Neil Young will release TUSCALOOSA, from his ongoing live archival series, on June 7th. The previously unreleased, 11-track recording features Neil Young & Stray Gators recorded live at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa on February 5, 1973. The album can be pre-ordered now and will be available as a double album over 3-sides with etched artwork on side 4, as well as a single disc CD and on high resolution digital audio via NYA. During 1971 – 1973, between solo shows and dates with Crazy Horse, Young would switch up his sound to suit the material he would focus […]
MUST SEE TV: ‘Safety Glasses Off, Motherf*ckers!’
PREVIOUSLY: On Friday April 21st, 2017 Bill Nye — bow-tied science communicator, advocate for reason and critical thinking skills, wouldbe astronaut, bane of creationists and climate science denialists, not to mention superstitious kooks and cranks of every ideological stripe — returned to the small screen with Netflix’s Bill Nye Saves The World. To mark the auspicious return of reason and fact to American airwaves, we present this encore edition of our 2014 interview with Dr. Nye. DISCUSSED: Why he believes in evolution and you should too, Carl Sagan, marijuana, why he wouldn’t sign up for the one-way trip to colonize […]
BEING THERE: Meat Puppets @ Underground Arts
The Meat Puppets’ Curt Kirkwood by JOSH PELTA-HELLER After the Meat Puppets’ first song at Underground Arts on Friday night, Curt Kirkwood’s son Elmo responded with a little cheek to a fan who called out his name to cheer him on. “What?!” Maybe he was annoyed, maybe not — but he almost immediately broke the tension with a fiendishly disarming grin, flashed from somewhere behind his cascading curls, and when the fan returned “We love you!,” the Pups’ heir-apparent backed down some more: “I love you too.” They’re not much for stage banter, these hirsute Phoenix indie-rockers-cum-desert-mystics — in fact […]
THE MAGIC PILGRIM: A Q&A With Damien Jurado
EDITOR’S NOTE: This Q&A originally published on May 18, 2018. We are reprising it now in advance of Damien Jurado’s performance at Johnny Brenda’s Friday May 17th in support of his new album, In The Shape Of The Storm. BY BRIAN HOWARD Damien Jurado is back. That statement is more literal than figurative. With his brand new album, The Horizon Just Laughed (Secretly Canadian), Jurado—the heart-on-his-sleeve indie folker who’s spent the last two-plus decades honing his signature style of spare, probing songs that are at once hauntingly beautiful and emotionally devastating—has returned to the real world, in a way. Jurado’s […]
MEAT PUPPETS: Nine Pins
Man, this new Meat Puppets album Dusty Notes is the best thing they’ve done since Up On The Sun! The original line-up — which reportedly hasn’t played together since 1995 — plays Underground Arts Friday May 10th.
INCOMING: Zep Doc Expected To Get The Led Out
Now in post-production, the as yet untitled Led Zeppelin documentary, directed by Bernard MacMahon, celebrates the world’s best-selling rock band on their fiftieth anniversary. The documentary traces the journeys of the four members through the music scene of the 1960s, their meeting in the summer of 1968 for a rehearsal that will change the future of rock, and culminates in 1970 when their second album knocks The Beatles off the top of the charts and they become the number one band in the world. With brand new interviews of Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, and John Paul Jones, as well […]
YIM & YANG: An Email Q&A With MMJ’s Jim James
BY JONATHAN VALANIA The Kentucky hair farmers of My Morning Jacket may look like 38 Special, but they sound like the reefer-mad angels that sit on Neil Young’s shoulder on a good night, cranking out sweaty, fist-pumping, three hour hoedowns of indie-centric southern-fried beard-rock. Fronted by the irrepressible Jim James — fuzzy-faced, Buddha-bellied, rocking a cape and a Cousin It haircut, whirling about the stage dervishly with a towel over his head — MMJ has cranked out seven stylistically varied albums in 18 years, slathering bruising he-man riffage and bombastic beats with ethereal harmonies, sounding like Lynyrd Skynyrd if […]
ROBERT JOHNSON: Me And The Devil Blues
Robert Johnson was born on this day, May 8th, 1911 in Hazlehurst, Mississippi. PREVIOUSLY: We’ve all heard the mythic tale of Robert Johnson’s Faustian bargain with the Devil, struck at the crossroads under a Delta moon. Let’s imagine for a moment that it’s a different night at that Mississippi crossroads. On this night, the devil is busy with other things, perhaps plotting the eventual rise of Slayer or meeting with the Republicans. And Johnson, well, he’s long since given the Devil his due, probably having second thoughts as to whether unlimited pussy, corn liquor and a little plantation-rock stardom was […]
WORTH REPEATING: 1021 Former Federal Prosecutors Sign Petition Asserting If Not For The DOJ Policy Prohibiting The Indictment Of A Sitting President Donald Trump Would Be Charged With Multiple Felonies Outlined In The Mueller Report
MEDIUM: We are former federal prosecutors. We served under both Republican and Democratic administrations at different levels of the federal system: as line attorneys, supervisors, special prosecutors, United States Attorneys, and senior officials at the Department of Justice. The offices in which we served were small, medium, and large; urban, suburban, and rural; and located in all parts of our country. Each of us believes that the conduct of President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting […]
REVIEW: Vampire Weekend’s Father Of The Bride
BY CHARLIE C. Father of the Bride, Vampire Weekend’s first album in six years, is a double album with 18 tracks spanning 58 minutes. An album of this length is uncharted territory for a band whose three previous LPs all ranged from 10-12 songs and as a result were uniformly consistent and never overstayed their welcome. Although this album is far looser than their previous works, especially considering the vast eclecticism of their back catalog, rarely does it drag on or remind you of its hour-long running time. Vampire Weekend is notable for their wide array of influences, their […]
ADAM SANDLER: The Chris Farley Song
If Sandler was trying to break our heart, it worked. *sniffles* What’s that? No. I have something in my eye. And I was cutting onions earlier.
WORTH REPEATING: The Duke Of Earle
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story originally published in the March 2013 issue of MAGNET. We are publishing the complete interview online for the first time on the occasion of Steve Earle & The Dukes performing at Ardmore Music Hall on Monday. DRUG STORE COWBOY BY JONATHAN VALANIA Steve Earle’s been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, poet, a protest singer, a playwright, a pacifist, a pawn and a king, he’s been up and down and over and out and the most persuasive anti-drug ad on two feet. But mostly he’s been one of the greatest living American songwriters. Still is. During […]