Over the course of 90 minutes, the new documentary Bad Reputation chronicles Joan Jett‘s roller-coaster life: The high of the Runaways, followed by a messy breakup. D.I.Y. success matched with a major label looking to crush her. Waning popularity paired with a Warped Tour reinvention. Through it all, she’s kept …
Read More »Paul Woolford on His Search for the Perfect House Record
Paul Woolford’s “Hang Up Your Hang Ups” is a dance-floor jackhammer, a vocal house record as spare as it is adrenalized. The track’simmediacy isn’t necessarily unexpected; Woolford is a veteran U.K. producer with several well-known club singles. What is more surprising: Though Woolford mainly releases tracks through esteemed small labels …
Read More »Devo on How 'Whip It' Changed Their Lives, Meeting the Rolling Stones
“I don’t think Devo would have hatched in a major city,” the group’s Jerry Casale says, looking back on the art-rockers’ early history in a excited tone. “We were surrounded by an anti-intellectual culture and antagonistic people in Ohio. By the time we came up on the radar of the …
Read More »Meek Mill Reflects on the Toll of Prison, 'Traumatizing' Upbringing
He’d slept three hours in the last two days and hadn’t had a moment to collect himself and wrap his head around the news that he was free. But the morning after his sudden release from prison, Meek Mill was at ease as technicians buzzed around him, hanging lights and …
Read More »Deadmau5 on Why He Went Orchestral With 'Where's the Drop?'
A day before his public debut as a tattooed maestro of symphonic music, the EDM superhero Deadmau5 is reclined in a basement recording studio in West Hollywood, crunching anxiously on nuts and celery stalks. He’s dressed in a Banksy T-shirt and bright red sneakers, scrolling through social media on his …
Read More »Mickey Hart: A Visit to the Grateful Dead Drummer's Sonic Playground
Mickey Hart extends a hand over his desk and smirks. “Would you like some water?” the 74-year-old longtime Grateful Dead drummer asks. “Beer? Vodka? Anything? Opium?” It’s hard to tell if he’s joking. In his sprawling compound on the top of a hill in the rural paradise of west Sonoma …
Read More »Artists to Fans: Put Your Phones Away!
The last thing Jack White wants to see, when he’s standing onstage, is a sea of fans more involved with their phones than the music. So after pleading with fans not to use smartphones at earlier shows, he’s going hardcore for his sold-out spring tour – hiring Yondr, a tech …
Read More »Radiohead's 'Pablo Honey': 10 Things You Didn't Know
The first major step in Radiohead‘s lengthy journey from Oxford club mainstays to globally lauded architects of contemporary art rock took the form of Pablo Honey, their debut LP, issued on February 22nd, 1993. While the album lacks the musical daring that characterized their later works, it finds the band …
Read More »Monkees' Michael Nesmith on Resurrecting His First National Band
Michael Nesmith couldn’t believe what he was seeing when he walked onstage at the San Bernardino, California, club Pappy & Harriet’s Palace earlier this month. It was his first gig with his early-Seventies country-rock group the First National Band since they split 46 years ago amid raging public disinterest, yet …
Read More »Pearl Jam's 'Vs.': How Band Battled Stardom on Angry Sophomore LP
Pearl Jam were at a major turning point in their young career when they gathered at remote Nicasio, California, recording studio the Site to begin work on their second album, Vs.It was March 1993, and the past two years had seen the Seattle quintet rise from obscurity to become one …
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