Tuesday, April 10 2012
Grunge: Straining to Challenge the Status Quo
Grunge: Music and Memory casts grunge as the unsure middle weight stepping into the ring against one pop music brawler after another. Down goes Michael Jackson, down goes Guns 'n' Roses, and while Springsteen is putting the finishing touches onHuman Touch/Lucky Town, Nirvana and Pearl Jam release the most influential albums of the decade.
Tuesday, November 8 2011
The Smashing Pumpkins: 10 October 2011 – Denver, CO
A classically Pumpkins evening, and perfectly Billy Corgan. He’ll do exactly what he wants, but he knows just what he has to do to pull you right in.
Thursday, October 13 2011
“Something in the Way”: ‘Loveless’ and the Un-Invention of Cock Rock
My Bloody Valentine's Loveless stands as an album of (at least) equal importance to Nirvana's Nevermind, garnering a great deal of its importance for the way that it offers a gender-bending sonic style that severed the entrenched connections between the electric guitar and masculine phallic power.
Tuesday, October 4 2011
Was Grunge the Last American Musical Revolution?
This year marks the 20th anniversary of Nirvana's Nevermind and Pearl Jam's Ten. In revisiting the grunge genre which altered the musical landscape two decades ago, the question arises: was this our last musical revolution?
Friday, September 30 2011
The Year Alternative Went Massive and Defined a Decade
Above all else, musically 1991 will forever be remembered as the year alterna-rock conquered the masses. PopMatters explores how alternative became the dominant form of rock music in the '90s.
Nirvana: Nevermind (Deluxe Edition)
Over time, it has become clear that this is an album about the feelings of one man (not a generation), and his struggle between rock purity and pop sensibility is what makes this classic.
Tuesday, September 27 2011
Smells Like MTV: Music Video and the Rise of Grunge
MTV’s central role in delivering grunge to a national audience in the early 1990s demonstrated the network’s power as a creator and definer of culture, and the reaction of many of grunge’s iconic figures against the video medium revealed the gulf between principle and reality.
Monday, September 26 2011
Between the Grooves of Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’
Our stable of writers undertakes a track-by-track analysis of the most celebrated album of the last 20 years, from the surprise hit that brought grunge to the masses, to the hidden cacophonous noise-fest that may not even be included on your copy of the record.
Friday, September 9 2011
Counterbalance: Year One
In this special one-year anniversary edition of Counterbalance, Eric Klinger and Jason Mendelsohn discuss their first year combing through the pop music canon (as determined by Acclaimed Music's calculations of every best-of list available), share a few favorites, and justify a couple items on their expense account.
Thursday, August 25 2011
Rock ‘n’ Roll 101: How to Handle a Dead Young Rock Star
In the wake of Amy Winehouse's death, record industry types and music journalists dusted off their Rock 'n' Roll 101 handbooks, revisiting the chapter on how to report on a Young Rock Star's death. Has it been handled any differently this time around than in the past?
