Flipping through the channels last night, I happened to stumble on something we rarely see nowadays: a real live rock concert.The Who played a show at the Gaumont State Theater in London on December 15th 1977, 9 days after I was born. It was recorded on 35mm for the Who rockumentary film The Kids Are Alright, and PBS aired the whole thing for the first time- remastered, digitally restored, the works- last night.

I was astonished. Full Article »

I heard Rose Hill Drive for the first time just a few weeks ago. I remember getting an email from my brother, who’d just come back from a taping of Conan O’Brien’s show in New York and was amped as all hell about the musical guest. “Sick vocals, sick bass, nasty lead guitar and solid fucking drums! They look like the Hanson brothers all grown up,” he told me. “Like the White Stripes on steroids.”Understanding fully that Jack White on steroids would pretty much cause the universe to collapse in on itself, I took this news for the slight exaggeration it had to be. But my interest was piqued. I caught ‘em on Conan later that night, and after seeing them tear the shit out of their new single Sneak Out, I understood what my brother was so excited about. I knew we had to talk to these guys.

We got tracked down drummer Nathan Barnes to get a bearing on what the band’s up to, where they’ve learned from the legends and what it means to be a band breaking into a dying industry. Full Article »

Frontin’ On Debra / Beck, Pharrell Williams & Jay-Z
I found this on vinyl at Amoeba in Berkeley. Throw it on at a party, and you’ll probably get laid. Full Article »

To date, Joe Purdy has sold more than half a million single paid downloads, and his song Can’t Get It Right Today has likely been all over your TV in Kia ads and Grey’s Anatomy.

The reception has been huge, and the labels are foaming at the mouth to cash in on this would-be-could-be superstar, but Joe’s flatly turned down every offer that’s been made. He releases the records only the way he wants to, and has lucked out like a Vegas champion in the press. But the days of blind luck in the music industry and are dead and gone, and now more than ever, people have all the tools they need to uncover the bullshit gristle before they’re tricked into parting with their money. To move the numbers Purdy does, the music’s got to be good, or at least meticulously designed for a particular demographic. Full Article »