On August 3, Australian music lost one of its most loved figures, in Damien Lovelock, vocalist for the iconic Celibate Rifles.

This week writer Kevin Burke looks into the heart of My Bloody Valentine’s sublime classic Loveless

Writer Kevin Burke looks back fifty-years and discusses the connection between Dennis Wilson, The Beatles and convicted murderer Charles Manson

Writer Kevin Burke discusses the connection between two of the most remarkable musical statements of the 20th Century.

Kim Deal, Kristin Hersh, Vanessa Briscoe Hay, Kim Gordon and Kat Bjelland, five women who inspired the sound of Riot Grrrl.

On July 15th 1988, the world mourned the loss of Nico, the true gothic princess,

Fifty years after the death of Brian Jones, Kevin Burke looks back at the last surge of brilliance from the original Rolling Stone

Kevin Burke shares his opinion on David Bowie’s game changing album The Man Who Sold The World

Following the release of the posthumous Originals, Kevin Burke looks back at the unreleased album by Prince that became a cult all of its own.

Cherry Red Record’s 5-disc box set Silhouettes & Statues encompasses the Gothic revolution of the late ’70s to mid-‘80s, capturing the spirit of an essential era in (musical) history.

A review and some thoughts on Chicago outfit, Whitney.

I had formed this band to make everyone in the world suffer for the hell I’d endured back in high school, so this was the perfect setting to unleash my anger.

I can’t believe that I’ll never see him at a show (or anywhere else) again, at least on this planet. I hope his soul is at peace. My heart goes out to his widow Mina. There will never be another one like him. Here’s to another one gone from us way too soon, this time at the tender age of 54. RIP John Stabb.

Two very short stories: more sludgy rumination on my salad days. 25 years ago today, nerds from New Jersey spent the night wandering around New York City and I check out CBGB for the first time. Then I recount the first time I got onto the radio.

I tried to interview an old Boston band called Dangerous Birds and became thwarted by sinister powers of cunning and treachery. Then a crusty librarian handed me an old photo of a shoe collection from the Korean Airline Disaster of 1983 and their whole lie unraveled, along with my interview.

I thought about the Dead Kennedys as I sat silently on the bus. I couldn’t understand a single word the singer was saying, it all just sounded like incoherent babble. He sounded like some kind of depraved nerd. At the end of the day, I shook my head in disbelief about punk rock.

Come Flyer With Me: A rant about DIY advertising, money, art, Facebook and dissapearing public spaces in Denver. Recently I was handing out flyers in downtown Denver and a funny thing happened. Almost everywhere I went, I was asked to leave.

Death In June have been called everything from Nazi-sympathizers according critics to staunch liberals coming from their fans. In reality, the answer is lodged somewhere between the two extremes.

A brief essay on music sales. Recently I went into two record stores in Denver and had drastically different experiences. It seems that in the wake of the economic downtown, independent music stores and corporate chains have a much different philosophy on their customers and what those customers want.

Remember what it was like to be the youngest person at a show, surrounded by people three times your age? With all of those strange tattooed people with their smelly dreadlocks? Lewis Dimmick hasn’t forgotten what that time period was like, and in this book he explores some of his earliest memories of participating in DIY music.

Recently, the filmmaker Jeff Feuerzeig (Half Japanese/The Duded) decided to document some originals & cover songs I have been performing on an acoustic piano in a 1983, ford Econoline. It’s given me an opportunity to turn people on to a version of a Velvet Underground song that tends to get lost in the shuffle.

Audio and commentary from a WGTB Benefit Show held in Washington DC on December 4th 1985, featuring Rites of Spring, Dag Nasty, Embrace and Beefeater.

In 2003 an anonymous person uploaded the earliest known recordings of Black Sabbath to a file sharing website. The songs, “The Rebel” and “When I Came Down” quickly spread around the Internet. Both of the songs reveal a young and wildly kinetic Black Sabbath. Both are still technically unreleased.

