Monday, September 11 2006
An Overheard Conversation Concerning Musical Taste
'But who determines the criteria by which one determines if something is well formed?' A debate of taste rages in a small field outside Maryland.
Thursday, September 7 2006
Notes from Underground
Begrand hits the traveling metal show Sounds of the Underground for nine hours of mayhem, moshing, and merch. And though this town's put the kibosh on mosh, there's plenty of familiar sights and sounds, from Metallica wannabes to papier-mâché phalluses.
Friday, August 25 2006
Bubblegum Pops the (Counter-)Culture
Fake and faceless, bubblegum pop in the late '60s and early '70s offended the prevailing rock myths of artistic creativity and rugged opposition to the powers-that-be.
Tuesday, August 15 2006
Postmortem
Hallelujah, it's raining blood! The Unholy Alliance Tour, a veritable distillation of the current state of contemporary metal on wheels, descends upon Western Canada and finally ends Begrand's 22-year wait to witness Slayer in the flesh.
Friday, August 11 2006
The Sounds of Now, Part Two: Meredith Monk
For the second installment in an ongoing series profiling contemporary composers, Jenkins reports on Meredith Monk, whose compositions and performances integrate the personal aspects of the body in a manner wholly removed from the majority of current musical production.
Thursday, July 13 2006
Complex Simplicity
Voivod vocalist Denis 'Snake' Belanger speaks candidly about the new Canadian Prime Minister, today's subordinate youth, and the 'emotional dimension' involved in creating a new album built around the guitar tracks of his deceased friend and bandmate, Denis 'Piggy' D'Amour.
Friday, June 30 2006
Melodic Patriotism: A Look at Some Lesser-Known Pieces for the Fourth of July
In observance of Independence Day, Jenkins examines some overlooked classical manifestations of American patriotism that may be more appropriate than Tchaikovsky's US-adopted 1812 Overture.
Wednesday, June 21 2006
Talk of the Town
Cober-Lake speaks with Chris Pugmire of the Seattle band Shoplifting about politics' place in punk rock, the role of men in feminism, and the dangerous power of language.
Friday, June 9 2006
The Devil’s Music: Franz Liszt’s Musical Representation of Mephistopheles
Liszt's Faust symphony offers a solution to the conundrum that faced so many Romantic and post-Romantic composers: how does one create a musical form that continually and progressively unfolds and yet manages to hold together, to be all 'of a piece'?
Friday, May 19 2006
Judging a Bach By Its Cover
If people are no longer as interested in classical music as a cerebral escape from the banalities of the everyday, then certain producers of classical recordings are willing to embrace this cultural condition by selling Bach not as an alternative to popular image culture, but as a part of it.
Thursday, May 18 2006
The Great Beast Resurrected
The long, strange trip of seminal metal band Celtic Frost is unexpectedly outfitted with a new plot twist: a new record that redefines a career over 20 years after it began.
Friday, May 12 2006
It’s Different for Girls
Rounder Records' new tween collective, a manufactured group of girls with inflexibly 'distinct personalities', is little more than harmless fun for a very specific target market. But what potential effects will Girl Authority have on the developing identity of its audience?
Thursday, May 11 2006
Lonnie Donegan and the Birth of British Rock
As skiffle's working-class trailblazer, Lonnie Donegan infused '50s British rock 'n' roll with a regional accent and music-hall comedy style missing from the popular American exports.
Friday, April 28 2006
Death and Music
As my eyes locked on that stark casket, my mind tripped out. The cognitive dissonance of it all shut me down until they played Aunt Shirley's 'Here's to Life'.
Thursday, April 20 2006
On the Necessity of Listening As Confrontation
How can you possibly know why you 'like' something you assume you like unless you confront that which you have dismissed? Jenkins discusses the importance of spending time with the music that immediately displeases us.
Monday, April 17 2006
The Time to Kill Is Now!
The least poetic of metal bands, Cannibal Corpse has gone to disturbing lengths to make gruesomeness its cold, calculated calling card.
Monday, March 27 2006
The Redcoats Are Coming! The British Invasion of SXSW ‘06
Ellis spends four days in Austin looking for the finest exports from Tony Blair's Cool Britannia. In lieu of monkeys, magic numbers, and Moz, his search yields Casio-pop, California harmonies, and communal sing-along epics.
Tuesday, March 21 2006
Thursday, March 16 2006
The Queen Isn’t Dead
Fearing an embarrassing failure on the scale of the Star Wars prequels, Begrand braves Queensryche's new sequel to its 20-year-old masterpiece Operation: Mindcrime.
Thursday, March 2 2006
The Sounds of Now: Brian Ferneyhough
In the first of a series of contemporary composer profiles, Jenkins discusses Brian Ferneyhough, whose complex scores force performers to confront the boundaries of the possible.
