I woke up on Thursday, January 24, to find the Mars Volta, an old friend, stone dead and on the slab. By now, anyone with sufficient curiosity has read Cedric Bixler-Zavala's multi-tweet breakup…   Read Story »

"He who works with his hands is a laborer. He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman. He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist." --St. Francis of…   Read Story »

There is a great episode of Seinfeld in which Kramer, fed up with receiving junk mail, decides to permanently suspend his mail service. Mailman Newman attempts to convince Kramer to reconsider by…   Read Story »

A music festival is a bit like an iTunes playlist. You're not going to listen to everything, but it's great knowing it's all there. And in a sense, a music festival is a lot like iTunes itself: a key…   Read Story »

"We're like business associates," Leslie Mann's Debbie frowns to Paul Rudd's Pete in This Is 40, Judd Apatow's sorta-sequel to Knocked Up. "We're like brothers and sisters." Their marriage is…   Read Story »

To a cynic, 2012 might have looked a lot like the Year Of The Bellyache. With musicians from Jana Hunter to John Mellencamp candidly addressing their personal economic realities in blog posts and…   Read Story »

2012 was the first full year without LCD Soundsystem since James Murphy distilled the fleeting essence of cool into seven-some comically heartrending minutes a decade prior. To remind us what we lost…   Read Story »

In 1959, Ornette Coleman released The Shape of Jazz To Come, a record with content almost as audacious as its title. Forty-seven years later, Coleman at least partially fulfilled his own challenge…   Read Story »

Throughout the course of my life I have not been what you would call an R&B listener. A brief history of my dabbling: I owned a cassette copy of Boyz II Men's II because who didn't? A year later I…   Read Story »

David Thomas, the singer of Pere Ubu, once said that "Rock music is mostly about moving big black boxes from one side of town to the other in the back of your car."   I love this line because it…   Read Story »