Another day, another journalist seeks to kill a genre of music. Today’s suspect is news.com.au‘s Neala Johnson. The weapon – My Chemical Romance. What got the axe? Emo, of course: NO MORE angst. No more whingeing. No more playing the victim. When My Chemical Romance re-emerge in early 2010 with their fourth album, any trace … [Read more…]
It’s an absolute pleasure to bring Chris Simpson into the America Is Just A World fold. Part of my inclination for adding more interviews and material to what I’ve already written for the book is to really uncover the narratives that have been overlooked, and no band’s lifetime has the same mixture of mild coverage … [Read more…]
Another day, another quizzical top ten list. This time it’s curtsey of Justin Jacbos at Paste magazine, with a piece entitled “10 Bands That Prove That Emo Wasn’t Always For The Hot Topic Tween Set.” The newsworthiness of the piece is due to the two fall reunion tours by emo 2nd wave forefathers Sunny Day … [Read more…]
I’d been meaning to post this up for quite a while, and here goes… I met up with Geoff Farina, frontman of the now-defunct and beloved band Karate, for an interview to be included in America Is Just A Word. Karate is one of a handful of bands that really challenged the ideals for what … [Read more…]
The Jealous Sound have confirmed a rumor I tracked down a little while ago: they are in fact touring with Sunny Day Real Estate and sharing bass players, one Nate Mendel. Whoa, is Mendel trying to one-up his bandmate Dave Grohl on the how-many-bands-can-I-perform-in-at-one-time? So far, Mendel’s got Foo Fighters, SDRE, and The Jealous Sound… … [Read more…]
I rarely mention Pitchfork in the guise of this blog… I won’t go into great details, and I will admit it’s easily one of the best aggregators for independent-related music information, so I do visit the site regularly. But when it comes to reviews, I try to stray from their pieces. Yes, the Pitchfork writers … [Read more…]
Amazon released their list of the 100 Greatest Indie Rock Albums of All Times. As with any “definitive” list, Amazon’s has some flaws, and some seem to stand out like sore thumbs, especially moving from one individual’s taste to the next. As a side note, yes, Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion is a great album and … [Read more…]
Last night, Public Enemy’s Chuck D dropped some knowledge at Harvard. Among the many insightful and brilliant things D had to say, one struck me in particular: “People need to write books. People need to write more books, now, more than ever. Write books and the cream will rise to the top.” That’s a bit … [Read more…]
So, for folks who’ve been following along in this blog, I submitted a proposal to Continuum’s 33 1/3 series to write a book about The Promise Ring’s Nothing Feels Good. Series editor David Barker emailed everyone who submitted a proposal today concerning those he picked to make it to the shortlist, the final compilation short … [Read more…]
The 33 1/3 blog released the final list of the nearly 600 potential books on a wide variety of albums that Continuum received after the call for open proposals a little while ago. Needless to say, it’s quite a list. It’s interesting to see what albums people are passionate enough about to fill an entire … [Read more…]