"It was like falling off a bicycle," said David Johansen. He was talking about restarting the New York Dolls in 2004 at the behest of no less a fan than Morrissey. "We've been doing this longer than the original band. It just feels right. We get together, we do a record. It's kind of an Read More
It might be better to burn out than it is to fade away, but what if your ambition is continuity?
Yo La Tengo is a New York (by way of Hoboken) institution, celebrating its 25th year of making music. The reasons the band has outlasted many of its indie peers are many, but most have to Read More
Plenty of bands get back together for that big one-off, or maybe a couple of tours, or even a new album.
But Dinosaur Jr. has pulled off something very different: They’ve picked up their sound just as it was when they imploded years ago, just as if time had stood still.
The band is now four years, Read More
Paul Tollett, the man behind the giant, weekend-long music showcase festival All Points West, which is taking over Liberty State Park in Jersey City this coming weekend, has learned a bit about holding giant, weekend-long music showcase festivals in New York, and what can go wrong.
“We felt there were a lot of things we didn’t Read More
What do musicians do when their stars have settled down a bit closer to the horizon? Do they keep producing albums, playing gigs, chasing the brass ring and the gold record?
If you're Matthew Sweet, he of 90's hits "Girlfriend" and "Sick of Myself," you do all that. And you make pottery that looks like cats.
If Read More
Forty-five years ago, Beatlemania was semiofficially diagnosed when the Beatles performed to an audience of millions on The Ed Sullivan Show.
A year later, they performed the very first concert ever held at Shea Stadium.
This week, Paul McCartney is back to christen that arena’s replacement, Citi Field. And while in town, he’ll be Read More
Two bands will be playing the Ezra Jack Keats Family Concert in Prospect Park on the afternoon of July 11, two bands that have the same name and the same members. Kids will be hoping to hear this band play “Who Put the Alphabet in Alphabetical Order?” or “Rolling O” while parents will be crossing Read More
It's always a little strange when holidays come to reality-television shows, since you know it had to have been taped, well, beforehand, and so everyone is just faking that it's Thanksgiving. Such was the case when the Top Chef crew headed up to a downright balmy Rochester, N.Y. (they cooked outside for the elimination challenge) Read More
The Killers' latest, Day & Age, out today, was rumored to be a more stripped down affair than we've yet seen from the band. There was to be less glitzy new wave than on their unrelenting 2004 debut, Hot Fuss, and less brooding Americana-tinged arena bluster than on 2006's uneven Sam's Town. Well, sorry, wrong Read More
Tuesday evening, for VH-1 and Vogue's "Fashion Rocks" show, the Black Eyed Peas performed a hip-hop version of the Rolling Stones' "Miss You." Turning one of the sexiest songs of all time into a dead-eyed, fake-funk abomination is a real accomplishment, though to be fair, it's just another day at the office for B.E.P.
Two nights Read More
It started a couple of weeks ago, with the unlikeliest of progenitors: The Boss.
Bruce Springsteen dedicated a live rendition of his hit "Born In The U.S.A." to Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps. Everybody cheered, even though that song isn't really a "go America!" kind of song at heart, and after all these years of defending it, Read More
Solange Knowles, like so many young people today, is an avid blogger! Recently, to accompany her posting of a song titled "F#@k The Industry" (scandalous!), Ms. Knowles wrote the following:
"Unfortunately I'm in an industry where diversity is not celebrated the way it should be. When some people see and hear something different it feels foreign Read More
The Jonas Brothers don’t occupy their prominent position in pop by accident, and they don’t owe their success to critics, music blogs, Imeem, Pandora, iTunes, or even a savvy Volkswagen commercial. New media be damned, they owe everything to the Disney monolith, a big old record label, and legion after legion of screaming girls.
With the Read More
What is the deal with joke rock? Does anyone actually listen to Randy Newman? At home on a stereo?
These are two questions with which I have wrestled over the past few years, as respected peers, with increasing persistence, lobby hard for Newman’s spare, early solo Read More
What does U2 sound like?
For a question that seems so absurd to ask-surely, everyone knows!--it's pretty hard to answer. Not because the band has been around for over three decades and experimented with a number of styles. Its that the answer is tautological: U2 sounds like U2. Its commercial success and attendant ubiquity has done Read More
