Not only did Harmony Korine’s new movie Spring Breakers give us the unholy image of James Franco in cornrows, it also inspired one of modern music’s strangest team-ups, a song called “Fancy Bitch” composed by Gucci Mane and Marilyn Manson. Says Mr. Mane in a Fader magazine interview, “We got…
Plenty of bands don’t only make funky jams, they also get some funkin’ done in the bedroom, and possibly tour bus with each other. Bands like Fleetwood Mac whose members did a whole lot of incestuous mackin’ and bumping uglies over the years. In honor of this famously horny act…
There is another description for the job of music writer: music snob. When you are repeatedly forced to form opinions on what makes music good or terrible, it becomes easy to confuse those opinions with fact. I am as guilty of this sin as anyone. I will argue to the…
Back in 2006, the Miami Heat’s crowd won the team the championship. The Heat were down two games to zero against the Dallas Mavericks, when the series came to Miami. The Mavericks were up by thirteen in the fourth quarter when Dwyane Wade went bananas and gave the Heat the…
If you want to feel young, go to a Crosby, Stills & Nash concert where the generation that coined “never trust anyone over thirty” are all now in their sixties. The two women in the seats in front of me discussed the travails of hot flashes as they waited for…
It’s coming. Medical marijuana is legal in California. Colorado has decriminalized it. It’s only a matter of time before marijuana is legal throughout this fine land. Like any other product for sale, those in charge of slinging weed are going to need commercials to sell their wares. Fortunately, popular music…
David Crosby is the Forrest Gump of rock n’ roll. I’m not saying Mr. Crosby isn’t very bright, nor that he’s very fast or adept at ping pong. But just as you can’t escape Forrest Gump when going through 20th century American history — there Forrest is shaking JFK”s hand,…
A thousand eulogies were written last week for Chris “Mac Daddy” Kelly, the rapper, who shot to fame with the rap duo Kriss Kross. Very few of those notices eulogized Chris “Mac Daddy” Kelly, the movie star who also died last week. Kelly, along with his partner in sound Chris…
There will be a musical act on stage this Wednesday at SunFest with the official name of Smashing Pumpkins. This band will be singing and playing chord progressions of music we recognize as being by Smashing Pumpkins. But there will be only one recognizable face from the video of “Cherub…
While you could argue that there are two types of people in the world, those who like Rush and those who don’t, I don’t think that’s quite right. There is, however, a line in the sand with which you can divide serious students of rock ‘n’ roll, and that line…
I wouldn’t dare make any suggestions to the brilliant minds behind the AMC tv series Mad Men. They’re doing just fine on their own, blowing our minds each week with witty quips and pitch perfect illustrations of the emptiness of our consumerist culture. But I couldn’t help to notice that…
On singer Justin Bieber’s travels to Amsterdam, perhaps after a visit to a local coffee shop and maybe before checking out the red light district, he visited the Anne Frank house. This historical site where a teenaged Anne Frank and her family hid in a tiny attic from Nazis before being…
Jimi Hendrix has a new album out. And no, we’re not talking about Jimi Hendrix, the Korean YouTube dance sensation, but the Jimi Hendrix from Woodstock who lit his guitar on fire and died 43 years ago. The New York Times reports that Ed Kramer, who produced Hendrix’s newest album, People,…
When Britain’s first female prime minister Margaret Thatcher died Monday from a stroke, her death seemed more a political story than a cultural one. But that wasn’t really the case. Sure, there was a lot of discussion about Meryl Streep winning an Oscar for portraying her in The Iron Lady,…
“You will drink the black sperm of my vengeance.” — Ronnie Barzell in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.That line of dialogue, by itself, would have been enough to get a flick one of film critic Roger Ebert’s notorious thumbs down. Ebert, who died of cancer on April 4, is…
It was a triumphant moment for music when Searching for Sugar Man won the Academy Award for best documentary last month. Yes, it was nice that after decades of anonymity, the subject of the movie, singer/songwriter Rodriguez got his day in the sun. But the award also validated what has,…
David Bowie quietly put out his first album in ten years on Tuesday. The Next Day sold about 90,000 copies in its first week of release which might give Bowie the first number one album of his career. All this in spite of Bowie not doing any interviews or performances to…
South Florida isn’t known as a breeding ground for country music, but our climate did inspire at least one country singer in Tommy Dalton to pick up a guitar and belt out some tunes. Dalton recently recorded a new album at Hollywood’s Sunflower Recording Studios. Now based in his new city…
There are several surprising facets to Morrissey’s concert tonight at Los Angeles’ Staples Center. The first is that Morrissey is able to play a venue as large as the arena that houses the LA Lakers basketball team. The second is that Morrissey requested that all the vendors at the arena…
Whatever you think of the Grateful Dead, you have to respect the admiration they inspired with their music. People gave up on all other ambitions to follow them around the country.Likewise, whatever preconceptions you might have about the California band Flogging Molly, seeing the dedication of their fans at last…
When I heard Spec’s Records was closing down, I couldn’t help but feel an era had ended even though the era ended a long time ago. In all honesty, it’s amazing a record shop selling mostly CDs and DVDs lasted all the way to January 2013. I can’t remember the last time I…
Your first reaction is envy when you hear Bjork, R. Kelly, and Belle & Sebastian are headlining Chicago’s Pitchfork Music Festival. And that the Stone Roses, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Modest Mouse, Lou Reed, and Blur (and that’s just Friday’s line-up) are playing Coachella, your second reaction is to audit…
