Last night at 5 Points Music Sanctuary in Roanoke, I saw Grateful for Biggie, and here’s the thing: I’ve never been a fan of The Notorious B.I.G. or The Grateful Dead. No old CDs, no t-shirts, not even a playlist. I went mostly out of curiosity, expecting to leave with a shrug and a “well, that was different.” Instead, I walked out smiling. The whole idea seems like something a […]
On the far edge of art, thought, and sonic rebellion stands Henry Flynt-a hillbilly fiddler, philosopher-logician, and avant-garde saboteur of Western culture. Long before the term "concept art" was gallery-ready, Flynt coined it as a critique, not a commodity. He studied under Quine at Harvard, jammed with La Monte Young, and publicly protested the "serious music" establishment by calling Stockhausen a cultural imperialist. Yes, really. But Flynt didn't just critique. […]
Let's talk about Les Rallizes Dénudés - Japan's most enigmatic, ear-melting psych-rock band and possibly the only musical group whose name doubles as a browser history liability. If you're not familiar, Les Rallizes Dénudés (pronounced something like "leh ra-LEEZE deh-noo-DAY," but let's be honest, we're all just mumbling it differently and nodding) were a Japanese avant-garde noise-rock band formed in the late '60s. They didn't record albums in the traditional […]
In Wim Wenders’ 1984 film Paris, Texas, one of the most affecting moments is non-verbal. Ry Cooder’s sparse slide guitar shimmers in the American desert. A man’s voice rises to meet it, a song that has no name, at least for the audience. As it goes on, the film’s absent father, Travis (Harry Dean Stanton), kneels and looks skyward, as if the sound of that voice had summoned it. “Canción Mixteca” (written in 1915 […]
Lucio Dalla looked like your eccentric uncle—the one who reads Rimbaud in dialect and believes jellyfish are psychic. He wore fisherman’s caps and round glasses like he was both blind prophet and jazz pirate. But behind that disarming appearance was one of Italy’s most unclassifiable musical minds: part chanson, part prog, part street ballad, part prayer. He didn’t write songs. He built them like strange, little cities—populated with time travelers, […]
from John Fahey Songs, Albums, Reviews, Bio & More ... | AllMusic Born John Aloysius Fahey on Feb 28, 1939 in Takoma Park, MD. Died Feb 22, 2001 in Salem, OR. One of acoustic music's true innovators and eccentrics, John Fahey was a crucial figure in expanding the boundaries of the acoustic guitar over the last few decades. His music was so eclectic that it's arguable whether he should […]
If Keith Jarrett were a tree, he’d be a temperamental oak in a jazz forest, growling at birds for landing on his branches out of rhythm. There’s a reason his name triggers both awe and exasperation among music lovers. He is, after all, the pianist who once stopped a concert because someone in the audience coughed too much. Not as a joke. Not as protest. As a principle. Because when […]
When you talk about Italian music with a conscience—no, scratch that—with a bullhorn and a Molotov cocktail—you eventually end up in the defiant company of 99 Posse. Formed in Naples in 1991, this band of misfits, militants, and musical experimenters were never content with just dropping beats; they dropped manifestos. Birth of a Posse 99 Posse emerged from the same cultural petri dish that birthed centri sociali, squatted spaces teeming […]
There are musicians who chase the zeitgeist, and then there’s Haruomi Hosono, who gently taps it on the shoulder, hands it a tropical drink, and invites it to dance to a steel drum inside a spaceship. If you’ve ever stumbled upon a 1970s Japanese album cover that looks like it belongs to a Hawaiian lounge band made entirely of aliens, congratulations—you may have entered the sonic Bermuda Triangle that is […]
If punk ever took communion in a red banner-lit chapel while screaming about factory alienation and grilled sausages, it would sound like CCCP Fedeli alla Linea. Forget what you know about punk. This wasn't three-chord rebellion in a dingy London pub. CCCP was a performance-art ritual, a dadaist cabaret dressed in Red Army drag, a sonic riot happening simultaneously in Reggio Emilia, Kabul, and a crumbling Catholic cathedral. Their name […]
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