Japanic were an arty punk/dance band from Houston that made it down to Austin semi-regularly back between 1999 and 2002 or so. I got their debut disc to review for Pop Culture Press and wasn’t overwhelmed by it but since they came into town a lot I figured they were worth seeing. Their live show [...]
I loathed the song “Misty” the first few times I heard it. I only knew the song as bit of torture that Johnny Mathis had inflicted on the world in the early days of AM radio. The terrible lyrics and Mathis’ voice were unbearable to me and I recall muttering “this song sucks so hard” [...]
There are a lot of great Johnny Cash songs out there, so it was incredibly hard to pick just one. However, it’s also the birthday of someone special so the choice becomes that much easier.
From the underrated I Walk The Line soundtrack, the ballad “Flesh and Blood.”
Johnny Cash - Flesh and Blood
Thinktree were one of those bands that blew everyone away when they appeared in Boston in the early nineties. Their sound was unique and hard to explain by even their biggest fans. I remember copies of their debut disc being passed around feverishly between friends and people cranking the tunes to hear the noises hidden [...]
I won’t delve too deep into the history behind “Ghosts of Cable Street” - wikipedia and the like do a far better job. I’m intrigued at how much better the live version of this song is and why it had to be relegated to a B-side of a questionable single. “Great Expectations” was a decent [...]
The UMC’s Fruits of Nature is a lost hip-hop classic. It’s aged as well as De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising or A Tribe Called Quest’s People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm but nothing clicked for the band the way they did for the Native Tongues Posse. It probably didn’t help [...]
You’ve been in this stinking town for a month and nothing has gone right. That ‘perfect job’ turned out to be a bait-and-switch, the ‘quaint’ apartment wound up being right above a couple who can’t stay quiet whether they’re fighting or making up. Don’t even get started on the weather in this place – the [...]