Best of 2008: Simone Stenfor’s votes

By Simone Stenfors Best live concerts/gigs: 1) Bad Manners 2) The Sonics 3) The Urban Voodoo Machine 4) The Jim Jones Revue 5) Rebel Yell 6) Girlschool 7) Autorama 8) The Glitterati 9) The Helacopters 10) The Delinquents My Top CD’s: 1) Sixx A.M., The Heroin Diaries Soundtrack 2) The Barbarellatones, The Devil’s Dildo 3) [...]

Best of 2008: Trish Bendix’s votes

Best Gay Lady Albums By Trish Bendix Jennifer O’Connor, Here With Me Folk rock with the focus on her guitar, JOC sings about her relationship with her girlfriend, and even puts her on the cover. The video for the title track is adorable – also starring her girlfriend. Someone is in love. An Horse, Rearrange [...]

Best of 2008: Carrie Waite’s votes

By Carrie Waite Best Albums: Beck, Odelay (Re-issue w/ Bonus Disc) The Black Keys, Attack & Release Calexico, Carried To Dust The Dirtbombs, We Have You Surrounded Dr.Dog, Fate Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes Flight of the Concords, Flight of the Concords Have Gun Will Travel, Casting Shadows Tall As Giants The Magnetic Fields, Distortion Rebekah [...]

Best of 2008: Nikki Navarro’s votes

By Nikki Navarro, guitarist, Giddy-Up, Helicopter! Top Albums (in no particular order): 1. The Dodos – Visiter 2. Land of Talk – Some Are Lakes 3. Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes 4. Ra Ra Riot – The Rhumb Line 5. Wolf Parade – At Mount Zoomer 6. Des Ark – WXDU Volume Two 7. Mount [...]

Best of 2008: Deborah Frost’s votes

By Deborah Frost Lists are for pedants to make and for –I don’t know what you can even call anyone who actually reads them– a SUB-pedant? If this is what editors are still ordering to be served up in daily or any other kind of publications, NO fucking WONDER they’re all hurting, if not going [...]

Best of 2008: Gina Vivinetto’s votes

By Gina Vivinetto Top Albums (in alphabetical order): 1. Deerhunter, Microcastle 2. Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes 3. French Kicks, Swimming 4. The Last Shadow Puppets, The Age of Understatement 5. Ra Ra Riot, The Rhumb Line 6. Santogold, Santogold 7. Wolf Parade, At Mount Zoomer 8. Wye Oak, If Children Best singles: 1. M.I.A. “Paper [...]

Best of 2008: Cathy Wos’s votes

By Cathy Wos I was born a Soulless Media Whore. I was weaned on TV and Music is my Therapy. One day I decided to use my powers for good not evil and I became a librarian. Last year I moved to Seattle and I was like a kid in a candy store when it [...]

Best of 2008: JG’s votes

By JG Best Albums: 1. The Dodos, Visiter If this decade were good for anything, it was for inspiring musicians to strip down and make much of little. Here’s a duo and a half (well, third member, Joe Haener, just became official) that create hypnotic and passionate pop with finger-picking guitar, fast tribal-like beats and [...]

Best of 2008: Going soft: What happened to the rock?

By Carla DeSantis It’s December and thanks to bloggers and the free subscription my mother has somehow ended up getting from Rolling Stone, I’ve been looking over what I’ve missed this year on the annual “best of the year” lists. Since ROCKRGRL’s demise at the end of ’05, I work at home and have musically [...]

Rock ‘n’ roll and mental illness: Who decides who’s mainstream and who’s “outsider” when everyone is nuts?

By Gina Vivinetto I read a recent article about The Vines canceling their tour because of frontman Craig Nicholls‘ deteriorating mental health. Nicholls was diagnosed with Aspergers in 2004 after his behavior had grown increasingly erratic and violent, but it looks like he’s getting even worse. For the record, I’m not sure Aspergers makes you [...]

We remember John Lennon

We’re sending love to Yoko today.

