All Stories

Everything we've published, newest first.

The Rolling Stones’ ‘Forty Licks’ CD, the weathered tongue-and-lips logo cover resting on a paint-splattered palette

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.

By Igan D'Bayan · October 9, 2002
Close-up of a green tentacle-faced Cthulhu in round tinted glasses, the words ALMOST and INFAMOUS lit across the lenses above a crowd and stage lights

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.

By Igan D'Bayan · September 16, 2002
Charcoal figure studies on easels and scattered across the floor of a peeling, light-filled life-drawing studio with plaster busts

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.

By Igan D'Bayan · August 18, 2002
Painting on a vinyl record of a pale carcass hanging upside down over a black-and-white checkered floor as a ghostly animal creeps in from the edge

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.

By Igan D'Bayan · July 23, 2002
Satirical pop-rock picture disc spinning on a Technics turntable, Nickelback’s ‘Silver Side Up’ vinyl propped behind

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.

By Igan D'Bayan · July 3, 2002
Dream Theater’s ‘Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence’ two-CD set, its scrawled red-and-black cover on a paint-smeared palette

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.

By Igan D'Bayan · June 24, 2002
‘Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd’ CD, its nested-frames cover art beside the geometric disc in an open jewel case

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.

By Igan D'Bayan · June 9, 2002
An Under Rug Swept CD tilted open beside its sleeve, Alanis Morissette’s flame-haired red-and-blue portrait doubled on disc and cover, on a paint-smeared tabletop

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.

By Igan D'Bayan · June 2, 2002
Road-worn black Fender Precision Bass with a tortoiseshell pickguard on a stand, beside a bass amp topped with a Wi-Fi router, neon-green cables plugged into both

Bass(ic) instinct and the Internet

Before tab sites, you learned Jaco by ear off a worn-out tape. An ode to the low end, written at the dawn of Internet music culture.

By Igan D'Bayan · June 8, 2001