I’m sure you know that feeling of being totally excited for a show, and then being swiftly disappointed because of just how terribly the sound is handled. Perhaps, it’s because the venue just isn’t that great, but more often than not it’s simply because of the sound guy.

Easily the most dangerous contaminant in music journalism today, after sexism, is some need writers have to single out a band with an attention span as short as their own album reviews.

Can music writers just stop using words like “cute,” “adorable,” or “twee,” to describe a band’s sound already?

He had the ability to touch the hearts of people all over the world, simply by being himself. He loved deeply both beauty and music; his passion was experiencing both of those simultaneously, whether he was making the music or listening to it.

Tom Gabel announces transition to new identity as Laura Jane Grace

Commit internet piracy 3x and you are banned from the internet

The sale of KUSF is neither popular nor moral, but rather another cave-in to the trickle-down supply-side economics that crassly support an anti-humanist and anti-religious notion of “science and innovation” at the expense of the liberal arts. Ultimately, it’s not even a sound economic decision for you or the University.

On December 14th, Epic Records will be releasing Michael, a collection of 10 songs that had to have been unfinished at the time of the King Of Pop’s death. This is a clear case of “can we” versus “should we”.

The song begins, to clapped hands, “Happy new year / my dear / it is time to face our fear”. That’s the line I kept singing, like a mantra. It’s a good alternate New Year’s theme, I think – welcome to a new, fearless year.

Jack, you left this world far too early.

A trip up north goes far in introducing new music.

A colorful Brooklyn duo with equal parts hip hop and synthpop apparent in their spartan beats are still very much of the moniker, ‘minimal synth’.

For an ambitious, up-and-coming outfit, New York City’s Her Virgins are a typical anomaly, fusing dark pop with a glam aesthetic that runs the gamut from Clockwork Orange to rivethead chic.

“Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth.”

So Slanted & Enchanted is not exactly “A tragedy of epic proportions!” More of a problem comedy—too realistic to offer the patriarchal cathartic moneyshot. Or, as Kathleen Hanna puts the wait for the Next Big Indie Thing—“It’s almost like this pregnancy where the baby never gets born. I feel like it’s been as if ‘The baby’s coming! The baby’s coming! And it’s five years later. And the woman weights three hundred pounds…and is not having the kid.”

There’s a growing movement to re-establish connections between the fractalized digital technology and the already established local music scenes. There’s many more money making opportunities if these connections are seen more clearly as a two-way street, especially as the recording and distribution industries have made severe cuts in their ‘regional offices’ (or more autonomous locally-run subsidiaries) in recent years.

I think once having the internet in your car is a normal thing, FM stations will suffer heavily, escpeially if commercial free stations such as Soma FM still exist. I’m pretty sure that college stations will continue to broadcast on line and perhaps having these online station options available in cars will finally pull some of the stranglehold away from Clearchannel….Who knows, it might be just what the music industry needs to recover from this current dire situation it has fallen into.” (Elise Nordling)

Frontman/bassist Michael W. Dean has made Bomb’s rarest recordings available for free from Bomb’s official website.

Montreal’s Xavier Paradis may have the French connection, but is actually a forerunner in the distinctly North American movement of minimal synth that has been seething below the surface since the 1990’s.

Food, Inc. is powerful enough to be to the local/organic/sustainable food movement what An Inconvenient Truth was to concern about global warming.

Destiny, Tamaryn, Zohra, Anastasia: New York City’s rising coven of seductive sirens, ladies of the new church of post-apocalyptic song.

Joe Stumble’s Last Days of Man on Earth blog contains some real treasures while retaining a respect for the artists and their music.

Here are six of my favorite Gayle albums. Most are imports, out of print, poorly distributed, or combinations of those states, but a look at Amazon shows that they can be found.

After 18 years, I’ve finally found the album that changed my concept of music forever.

The Nuggets of punk rock is better than ever in its expanded online format.

Shadowrun is a gritty, cyberpunk epic, while Starflight is an otherworldy space opera.