Stories From The Road: Deborah Frost and Metallica

By Deborah Frost I once walked into the dressing room of a very huge metal band — well, they were not quite as huge then as they are now, oh what the hell, they are probably the biggest band in the world — Metallica (and they didn’t get that way without airing their own dirty [...]

‘Twilight’ star Kristen Stewart to play Joan Jett

By Stephanie Koppel A few days ago, I had absolutely no interest in seeing a film about teenage vampires, but as soon as I heard that the film’s star, Kristen Stewart, had been cast as Joan Jett in the upcoming Runaways biopic, I knew I needed to see Twilight. Stewart’s overall performance wasn’t terrible, but [...]

It Happened To Me: John Waters signed my KitchenAid mixer

By Eve Naskale (Editor’s note: We asked Eve to share this story with us after we saw this item about a sewing machine signed by members of Metallica. Big whoop. Eve got John Waters to sign her pink KitchenAid mixer). The best thing that has ever happened to my dream future kitchen is breast cancer. [...]

Stories From The Road: The Pleasure Seekers meet Iron Butterfly

By Nancy Quatro Glass I was only 15, on tour with the The Pleasure Seekers, and quite innocent to the ways of musicians. Does anyone remember the band Iron Butterfly? Picture me walking down the hotel hall to my room, all of the doors open with the smell of pot all around, and out walks [...]

Is this Morrissey’s inner child?

By Gina Vivinetto Have you had a gander at the album cover for Morrissey’s 2009 release Years Of Refusal? Check it out: Why the hell is Morrissey holding a baby? Is this his inner child? Is it merely another installment in a series of Pictures of Morrissey Doing Things We Never Thought Possible, for example, [...]

David Lee Roth’s naked vocals

By Gina Vivinetto Some pranksters are circulating “videos” of David Lee Roth‘s bare vocal tracks from a few of Van Halen‘s classic tunes. It’s pretty weird listening to him yelp and squeal and holler without the accompaniment of thunderous drums, thudding bass and Edward Van Halen‘s guitar wizardry. For example, “Runnin’ With the Devil”: It’s [...]

Stories From The Road: Pylon tours with Gang of Four

By Vanessa Briscoe Hay Back in 1980 or so, my band Pylon was on a short tour through the Midwest and parts of Canada with post punk legends the Gang of Four. The two bands have been friends since the summer of 1979 when we had opened for them in Philadelphia and in New York [...]

Remember the Bee Girl from the Blind Melon video?

By Gina Vivinetto In an earlier post, we wrote about Spencer Elden, the little baby on the cover of Nirvana‘s Nevermind album who’s now a 17-year-old young man. Well, we just found an recent interview with Heather DeLoach, the little Bee Girl from Blind Melon‘s whimsical 1993 “No Rain” video. Let’s refresh your memory: Heather [...]

Rock Camp For Girls auction tonight in NY

By Gina Vivinetto If you’re in New York tonight, please consider swinging by the 3rd annual Willie Mae Rock Camp For Girls auction at 6 p.m. at the Zipper Factory. Everyone’s favorite showbiz personality Murray Hill will emcee the live bidding, with proceeds going to the camp’s scholarship fund. The show cost $50 to get [...]

Cherie Currie’s Guide to Life: Predators

By Cherie Currie Predators. Now this is a subject where I feel things that jerk me from my seat, want to grab my gun and check out the newest torturer devices online. Movies like Saw and Hostel 1 and 2 start flipping through my head at lightning speed and I have to calm myself before [...]

Which of these things is not like the others? (Why did Christies host a punk rock auction?)

By Carrie Waite I’ve been obsessively mulling over the sales from the Punk/Rock Auction at Christies last Monday. Note that’s Punk/Rock, not Punk Rock. The majority of the auction was your typical Beatles/Elvis memorabilia. And does a violin signed by The Three Tenors classify as either Punk or Rock? Um, no. The cultural implications of this type of [...]