Michael Alan Goldberg

Thirty years ago, singer/guitarist Mike Palm and the rest of his Southern California trio, Agent Orange, got the good idea to mix first-wave punk-rock and hardcore with '60s and '70s surf music, holding onto the loud/fast/snotty approach while delivering melody and clarity too. And with that, they all but invented...

In the beginning, Philadelphia native Garrett "G. Love" Dutton -- hitting the national music scene like a fourth Beastie Boy crossed with splashes of Beck and Bob Dylan -- created the song "Cold Beverage" with his two-man backing band, Special Sauce. The year was 1994, the shambling song came from...

You could make the argument that Canadian anarcho-industrial-rock pioneers Skinny Puppy have been at their most artistically potent (and successful) over the past 27-plus years when there's a right-wing bogeyman at the helm of the free world to rail against. The group -– long led by frontman Nivek Ogre and...

In an early scene from one of our cinematic treasures, 1982's Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Phoebe Cates' character, Linda, points out, "There are three girls at Ridgemont who have cultivated the Pat Benatar look" before the camera hones in on three chicks with striped shirts, tights, spiky hair, heels,...

Part of what made Torche's last year's breakthrough album Meanderthal such an amazing, compelling listen was the collision of disparate styles and influences — singer/guitarist Steve Brooks was into death metal like Entombed and Deicide, while guitarist Juan Montoya brought to the band a love of My Bloody Valentine, Jawbox,...