Back in May, “Best Worst Movie” director Michael Paul Stephenson wrote an editorial about loving bad movies. It was titled: Bad Books Are Bad, and Bad Food Is Bad. But Bad Movies Are Not Always Bad What’s missing from the title? Music. Specifically bad music. Perhaps Stephenson left bad music out of the conversation for … [Read more…]
What is one expected to do when the economy’s in the tank and it seems harder and harder to make a decent living in your chosen industry? In music, the route to a sustainable existence appears to be written in the ads. Or, so it seems in the case of the Black Eyed Peas, a … [Read more…]
It’s hard to sum up an entire year of pop music in one concise “best of” list. Instead, here’s a tidy little look at some of the highs and lows in pop music over the past year: Hip-Huh?: The New Yorker‘s Sasha Frere-Jones declared that hip-hop was dead and upset a lot of hip-hop heads. … [Read more…]
It was indeed “A Decade Under The Influence.†But while Taking Back Sunday could string together a few solid hits drenched in a post-hardcore milieu and cut with pop sensibilities, chances are no one in the band could have predicted how influential emo would become in the aughts. The presence of the word in the … [Read more…]
I’m not one to usually recycle news without some sort of comment/insight (errr… at least, not on a consistent basis and based on reporting from other sites), but the following news (as reported by Aversion) certainly speaks for itself: Much to the delight of uptight moms and punk kids alike, Brokencyde’s pulled out of the … [Read more…]
Saw the above t-shirt at Warped on Tuesday. It may just be a shirt, but nowadays fashion is oft as important – if not the important – as the music that a band chooses to define itself. In My So Called Punk, Matt Diehl notes the clashes between “emo” kids and traditional “punk” kids at Warped … [Read more…]
 Got back from Warped Tour a handful of hours ago. For those eager to hear what went down at the Boston date, check out Bostonist in a day or two for a review with a smattering of pics such as the one I took of Frank Carter at the start of this post. Sure, … [Read more…]
Well, I haven’t gotten out to Warped just yet, but even so, it seems that I got the jump on the New York Times with my piece on the whole scrunk thing for The Phoenix. Ok, perhaps that’s a huuuuuge overstatement, but Jon Caramanica did notice the combination of electronics and screamo as sure as I … [Read more…]
The behind-the-scenes (or rather, behind-my-thoughts) on the Boston Phoenix piece I did on scrunk and Warped Tour is still to come, but consider this a little preview. A lots been said online since the piece went on the net about scrunk/crunkcore and its impact on Warped Tour, which isn’t to say that my article caused these … [Read more…]
 So, the research I’ve pointed out in a few earlier blog entries has come to fruition in an article for The Boston Phoenix. On scrunk. That’s right, the (un)holy matrimony between screamo and crunk as seen in brokeNCYDE, Millionaires, and various others. You can check out The Phoenix site for the article, or pick up the issue … [Read more…]