“Let’s have a war — blame it on the Middle Class!”
The guitar emerges in a blur. The outburst only lasts a second or two before the rest of the band kicks in as abruptly. Someone calls “Out of vogue” repeatedly, as lead singer Jeff Atta responds, “We don't need no magazines/We don’t need no pictures/We don’t need no TV/We don’t wanna know!” It’s over in a minute. The other three songs on the seve
There’s the classic adage that a picture is worth a thousand words. However, a quality band T-shirt is worth a million. Our music tastes are synonymous with our personalities and how we express ourselves, so what better way to embody this than to dive into a collection of classic T-shirts?
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Perhaps the best way to know that a song is well written is to strip it down to its most natural and intimate form. If a song can elicit an emotional response from a listener with simply the artist’s voice and a singular instrument, then it's clear that everything is there to lay the foundation for a truly great composition. Whet...
In 1997, Third Eye Blind released their self-titled debut album, one that ultimately catapulted the band to mainstream success. Now, 25 years later, the group are commemorating those early days with their retrospective album Unplugged. In celebration of the momentous anniversary, Third Eye Blind are also gearing up for their Summer Gods: 25 Years In The Blind tour with Taking Back Sunday and Hocke
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...
To properly dissect the best emo albums from 2011, one must not be afraid to use the term “emo” broadly, as this style of music can take shape across multiple genres. In 2011, emo was arguably at its lowest point commercially, as the mid-to-late 2000s boom had slowly faded away at the turn of the decade, followed by the genre’s dip into happier and more neon territory. However, due to ...
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Nov. 20, 1980, after-dinner hour: England’s eyes were focused on Top Of The Pops, BBC’s long-running pop program, as they had every Thursday evening since the first day of 1964. In the middle of the rundown of the U.K.’s 30 best-selling singles appeared this apparition, resembling black leather Visigoths from a Hell’s Angels fever dream. The mixed scent of Mar...
Remember when Tom DeLonge started shouting about UFOs and no one took him seriously? Remember later, when the U.S. Navy confirmed the mysterious objects appearing in the footage DeLonge helped get released were, in fact, UFOs? People weren’t laughing then. And ...
2005 began with a sick hangover, otherwise known as facing four more years of President George W. Bush’s administration, compounded by the erroneous war in Iraq. And that queasy stomach and headache never subsided. Is it any wonder the year’s best punk music was overwhelmingly bright and cheerful, even if it pounded like a jackhammer? It was as ...
The screen fades in from black to a grainy, high-speed chase through an urban landscape, all jerky camerawork and streaky lights, flickering between night and day. The lens finally settles on a water plant or oil refinery rushing by, cutting to details of a speeding motorcycle carrying a pair of riders who resemble Mad Max extras...
For most fans of music, EPs aren't as special as full-length releases. They are often considered odds and ends in between records rather than their own thing. On that rare occasion, though, EPs give us a completely different experience than what we thought we would get, packing the punch of an album in a little amount of time...
“The Battle Of Britpop”
In its Aug. 26, 1995 issue, venerable U.K. pop weekly NME reported, “In a week where news leaked that Saddam Hussein was preparing nuclear weapons, everyday folks were still getting slaughtered in Bosnia and Mike Tyson was making his comeback, tabloids and broadsheets alike went Britpop crazy.” Homegrown pop g...
In recent years, it has become impossible to ignore the resurgence of several sectors of pop culture that were deemed either irrelevant or rendered obsolete. At the start of 2020, we saw the rise of the next generation of pop-punk, emo and scene culture that has since been catapulted back to the mainstream for the first time in years...
Punk rock would never escape society’s accusations of ineptitude. To mainstream ears, the music was ugly — tuneless, arhythmic, untalented. Worst of all, the vocalists couldn't sing. How could that garbage be called music?
We all know the naysayers were wrong. But a degr...
Lawrence Livermore, the founder of Lookout! Records, Green Day’s first record label, claims that when he first invited the group to make the EP that would become 1989’s 1,000 Hours, Billie Joe Armstrong was so young, he didn’t recognize the opportunity as being of any great significance.
More than th...
Not every album is destined to be a classic. No matter how much a band might like to recapture the magic every now and again, there are always projects that fly under the radar. If you look at the classics, though, you’re missing out on some of the best material that these bands have ever made. Thes...
Over the course of a 20-plus-year career that started with hardcore-influenced punk and ended with electro-pop-tinged arena rock, Fall Out Boy made sure to never make the same album twice. One of the biggest bands to come out of the mid-2000s pop-punk scene, it’s hard to underestimate the impact that Patrick Stump, Pete Wentz, Joe Trohman and Andy Hurley have had — and it isn’t simply confined to
Established by Bad Religion guitarist Brett Gurewitz in 1981, Epitaph Records set out to bring together the California punk scene under one umbrella. It soon outgrew that original mission statement and went on to become a certified authority in other genres as well...
“Rock ‘n’ roll is supposed to be fun,” Sex Pistols singer Johnny Rotten told British rock journalist Charles Shaar Murray in 1977. “You’re supposed to enjoy it. It’s not about taking a million fucking years to learn a million fucking chords on the guitar.”
That clarion call — sounded as thei...