The News Review:
- Matt Groening: Cartoon hero
- Subculture not a warped idea
- Iggy Pop: the New Weirdness
- Lighting the creative fire
- The 2007 Pitchfork Music Festival
- Sonic Youth rockets back to ‘Daydream Nation’
- The Gauntlet: Guns N’ Roses Metal News
Matt Groening: Cartoon hero
The Independent – Independent – Jul 21, 2007
In 1977 just graduated from the north-west’s most progressive hippie-ish college in Olympia Washington the young man who went on to create The Simpsons was newly arrived in Los Angeles and looking to settle into the role of “struggling writer and cartoonist”. During the height of the punk era he would wait tables at musicians’ hangouts and work behind the counter at the Licorice Pizza record store purveying drug paraphernalia alongside the 45s and keeping an eye as the punks tried to shoplift the photocopied cartoon zine he had put on sale. In 1977 just graduated from the north-west’s most progressive hippie-ish college in Olympia Washington the young man who went on to create The Simpsons was newly arrived in Los Angeles and looking to settle into the role of “struggling writer and cartoonist”. During the height of the punk era he would wait tables at musicians’ hangouts and work behind the counter at the Licorice Pizza record store purveying drug paraphernalia alongside the 45s and keeping an eye as the punks tried to shoplift the photocopied cartoon zine he had put on sale… The wealth they have created for Groening and his resulting wealth of leisure time has allowed him opportunity to indulge his passion for music specifically obscure world music and the sort of experimental rock that wouldn’t graze the charts. He owns thousands upon thousands of records and CDs. He was even allowed to curate an LA music festival – although poor ticket sales forced a rethink and he was persuaded to add a few household names to spice up the bill. One of Groening’s few professional frustrations has been that his most significant post-Simpsons creation Futurama failed to capture the public imagination in the same way. The adventures of a pizza-delivery man cryogenically frozen and then brought back to life in the 31st century the show mines Groening’s science fiction obsession and acts as a kind of warped parody of modern life. Groening had to fight hard to persuade Fox to take up the show in 1999 and fought even more ferociously hard to keep it on the air ultimately to no avail. Cancelled after four series it nonetheless won itself a cult following that delights Groening and has enabled him to attempt a resurrection.
Subculture not a warped idea
St. Petersburg Times – Jul 21, 2007
addVariable(“fontcolor” “0×336699″); ap. write(“flashcontent”); Walking from stage to stage at the soggy Vans Warped Tour on Friday – amid a crowd that smelled like wet dog dipped in beer and Axe body spray – I kept thinking about a cultural conundrum that's very 2007. In an age when any kid in any city is a mouse click away from any band anywhere does the idea of subculture still mean anything?When the Warped Tour began in 1995 punk was a newly revived trend emo wasn't yet a buzzword and skateboarding was still largely seen as pseudo-suburban rebellion a la Bart Simpson. Now Green Day is one of the biggest bands in the world emo-screamo-pop punkers like Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance aren't far behind and skateboarder Tony Hawk has been a guest voice on The Simpsons. The Warped Tour doesn't seem so alternative anymore. Maybe that's why the bands acted like rock stars – to these fans they are. He needs a keytarAs Scary Kids Scaring Kids singer Tyson Stevens let loose his gutteral screams his bandmates hunched behind him and head-banged perfectly in sync to the thrashy pop-metal beat.
Iggy Pop: the New Weirdness
San Francisco Chronicle – Jul 21, 2007
The synthesis of those two irreconcilable worlds became Iggy Pop a being whose timeless appeal like the Blues was founded in the feeling of not belonging anywhere. Mainly though Pop used the blues as a template for conveying large emotions with simple words. The music itself with its crunchy surgically precise guitar strut and metronomic drumming made crudeness volume repetition and energy into a religion and it spoke to private experiences whose universality lay in their intimacy: lust anger loneliness inertia and above all boredom. He could load a line as simple as “I’m so messed up I want you here” with immense feeling but now and again he could also floor you with a perfect rock couplet: “I’m a streetwalking cheetah with a heart full of napalm” he sang on “Search and Destroy. “”I’m the runaway son of a nuclear A-bomb. Thus the first three Stooges albums contain some of the most genetically perfect rock songs ever made. More than anything else The Stooges music was beautifully impossibly viscerally mindless in a way that’s all but impossible to capture in the Information age — a time in which those private experiences are obliterated by connectivity and information and where it’s virtually impossible for an artist to create something without being paralytically conscious of what type of artist he is and what type of art he’s making… It could also be a plea. “When punk began to be a genre people were going to go out and try to mine it” Pop says. “All of the better groups like the Ramones and The Sex Pistols were very artificial. These were highly artificial groups. The Sex Pistols these guys took pains to tell people that it was all a con: That was the thing: ‘Don’t listen to us. ‘”"The top rockers” Bangs wrote “have a mythic aura around them ‘the superstar’ and that’s a basically unhealthy state of things.
