steve shelley

Among all the music that the ‘90s brought us, there’s one common denominator—kick-ass women vocalists. From the emergence of grunge to the golden age of hip-hop settling in its place, the ‘90s proved to be a decade where artists expressed the exasperations of womanhood with all of their might. As women lead singers began to […]

When it initially blasted into the world from New York’s Lower East Side almost concurrently with punk in 1977, it was dubbed no wave. Village Voice critic Robert Christgau referred to it as “skronk,” an onomatopoeia based around the general guitar sound. He uncharitably dubbed its ’80s practitioners “pigfucker” bands. This writer’s personal name for […]

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 […]