Artist Spotlight courtesy of Nunez Hello friends! Today I am delighted to tell you all about my favorite band in the entire world, Against Me! I have seen them close to 20 times and they get better every time I see them. Anyway, let’s get to the good stuff! Reinventing Axl Rose was my first exposure to the band before seeing them on an Anti-Flag tour in 2003. This can be a challenging listen for the uninitiated, but please stick with it if you’re going to try it out. There are so many hits on this album, I had a … Continue reading Artist Spotlight – Against Me!

Tank fly boss walk jam nitty gritty, You’re listening to the boy from the big bad city pleasant coastal town this is jam hot. Welcome to the Artist Spotlight for Norman Cook AKA Fatboy Slim, AKA Pizzaman, AKA…..well a lot of acts. Thirty plus in fact. Starting in 1985 with The Housemartins. The Housemartins had 2 UK top 10 albums and a number 1 with their accapela cover of Caravan Of Love. They Split in 1988 with Paul Heaton and Dave Hemingway forming The Beautiful South and Cook returning to his home town of Brighton and began working with the studio engineer Simon … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: Norman Cook

The Canadian alternative rock scene of the early ’90s was surprisingly varied. Our Lady Peace and Big Wreck drew inspiration from their Seattle contemporaries to forge a sort of mystical post-grunge sound. I Mother Earth had a funky, jam-band vibe. Big Sugar and Headstones melded roots rock and country. The Tea Party essentially ripped off Led Zeppelin before deciding to become a bunch of world music-loving prog-rockers. Meanwhile, Matthew Good got his start in Vancouver’s folk scene. He initially performed as a solo artist before forming his eponymous band and releasing their debut full-length, Last of the Ghetto Astronauts in 1995. Matthew … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: Matthew Good

That’s where Dengue Fever fits in: playing music that sounds like something you’d hear while buzzing through Siem Reap on the back of a motorbike, dog-eared Lonely Planet guide poking out of your knapsack. Continue reading Dengue Fever, America’s Best Cambodian Rock Band

Good Evening and welcome to another in the occasional series “Artist spotlights on Female Spanish language rappers who’ve recorded versions of ‘Eres Para Mi’ with Julieta Venegas. (I feel this could run and run) Raised in Seville, she became involved in the city’s rap scene in the late 90s , recording tracks with SFDK, La Gota Que Colma and several others. Her first solo record ‘ A Jierro’ was released in 1999. It was a simple, Latin American tinged track that attracted the attention of major labels and led to her signing with Universal in 2000. In that year she … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: Mala Rodriguez

It is said that young Shiina Yumiko’s cheeks would turn red as apples whenever she blushed. Thus, she got the nickname Ringo, or Apple. So when the singer, song writer, pianist, guitarist, and producer burst on the scene in 1998, she was known as Shiina Ringo. Shiina Ringo, or Ringo Sheena, likes to tinker around with genres and bend them to her will. Her template appears to be rock, but she goes into funk rock, jazzy R&B, big band swing, showtunes, bossa nova, electronic music, and classical. And she often re-records songs or plays them live in different styles depending … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: Shiina Ringo and Tokyo Jihen

Artist Spotlight courtesy of Uncanny Valet In 2011 I went to the Newport Folk Festival with a few friends. I was really excited about The Decemberists, Teegan and Sara, Gogol Bordello, and a few other bands. One of the friends I was with insisted we had to catch River City Extension’s set. The story goes that they played a small random show at a bar at SXSW that year and the crowd was so into it they wouldn’t let them leave the stage when they finished, so they grabbed their instruments and played while walking through the crowd and out … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: River City Extension

Björk Guðmundsdóttir has been a singer, songwriter, instrumentalist, arranger, and producer since she was young. Her first album, Björk, was released in 1977, when she was barely twelve-years-old. During her teens and early twenties, Björk was part of several music bands in Iceland. Most notable of these was rock band the Sugarcubes, which was active between 1986 and 1992. They released three albums to…some success, but Björk was getting restless to do her own thing and her own thing did not include being in a rock band. Instead, she wanted to make music that was poppy and dance-y, but coming … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: Björk

Artist Spotlight courtesy of former dictator glorious leader Joseph Stalin The Kinks were great band led by brothers Ray and Dave Davies, along with Mick Avory and Peter Quaife in the original line-up. But really, this is story of two brothers, because they were heart of the group. They were part of British Invasion, and first single was song we have all heard, “You Really Got Me”. But Kinks were so much more than that. Their songs were often observational about English culture and very insightful. They were popular throughout 1960s and critically well-received, but their albums did not sell as … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: The Kinks

Hell and welcome to a spotlight on Ana Tijoux, an artist you may remember from such TV montages as Born in France to Chilean parents in exile from the regime of Augusto Pinochet , it’s no surprise that her music is cosmopolitan (She raps in Spanish , French and occasionally English) and frequently highly politicized. Tijoux returned to Chile in 1993 after the country’s return to civil power. She performed with several rap groups eventually becoming a founder member of Makiza. Makiza lasted 9 years , during which time Tijoux worked on several other collaborations with , among others, the … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: Ana Tijoux

I would be the first to admit that my life wasn’t very hard, comparatively speaking. My mother was an English professor, and she made sure that I was never left wanting, or left empty-handed with any essential. She encouraged me to follow my musical dreams, and even after I dropped out of college, she was still supportive of me and my nascent career (although I suspect that finishing college would have sat a lot better with her). So yeah, I was no gangsta. I never lived in a truly poor ghetto, and I don’t know what the gang life is … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: Kanye West

“Hang on. We’re not some poor man’s Go-Go’s.” – Vicki Peterson, The Bangles Everyone thinks they know the Bangles and yet I never seem to meet anyone who really does. Three songs more or less define their pop music legacy – the fun but lightweight “Manic Monday”, the goofy and even lighterweight “Walk Like An Egyptian”, and the huge and lightestweight power ballad “Eternal Flame”. They’re all decent-to-good songs, but it’s not like the history of 80s pop couldn’t be written without them. Let’s be real, here. I meet a few people who remember their lesser hits – the Jules … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: The Bangles

The history of Ween, long story short, is that two junior high school buddies started dicking around with a DAT, named themselves – in a fit of junior high school inspiration – after a combination of “wuss” and “penis,” and somehow ended up with a record deal. I think the the evolution of a typical band can be broken into three phases: first, the “raw” phase, where the band is still finding their sound. Some bands do their best work in this phase, sometimes because they just don’t know any better. Second, let’s call it the “classic” phase, where the … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: Ween