Photo by PETE TROSHAK Halfway through a triumphant set at the Fillmore on Thursday night, Garbage singer and Scottish firebrand Shirley Manson stared out into a crowd and asked “Who would’ve pegged Garbage as a band that would’ve fucking survived the nineties?” Manson along with guitarists Steve Marker and Duke Erikson and bad-ass drummer/uber producer Butch Vig have not only survived but thrived over the course of 25 years since their debut. With Jane’s Addiction Eric Avery taking on bass duties, the band set out on tour this year to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of their second album Version 2.0, […]
THE GODFATHER OF GRUNGE: Q&A With Butch Vig, Garbage Drummer/Producer Extraordinaire
Photo by AUTUMN DEWILDE EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview originally published on November 23rd, 2016. In advance of tonight’s Garbage show at the Fillmore, we present this encore edition. Enjoy. BY JONATHAN VALANIAThe Smart Studios Story documents the rise and fall of the legendary recording studio founded by acclaimed producer Butch Vig and his partner Steve Marker, where they recorded Smashing Pumpkins, Garbage, Death Cab For Cutie and, most importantly, Nirvana’s Nevermind. The film tracks the evolution of Smart Studios from its humble DIY beginnings as a glorified punk rock treehouse with free beer to the center of the alt-rock universe […]
TONITE: The Importance Of Being Johnny Marr
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story originally published in issue 95 of MAGNET MAGAZINE in 2013 upon the release of Johnny Marr’s first proper solo album, 2013’s The Messenger. Marr followed it up with Playland in 2014 and Call The Comet, released back in June. EDITOR’S NOTE: This story originally published in issue 95 of MAGNET MAGAZINE in 2013 upon the release of Johnny Marr’s first proper solo album, 2013’s The Messenger. Marr followed it up with Playland in 2014 and Call The Comet, released back in June. We are re-posting this story in advance of Marr’s performance tonight at […]
BEING THERE: Big Thief @ First Unitarian
Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER When I was three years old, I tripped on the wooden floorboards of my family’s small home in middle-of-nowhere Pennsylvania, my head landed on a nail that gashed my left eyebrow open. Far-removed from any town or decent phone service, my panicked parents rushed me to the closest hospital they could think of, praying their first-born daughter wouldn’t lose her eyesight from the accident. Nearly twenty years later, driving with my mother to that same house in the mountains, I heard Adrianne Lenker’s screaming voice in “Mythological Beauty” detail her own experience of toddler-age blood-gushing head […]
BEING THERE: Mitski @ Union Transfer
Photo by JOHN VETTESE Typically I make a point to miss the opener at shows, but I would’ve been sorry to miss Overcoats. The New York-based duo, Hana Elion and JJ Mitchell, emerged straight from the 70’s in flowy white blouses and corduroy blazers, their aesthetic reminiscent of Heart’s Anne and Nancy Wilson. Their music runs in the vein of indie electro pop, full of pulsing digital beats and synchronized harmonies. The set was composed of songs from their debut album Young, a work that may not be the most musically complex but is driven instead by an overarching sense […]
BEING THERE: Public Image Ltd. @ Union Transfer
Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER “Welcome to our 40th!” bellowed PiL frontman John Lydon (a.k.a. former Sex Pistol, Johnny Rotten) by way of a greeting to last night’s crowd at Union Transfer with his trademark sardonic smirk, that look of devilish joy he’s proudly worn throughout the span of his musical life. Currently on the North American leg of their The Public Image Is Rotten tour, and with a documentary of the same name to promote, Public Image Ltd. (Lydon, and current drummer Bruce Smith, guitarist Lu Edmonds, and bassist Scott Firth) is celebrating 40 years of Lydon’s post-Sex Pistols amalgam […]
ANTICHRIST SUPERSTAR: Q&A w/ John Lydon
EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview originally posted on November 11th 2015. BY JONATHAN VALANIA Thirty-eight years after the release of Never Mind The Bollocks, the windshield of pop culture is still fogged up with the huffing and puffing of critics of hyperventilating over the game-changing filth and the fury of The Sex Pistols — for which John Lydon, aka Johnny Rotten, served as acerbic, bug-eyed jester raging against the machinery of a corrupt Establishment and a necrotic music biz with a voice like Godzilla’s death ray — so I will spare you the lecture. Except to say this: in the fullness […]
BEING THERE: Little Dragon @ Underground Arts
Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER Never to be pigeonholed, Swedish genre-benders Little Dragon delivered a face-melting set of dancehall R&B synth-pop disco-tronica at Underground Arts on Friday. You wouldn’t have known it if your cell phone was vibrating that night, not through Frederik Wallin’s pants-rockin’ bass-guitar grooves, anchoring singer Yukimi Nagano’s smoky, sultry vocals. There was no stage-banter to speak of, not much acknowledgement of the proverbial “fourth wall.” Shrouded in mystery — or at least what looked like potentially really warm head-to-toe stage costumes — the singer managed to make sure she reached out to connect in her own way, […]
BEING THERE: Gorillaz @ Wells Fargo Center
Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER There’s a plotline to all the mayhem, if you’re interested, some backstory to the wild exploits of this virtual band, that serves to nominally explain why lovable scamps 2D, Murdoc, Russell and Noodle are always under attack by anachronistic seaplanes, what Noodle’s doing with that machine gun that’s as big as she is and why she’s a cyborg now, and why Bruce Willis is trying to kill them. But at their live shows, somewhere between the mesmerizing blazing lights and colors of Jamie Hewlett’s beautifully animated eye candy, Damon Albarn’s enchanting incantations and all of the […]
Win Tix To See Ja Rule + Method Man & Redman
We have a pair of tix to see old school ballers Ja Rule plus Method Man and Redman at North Seventh (formerly Electric Factory) on Friday and to win them all you have to do is like us. Really, really like us. More accurately, you need to follow us on Twitter and send us an email at phawker66@gmail.com telling us you have done so or already were along with a screen shot of the top of our Twitter page that clearly displays your FOLLOWING status. Put the word R.U.L.E. in the subject line and include your full name as […]
LOW: Dancing & Blood
Low plays Underground Arts on November 10th.
Win Tix To See Death Cab For Cutie @ The Tower
Death Cab For Cutie are the consolation prize for people like you and me. We may not get to be Ken or Barbie, the quarterback or the homecoming queen, or for that matter CEO or Taylor Swift, but we do get some damn pretty music to help us lick our wounds and accept our status as the runner-up in our own lives. Ordinarily, we’d leave it at that and move on with the low expectations business of being beta. But we have it on good authority that EVERYONE in this country who isn’t an a**hole could use some cheering […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR: Musician and writer Leonard Cohen died in 2016, leaving behind many unpublished poems and lyrics. His son Adam Cohen discusses The Flame, a collection of some of Leonard’s final works. MORE PREVIOUSLY: Everybody knows that 2016 was a cruel and unusual year. Intolerably cruel. Everybody knows that war is over and everybody knows the good guys lost. So I am only half-kidding when I ask: How can we possibly be expected to endure the abominable presidency of Donald Trump without David Bowie, Prince or Princess Leia? But I’m dead serious when I say we can’t do this without […]