“We kill the alive to praise the dead,” is how Robert Glasper summed up the current jazz scene in his interview on NPR last week. In other words, if you can’t relate to jazz, he’s feeling you. And he’s making big waves for trying to change that, especially in the wake of…
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As Rise Against have gone from scruffy Chicago punks to chart-topping mainstream hitmakers over the last decade, they’ve run into no end of blowback from early fans who think they should still be putting out minute-long blasts of hardcore for Fat Mike.
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On November 10, 1891, Arthur Rimbaud died. On November 10, 2011, on the 130th anniversary of the hapless French poet’s death, Drake’s album “Take Care” was leaked. And for the last four months, he’s unknowingly embarked on a tour to resurrect Rimbaud’s central thesis of maddening love – in packed arenas across…
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Rupa Marya calls her style “intentionally unclean.” Beyond that, it’s difficult to explain. Cooler and crazier than useless phrases like “world music” could hope to describe, her San Francisco-based band Rupa and the April Fishes takes gypsy jazz on a punky, border-crashing joy ride that sprawls across multiple styles, cultures and languages.…
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James Graham is not exactly holding up his role as lead singer of the Twilight Sad. The man known for songs like “And She Would Darken the Memory,” “I Became a Prostitute” and “Don’t Look at Me” sounds damned psyched on the phone as he crosses over the border from Canada into…
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Beerijuana. Yes, you read that correctly, and if the name alone sent tingles down your spine that was the correct response. While some sources date the origins of the San Jose band to, “Before the dawn of time (Optimus Prime Voice),” a quick read through the Sumerian texts will reveal that boast…
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In 1998, 98.5’s KOME became KFOX, and gone was all the angst and sexual frustration of the decade’s music, switched out for the musty, “feel good” vibes of our parent’s generation. To help harken back to the good ol’ days, streetwear line Mishka’s fourth release in their Radio Friendly Unit Shifter series…
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by
Aaron Carnes on February 29, 2012
What would happen if a bunch of freestyle rappers started a jam-band? It might sound impossible, but that’s exactly what happened to San Jose’s Rebelskamp. Four members of this rock, funk, avant-garde, free-form, genre-busting quintet (along with Kung Fu Vampire) were at one time the local freestyle rap crew, LSB.
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A lot has happened to Derek See in the last year. It’s been about that long that since The Bang, the girl-group band he started with his partner Angeline King, broke up.
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Chicago’s DMN Ology has been spelling his name about six different ways since he came up in the Chicago hip-hop scene in the ’90s. It’s not so much that he’s into Satan—although devils and demons do pop up in the imagery of his songs—it’s that “Demon” was his nickname growing up, a…
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