Tag Archives: Alternative Rock

Rhino Records' spiffy new reissue of this indispensible 70's NYC rock classic.

Music from Buffy, the Vamprie Slayer's final seasons.

Our wise Taloran’s mention of the fine funky guitarist Carlos Alomar in the Rolling Stone guitarist poll post (see comments #534, 536) inspired me listen to his work (Alomar’s, not Taloran’s, no offense). This brought me to David Bowie, 1974. In a move away from sci-fi glam rock to what …

I just stumbled across an old news story about Toad the Wet Sprocket reuniting for a brief tour last February. I don’t remember hearing anything about it. There was a brief period in the early-’90s when Santa Barbara’s Toad was on top of the world – how soon they forget. …

Guided by the ace production team of Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley, Madness’s cartoonish “nutty boy” image, cockney enunciation, and mutating neo-ska sound struck a deep chord in Britain, where they had 19 consecutive Top 20 hits between ’79 and ’85. Highlights include the manic ska propulsion of “One Step …

Arriving just in time for the election, we have its theme song: Listen to “California Uber Alles” In light of the silliest election EVER taking place today in California, the artist formerly known as Dramarama has jumped into the studio and recorded a blistering version of the Dead Kennedys’ “California …

Sascha Konietzko is founder, bassist, programmer, sometime-vocalist, producer and focal point for the German/American industrial group KMFDM (which stands for “Kleine Mitleid Fur Das Mehrheit,” translated “No Pity For the Majority”), perfecters of the metal guitar and electronic beats approach to industrial music. KMFDM has released classic albums Money, Angst, …

As owner and chief producer at Beserkley Records from the mid-’70s through the mid-’80s, Matthew King Kaufman created one of the coolest indie labels, and helped create some of the finest power pop of all time. On a shoestring he produced or co-produced enduring albums by Earth Quake (Rocking the …

Poor Modern English: doomed to live up to the greatness of one song, reduced to rerecording it to get some attention, some fine work not up to iconic status largely ignored. It was ever thus for “one-hit wonders” – even those with lots of good songs. In ’82 Hugh Jones …

In 1982 guitarist-keyboardist-singer Roland Orzabal, and singer-bassist-keyboardist Curt Smith left the ska group Graduate to form Tears for Fears, an ambitious blending of synth-pop and primal psychology. Their first single was “Mad World,” which combined odd, syncopated percussion with moody synths and Smith’s haunted vocals on killer lines to forge …