grant hart

The most important member of any rock ‘n’ roll band is the drummer. Seriously, you can have Jimi Hendrix on lead guitar in your band. But if Mitch Mitchell isn’t in the back, holding it all together on drums? You just have noise.  Rhythm is king in rock ‘n’ roll. Naturally, rhythm also rules in […]

Kid Congo Powers, one of avant garage punk’s secret weapons, was interviewed March 9 from his Tucson, Arizona, home that he shares with his husband. On the brink of releasing his amazing new EP with his longtime band the Pink Monkey Birds, Swing From The Sean DeLear, he explained to us in part one what […]

It stands to reason LGBTQIA+ culture informed, inspired and enmeshed with punk, down to the crossover with the ’70s glam scene that helped spawn it. After all, both worlds were essentially the Island of Misfit Toys, from the Rankin/Bass 1964 holiday special Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer: a rebel culture for those whose ideas don’t fit […]

Record stores are magical places. A good, well-stocked and curated record shop with a knowledgeable staff can influence tastes, expand horizons and serve as the hub for a local musical community. It can be a community center, a place to meet with your friends, promote your band’s upcoming shows by hanging up flyers, even sell […]

1979: As far as the American record business was concerned, punk rock was finished. They’d spent a packet on the Sex Pistols, Ramones and Dead Boys, and those albums seemingly shipped straight to the cut-out bins. The Pistols self-destructed at the end of their U.S. tour the previous year, and now that Sid Vicious kid […]

These 10 albums represent SST Records’ greatest achievements. Greg Ginn began Solid State Tuners at age 12 as a mail-order electronics business still thriving in his early adulthood. In 1978, when pioneering California indie label Bomp! Records dragged its heels releasing Nervous Breakdown, the debut EP from his punk band Black Flag, Ginn figured he […]

Welcome to the best punk albums of 1987. But first, some context. Feb. 20, 1987: An attack by a domestic terrorist called “the Unabomber” plants a bomb in a Salt Lake City computer store. The owner is injured. March 4: President Ronald Reagan owns up to what was swiftly called the Iran-Contra Affair in a […]

Drummer, vocalist, artist and founding member of Hüsker Dü, Grantzberg “Grant” Vernon Hart died at 56 Sept. 14 from complications of kidney cancer. Though he spent his time in Hüsker Dü behind a drumkit, Hart’s massive presence and impeccable sense of melody was magnetic and absolutely captivating. Responsible for writing several songs for the band, the […]

[Photo by: Hüsker Dü/Facebook] Grant Hart, drummer and singer of Hüsker Dü, has died at the age of 56 after a battle with cancer. Around 2:00 a.m. EST, the band shared a photo of Hart, without a caption. His death was then confirmed by the band’s publicist, Ken Weinstein, The New York Times reports. Hüsker Dü songwriter […]