thurston moore

With their sophomore album, Back Home, Big Joanie are honoring the deep roots of their ancestors. In this interview, the punk trio detail its creation.

“When Damaged came out, it perfectly represented the depths and darkness of my particular teen angst,” Adam Grossman, guitarist for Angkor Wat, Skrew and Ministry, tells Alternative Press. “It was the soundtrack of my life at that point in time.” Any musician involved in the most extreme forms of musical expression owes their existence and […]

“People were commenting about this one photo I took of Marginal Man that was in the inner sleeve of their record [Identity, Dischord Records, 1984],” mused veteran Washington, D.C. punk/alt-rock photographer Jim Saah via telephone. He was reflecting on an exhibit at D.C.’s Lost Origins Gallery celebrating his new book In My Eyes: Photographs 1982-1997 […]

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 […]

Lester Bangs, the greatest rock journalist ever, felt eternal Lower East Side musical royals the Velvet Underground were “our Beatles and Bob Dylan combined” and that “modern music begins” with them. He wasn’t wrong. They existed only for a handful of years—1965 to 1970. But five years was enough for them to create virtually everything […]

Alongside Hank Williams, Bob Dylan is arguably the greatest American songwriter of the 20th century. Last year’s blues-drenched Rough And Rowdy Ways proved that he’s hardly lost any of his gifts in this century, even as he approached his 80th birthday this past May 24. But the minute he walked into New York’s Columbia Studio […]

We may be taught not to judge books by their covers, but are we always so kind to albums? In a sea of iconic cover art designed by prolific artists, the importance of release presentation can’t be understated. So, naturally, when we see musicians taking on the daunting task of designing the artwork themselves, we […]

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 […]

Remember the time Hootie And The Blowfish performed on NBC’s Friends and Monica even wound up getting a hickey from one of the band members at a meet and greet after the concert? Of course you do. You probably also remember that the band actually didn’t play on the show and, even worse, weren’t seen […]

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, 2020 has been an incredibly difficult year for the live music industry. In particular, independent music venues, artists and companies are facing closures and unforeseen economic hardships. Now, Weezer and Fall Out Boy are among the artists giving back to the National Independent Talent Organization (NITO). Two signed Weezer and […]

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 […]