All Stories
Everything we've published, newest first.
Jaco Pastorius and the music of the spheres
The first career-spanning Jaco Pastorius anthology arrives, and the bassist who reinvented the instrument gets the retrospective he was owed.
You Can’t Always Get What You Want (in Bangkok)
Nothing could stop me from seeing the Stones live in Bangkok, except the possibility of a dead me. Severe Anxiety over the Rolling Stones.
Let the old freaky year make way for the new freaky year
A year-end gratitude list from a man at peace with the freaks: working ears, a flushing toilet, legal beer, and readers who write back.
Can Chris Cornell save Rock ’n’ Roll?
Audioslave will be crucified for not being Soundgarden and not being Rage. But pure, visceral rock is exactly what the scene has been missing.
The Rolling Stones and the gathering moss of time
Is ‘Forty Licks’ an epitaph for the world’s greatest rock band, or a threat of more to come? Forty years of Jagger, Richards and the gathering moss.
Almost Infamous: Zen and the art of rock n’ roll heckling
How a rusty caterpillar ride at Fiesta Carnival and one Scorpions song turned a Malabon kid into a rock critic. No money for nothing.
Sketching skinscapes and other epiphanies
A Saturday nude sketching session with Malang, Arturo Luz, BenCab and Anita Magsaysay Ho, and one starving non-artist with a mangled pencil.
Apocalypse to the Ears: The most mind-altering albums of all time
Turn me on, demons: nine albums that rearrange the furniture in your head, from Jane’s Addiction to Coltrane, with the tenth slot left empty.
Caught between pop rock and a hard place
Pop rock is safe as milk: a 2002 broadside on Puddle of Mudd, Hoobastank, Nickelback and the Goo Goo Dolls, graded without mercy.
Who’s afraid of Big Bad Prog?
Nearly everyone is afraid of prog rock: the labyrinthine structures, the odd time signatures, the lyrics about topographic oceans. Dream Theater is not.
Floydian Psychology 101
Not a greatest-hits and not an epitaph. Twenty-six tracks that work as a primer, engineered to send you back for the entire Pink Floyd catalogue.
Queen of Pain revisited
Alanis Morissette is light years past the grrls she gets lumped with, but ‘Under Rug Swept’ leaves her where we found her, and overdue a reinvention.