Last weekend I drove around Chicago with a friend whose car CD player was broken. Forced to listen to terrestrial radio for perhaps the first time in a year, I was reminded constantly of why I prefer streaming stations online to those pesky airborne frequencies. Ads for nudie bars, constant station IDs, and a whole […]

In the blog age of the hyper (and overhyped) search for the Next Big Thing, an artist’s shelf life as a “big deal“ in the independent music world is dwindling to little more than one sold out tour and a trackback in year-end review posts. Gone are the days when one band set the bar […]

Jeff Tweedy’s all for German engineering. Unless you live under a rock rock, you know by now that Wilco has licensed the entirety of Sky Blue Sky to Volkswagen for use in a series of commercials that the hipper-than-thou car manufacturer will run through the summer of 2007.
I’m torn on this little dance. On the […]

I’m a sucker for the history of pop music. I’ve made the 8-hour pilgrimage to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, I’ve scoured the library stacks for commentary on everything from free jazz to Brit punk to Motown. I’ve read ‘em and loved ‘em, so fire up that library card and get a little […]