Finding ways to share one’s music is no less complicated than it was before the digital revolution. But the precarious life of an up-and-coming musician has become ever more precarious in the age of COVID-19…
Napalm Death was on my shortlist of music to find—like an archeologist digging their way toward an ancient tomb. In September of 1989, I finally struck treasure when I pulled a vinyl copy of Mentally Murdered from the racks, holding it up, exposing it to sunlight for the first time…
In 1977, the Germs set out to destroy the detached, artificial tone of pop. The popular music of their time corresponds with sadly predictable accuracy to what lives on the radio today—like what is propelled like a cannonball from passing SUV windows or crawls from cell phones with the nasal tremors of a vengeful mosquito. Punk rock music, by contrast, was especially vibrant because it was performed by human beings in modest recording studios…and it spoke to the origins of American folk music.
African Head Charge create a synthesis of experimental reggae, psychedelia, dub, and electronica. Rhythm from the drums and bongos, play into one another like percussive molecules. I went to bed each night and I put on the same album and by day thirty, I realized I couldn’t stop listening to it.