Category: Music

What’s in a name? Well, it depends who came up with it. In the case of Middleburg, Florida quintet The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, it might mean anything. Jumpsuits can be sleek and fashionable, tight and revealing. Or they can be loose and homogeneous, suggesting redundancy and confinement befitting a jailbird. Red is often flashy and…

“WHY DO THEY ROCK SO HARD? Well lemmie tell ya……” It has been almost two years since REEL BIG FISH raised a mighty middle finger to humorless music snobs everywhere with their single “Sell Out,” and what a whirlwind it has been. The monumental leap Aaron Barrett, Matt Wong, Tavis Werts, Dan Regan, Scott Klopfenstein,…

“I think it’s like the driven disco of Daft Punk but darker ala Depeche Mode when they started playing guitars” DukeIronFist (AKA Paul Westwater) is more forthcoming than most as he attempts to explain his trio’s sound. “There was no musical agenda when Disco and I started working together we just let it happen. I…

Rock ‘n’ roll is not about being an outsider; rock ‘n’ roll is about feeling like an outsider. When you spend just about your entire life in Libertyville, Illinois, as Reilly has, you’re supposed to be a worker, not an artist. He harbored no grand scheme to write songs, he wanted to be the characters…

Matt Thiessen – vocals, guitar Matt Hoopes – guitar Brian Pittman – bass guitar David Douglas – drums What are the signs that a buzz band is about to break it big? For starters, the band must have the type of tireless tour ethic that lands them on the cover of Pollstar Magazine and sharing…

“I think headphones are the trip on this record,” says Mike Mills in describing how best to listen to the extraordinary new R.E.M. album, Up. “It seems like that kind of record. More than any of our other ones, this could be a really good late-night, by-yourself, in-the-dark kind of record to listen to.” “There…

The story of The Rapture is an unusual one. Firstly, because it begins ten years before the release of their debut album, Echoes. Secondly, because it begins a world away, geographically and culturally, from the place it has become so associated with. And thirdly, because although Luke Jenner (vocals, guitar), Mattie Safer (vocals, bass &…

Music has the power to instantly set a mood, whether it be sad, serious, or fun. So when Ray J began working on his Atlantic debut, “THIS AIN’T A GAME,” his goal was to inject the energetic, raw vitality so often absent from R&B. The handsome, multi-talented 20-year-old born Willie Norwood, Jr. has created a…

Monday 28th June 2004 began a week where a band called Razorlight stopped being a London four-piece with potential and instead saw them stand up and seize their destiny to become a British band of huge substance. A sign of things to come, Razorlight came of age. It was a great summer. That week in…

The onetime backing group for R. Kelly, Chicago’s Public Announcement made their solo debut in 1998 with All Work, No Play, scoring a Top Ten hit with the single “Body Bumpin’ Yippie-Yi-Yo”. Kelly moved on to contemporary R&B stardom, while the group remained in semi-retirement until late 2000 when they released theirsophomore album Don’t Hold…