A Historical and Theoretical Analysis of Fifteen Songs Representative of American Hardcore’s Musical Style I’m going a little academic on this one, but it’s a funny story: Due to a miscommunication in my class on American hardcore punk (yes, there is an actual course on hardcore punk led by Kimon Keramidas at NYU’s Experimental Humanities department – it’s not a history course so much as a course on archiving, and how to accurately and respectfully document this unique, DYI, analog era), I thought I had to choose 15 songs and write 600 words about each of them. That’s 9,000 words all in all, b ..read more

Prudential Center – Newark, New Jersey – January 21, 2022. In a Rolling Stone article from November 2020 announcing the latest studio album—The Bitter Truth— from alt-metal band Evanescence, Brittany Spanos wrote: “Every rock era has been defined by how few women have been able to break into the mainstream.” Let that sink in for a moment. Last night, at the final show of Evanescence’s tour with Halestorm and Lilith Czar, I witnessed three powerful female musicians who have done exactly that. Seated at a white piano, Czar offered gratitude for the two headliners: “They broke the glass ceiling a ..read more

Prudential Center – Newark, New Jersey – January 21, 2022. In a Rolling Stone article announcing the latest studio album—The Bitter Truth (2020)—from alt-metal band Evanescence, Brittany Spanos wrote: “Every rock era has been defined by how few women have been able to break into the mainstream.” Let that sink in for a moment. Last night, at the final show of Evanescence’s tour with Halestorm and Lilith Czar, I witnessed three powerful female musicians who have done exactly that. Seated at a white piano, Czar offered gratitude for the two headliners: “They broke the glass ceiling and changed th ..read more

What were you doing 10 years ago? This question has been trending on social media lately, but it focuses a little too much on “What did you look like 10 years ago?”  Looks don’t offer much of a narrative as far as I’m concerned, so I’ll tell you a little story about something I did 10 years ago. It all started at Ultra Music Festival in March 2012 – three days of Electronic Dance Music (EDM) – in Miami, Florida. That year, the festival hosted an impressive list of artists from New Order and Kraftwerk to Avicii and Skrillex. For the 165,000 attendees, it was a night – or several nights ..read more

A Historical and Theoretical Analysis of Fifteen Songs Representative of American Hardcore’s Musical Style I’m going a little academic on this one, but it’s a funny story: Due to a miscommunication in my class on American hardcore punk (yes, there is an actual course on hardcore punk led by Kimon Keramidas at NYU’s Experimental Humanities department – it’s not a history course so much as a course on archiving, and how to accurately and respectfully document this unique, DYI, analog era), I thought I had to choose 15 songs and write 600 words about each of them. That’s 9,000 words all in all, b ..read more

Gramercy Theater, New York, 11/11/21 “You got your bomb, got your blood . . . It’s the American attraction…” sang Justin Sane to an audience of devoted fans at the Gramercy Theater in New York City. The lyrics to political punk rock band Anti-Flag’s song had never landed as close to home as they did for me tonight. One hour earlier… In the interim between opening bands, I ventured downstairs to scope out the vinyl offerings at the merch tables. As I flipped through a bin of signed albums, Anti-Flag’s assistant and all-around jack-of-all-tour-trades, Josh, looked up from his phone and asked, “H ..read more

Music studio owners, Matthew Taylor Bray of SosH Studios in Bushwick, and AJ Tissian of The Wave Lab, NYC in Williamsburg share their thoughts on the future of recorded music. In his acceptance speech at the 2020 Grammy Awards, Finneas O’Connell, having just won Song of the Year for “Bad Guy” which he co-wrote and produced for his sister Billie Eilish said, “This is to all of the kids who are making music in their bedroom today. You’re going to get one of these.” O’Connell’s promise demonstrated how far musicians have strayed from the image of a conventional recording session where engineers l ..read more

Nearly two weeks after I won the oddest radio competition ever (see Part One: Someone Mooned Me From a Car Window – 15 Years Later That Asshole Did Me a Favor), I arrived at Webster Hall and wound my way up to the opulent and carnivalesque ballroom at the top of a grand staircase. The ghosts of Halloween sacrifices past still permeated the air while a crowd of black t-shirt clad rock fans gathered in front of the stage. An opening band from Halifax, Nova Scotia, called Kestrels played a short but loud set to get us all on our toes. Kestrels, Webster Hall, New York But there was no need to get ..read more

Just when you think the world has gone full digital and the fun we had as kids is doomed never to repeat, something or someone reminds me that the radio is still playing, and that adults are still as cruel – or as cool – as we were in our youth. A couple Sundays ago, I tuned into my favorite radio show on WFMU – Rock & Roller Derby with Suzy Hotrod – and listened to her tell a story about getting harassed by an asshole on the street. I know all about that – as women, don’t we all? Her story was unusual because in this case she had been the one inside the car. Women are often subjected to d ..read more

In observance of World Suicide Prevention Day on September 10, 2021, I’ll share three channels offering hope and advice from inside the music community. Suicide is a dark subject, and yet in the music industry it often feels all too common. The litany of names is long, from Darby to Chester and Kurt to Chris and all those whose will to live still couldn’t prevent their ultimate fall. Fortunately, the conversation around mental health is open and growing wider by the day. One of the few silver linings of the Covid-19 pandemic is that a whole new crop of resources for information and support has ..read more