Music

“Bro Hymn,” from Pennywise’s self-titled, full-length 1992 debut, ranks among the most singular songs in punk history. None of the group’s peers could pull off such a staggeringly earnest ode to friendship: Bad Religion is too brainy, Green Day too wimpy, and Rancid too proudly purist. Like most powerful shmaltz,…

Listening to New Orleans’s Soilent Green is like being dragged along the bottom of the Mississippi by a speedboat driven by a chain-smoking, velvet-clad demon. At almost inconceivable velocity, the sludge of Scott Crochet’s furious bass and Brian Patton’s detuned guitars gushes into your nostrils, ears and mouth, while the…

Three years ago, Aubrey Collins appeared to be on the fast track to superstardom. On Back to Me, her 2002 debut, she displayed a talent and maturity far beyond her fourteen years, turning the heads of many Nashville execs and filling them with visions of LeAnn Rimes. But then Collins…

As the in-house producer for Moonshine Music, the nation’s largest independent dance label, Dave Aude (who appears at the Church on Friday, January 20) has produced and engineered some of the biggest names in dance music — notably, Paul Oakenfold and Keoki, as well as pop stars like Lindsay Lohan…

Cooking has always been one thing that I love to do,” says Armando Zuppa. “In Italy, my mama taught me everything she knew. I still do a lot of things her way.” Ah, the old country — where hearty Genoan focaccia rivals the Roman pizza of Zuppa’s boyhood: “So thin,”…

Gooch was a sight for sore eyes when he showed up on my doorstep on New Year’s Day. The two of us have been best friends since grade school. But we’re more than that, really; we’re musical soulmates. At least, we were until we hit the proverbial fork in the…

Medeski, Martin & Wood bassist Chris Wood gets that hometown feeling every time his group performs in Boulder, where he was raised. “My parents live there, and my wife’s parents live there, too,” he reveals, “so it always turns into a big family reunion.” Then again, everything’s relative for Wood…

The laws of probability and rock tradition dictate that 2006, like every year before it, will not end without a notable musical death or two. Eventually, all of our rock heroes end up in the Afterlife All-Star Band. Those who went to the after-party in 2005 — including Luther Vandross,…

All hail Dr. Dre, who has spent his life lying down with dogs but never catching fleas (or bullets). Unlike so many of those around him, Dre has always known that gangsta rap is music, not life. But there are so many others who foolishly think that they are somehow…

Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein and famed author Nora Ephron probably had big literary aspirations for their son, Max. But he went and started a Los Angeles punk band, the Actual, instead. Over the past few years, the trio — comprising Bernstein on guitar and vocals and brothers Jeremy and Aaron…

That Guy — you know, the one at the show who thinks it’s funny to drunkenly bellow, “Play “Stairway to Heaven’!” — is finally getting what’s coming to him. His comeuppance will be delivered by Lez Zeppelin, who’ll actually do it. This New York-based act proves that it’s okay to…

Along with Cooder Graw and Cross Canadian Ragweed, Jason Boland and the Stragglers are part of a talented crop of like-minded country-rock bands that popped up like virulent weeds in 1999. Along with the hugely popular Ragweed, Boland used to have a home base of Stillwater, Oklahoma (he now lives…

Joe Leste has fought on long after lesser men would have waved the white flag. He first turned heads as the pretty-boy frontdude in Bang Tango, a grad of the late-’80s L.A. rawk scene. The Bangers put out intermittently entertaining major-label discs in 1989 and 1991, and while neither caused…

In portions of the globe with a surer grasp of umlauts than is regularly exhibited here, this Swedish export is also known as the Esbjörn Svensson Trio. Pianist Svensson, joined by drummer Magnus Öström and bassist Dan Berglund (whose name is blessedly free of extraneous diacritical marks) specialize in acoustic…

During the frantic post-9/11 anthrax scare, Anthrax the band issued a statement saying that it was considering changing its nameto Basket Full of Puppies. Which should have been no surprise: The legendary thrash quintet has always been great at tempering social awareness with a morbid sense of humor. Formed in…

No one could have predicted the enormous worldwide influence the Wailers were to have when Bob Marley began singing as a teenager in the early ’60s. From the rough streets of Kingston’s infamous Trench Town ghetto, where the Wailers got their start, to selling millions of records and packing theaters…

After roaring out of the gate a few years back, The Last Seen (due at the hi-dive on Thursday, January 12, with Matt Boyer of Sun Kil Moon and Triplight) kept a pretty low profile for most of 2005. If their recently completed three-song effort is any indication of things…

Gary “Mani” Mournfield enjoys the distinction of having been part of two of the most important bands to emerge from Britain in the past twenty years: the Stone Roses and Primal Scream. Both acts helped create the zeitgeist of their time, particularly the Stone Roses, whose impact on British rock…

Visitors to Atlantic Records’ Internet home will find the Nappy Roots listed among the imprint’s roster of artists, and an affiliated website that’s linked there remains fully functional. But despite appearances, the performers have moved on, and rhymer William Hughes, who goes by Skinny DeVille, makes it clear that the…

Approximately 67,518 discs were issued in 2005. Of the thousands I managed to listen to, fewer than fifty truly moved me — but among those, I kept coming back to the following albums: The Mars Volta, Frances the Mute (GSL/Universal). When the Mars Volta played before an intimate crowd at…