Lighting the creative fire
NEWS.com.au – Jul 21, 2007
Charles played with bands such as Autumn Giants Kilgore Trout and Blonde Cobra as well as numerous solo shows. He has released two independent CDs under the name Charles Curse InSilverScene and Rain In Skull. While some of his music has had an experimental edge Charles also explores more traditional songwriting forms. "I’m a naturally creative person" Charles says. "I’ve always been that way and I feel that’s the only skill in life that I feel totally comfortable with. It just seems to come naturally to me I don’t force anything. "His path to songwriting began with writing fiction before being introduced to the punk aesthetic by Nirvana… "I’ve always been that way and I feel that’s the only skill in life that I feel totally comfortable with. It just seems to come naturally to me I don’t force anything. "His path to songwriting began with writing fiction before being introduced to the punk aesthetic by Nirvana. "That invigorated me and I kept delving became a total music nut. I picked up a guitar at 15 and that’s been my outlet ever since. I’m not one of those people who likes a band just because they are obscure. What I’m interested in is music that doesn’t sound like an amalgamation of two bands that already exist and a lot of bands now seem to be like that.
The 2007 Pitchfork Music Festival
New York Daily News – Jul 21, 2007
And well no one under any circumstances really enjoys using a port-o-potty but in my mind that’s where the problems began and ended. And that’s saying a great deal when you have 48000 people congregating over three days outdoors in mid-July. As far as I’m concerned the weekend felt far more like a lower-scale DIY punk festival that just happened to have huge numbers and somewhat large sponsorship. And by that I mean the festival organizers kept ticket prices low ($45 for the whole weekend and $15 for Friday $25 for Saturday and Sunday) and charged a whopping $1 for water and $4 for a beer. Though each day of the festival sold out the park didn’t feel prohibitively packed or uncomfortable and the vibe stayed somewhat communal. Perhaps it was the uncommonly perfect weather but everyone seemed to be smiling and doing their thing whether that meant playing four square and basketball on the few available courts or reading Nabokov in between bands. Previous Page Next Page 12.
Sonic Youth rockets back to ‘Daydream Nation’
OCRegister – Jul 21, 2007
Just entering Cal State Fullerton though I knew only from mid-’80s college-rock the sort I sought out while seemingly everyone else at Canyon High listened to Van Hagar’s “5150″ and the “Top Gun” soundtrack. We all got into U2 of course and I rarely came across someone who didn’t want to go to an Oingo Boingo Halloween show. But for us adventurous types there was another world to discover the true alternative rock the music of the Minutemen and H?r D?d the Meat Puppets and the Birthday Party and early R. and the pre-”I’ll Be You” Replacements and the Jesus and Mary Chain and really it’s quite a long list. Anyone immersed in such sounds at the time could recognize that Sonic Youth shared a certain sensibility with most of those names like them the New York art-punk noise-control masters unflinchingly struck out on their own musically adhering to few if any of rock’s conventions at a time when it seemed like most of them had decayed for good… To top itself I now challenge the group to follow Lucinda Williams’ lead and tackle five albums in five nights at El Rey as she will do in September. My recommendations should they accept the assignment and assuming there will be no replay of “Daydream”: “Sister” “Goo” “Dirty” “A Thousand Leaves” and “Murray Street. ” Redd Kross the wonderful punk-turned-power-pop outfit from L. also got into the night’s album-revival theme dusting off its 1982 debut “Born Innocent. ” “Still timeless” Moore said during SY’s encore and while that might be overstating things a bit the collection does hold up quite well especially given the years of melodic deepening and riff-mongering founding brothers Jeff and Steve McDonald and disconcertingly lanky guitarist Robert Hecker have put in. Paying homage to Linda Blair and Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker while mixing in ripping remakes of tunes by the Carrie Nations and the serial-killer songsmith himself Charles Manson Redd Kross’ return to basics reminded that the best punk tends to age remarkably well.
The Gauntlet: Guns N’ Roses Metal News
The Gauntlet – Jul 21, 2007
Kerrang! called “Appetite” the #1 album of all time. The record has scored impressively amongst dozens of best album polls. A landmark in the history of rock music “Appetite For Destruction” is a bona fide rock phenomenon that’s left an indelible mark upon millions. Guns N’ Roses wraps up its Japanese tour this evening with an appearance in Osaka Japan. Date: Jul 21 2007 As Reported by: Erin Fox Tags:.