Rock & Roll
29 stories
So long, 2024, and no thanks for all the phish
Phishing texts, meetings about meetings, and A.I. acquaintances suddenly writing like Hitchens. Welcoming the new year with a renewed sense of dread.
The day the music died
Goodbye to the late, great Noli Aurillo, who chanted ‘Au au au!’ to the room before conjuring magic with a deck of cards or one guitar.
At home with Martin Honasan & Barbie Almalbis: Cradle of art, love & a cat named after Vernie Varga
A house tour with Martin Honasan and Barbie Almalbis: a cradle of art and love, boxes of keepsakes nobody throws out, and a cat named after Vernie Varga.
Ang himig ni Pepe Smith
A farewell to Joey ‘Pepe’ Smith, father of Pinoy rock: Juan de la Cruz Band, the Jingle years, a shared film set, and the songs too hard to play now.
Love hurts… and so does rectal probing
A Valentine’s dispatch from the pit: heartbreak playlists, actual rectal probing, the smiley of doom, and why, oooh, crap hurts.
Videoke of Doom at the End of the World
Three minutes as Ian Brown, then back to being you. Nights in the karaoke rooms of Malate, where no one ever gets over anybody.
Dance the disco corrosion
A commencement address for the doomed: writer’s block, Eva Longoria as a sign of the apocalypse, and one ordinary Monday that broke a heart.
Last rites at Penguin
A last drink at Penguin Cafe in Malate: Noli Aurillo plucking, a Rolling Stones epitaph, and thanks for all the fish crackers.
The filth, the fury, Makuhari
The Sex Pistols at Summer Sonic in Chiba: four old punks who should have been dead by now, playing tight to a thousand trembling Japanese lambs.
La Luz in my religion
Inside La Luz De Jesus on Hollywood Boulevard, the gallery that turned lowbrow art into a congregation, with a gift shop of relics and toys.
From Hell to Eden and back: Welcome to the Eagles gig in California
The Eagles at the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles, Hotel California in full cinematic paranoia, for a crowd still hoping to party like 1979.
Achtung Berlin
A vanished Wall, neo-expressionists on Sophienstrasse, and the ghosts of Bowie, Iggy and Lou still loitering around Hansa Studios.
A city where the lights never go out
Two Japans in one trip: ninja houses and the record bins of Akihabara, then the long silence of the A-Bomb Dome in Hiroshima.
Questions 67 and 68
Why do noontime hosts say happy viewing, why do movie goons wear leather in this heat, and what does Hollaback Girl actually mean?
The brats of Beat
Kerouac with Steve Allen on piano, Ginsberg howling, Burroughs on a hip-hop record. The spoken-word albums of the Beats, for freaky times.
Space cadets glow
The Mars Volta’s Frances the Mute is a kick to the groin of pop: salsa breaks, Flea on trumpet, and Cedric Bixler-Zavala’s frantic flailing.
London calling
A shoestring rock and roll pilgrimage through London: Denmark Street, Trident Studio, the Apple rooftop, and finally the Abbey Road crossing.
Catfights, jackasses and metaphysics at the 2003 MTV Europe Awards
Awards night in Edinburgh: a Christina-versus-Kelly feud, Jackass mayhem, and Michael Stipe insisting rock isn’t dead yet.
The aural wallpaper to emptiness
Radiohead retreats from the electronics of Kid A back to guitars, and Thom Yorke keeps on chronicling the abyss. A Hail to the Thief review.
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.
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.
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.
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.