Last night (September 13, 2009) marks a very important milestone in the career of Kanye West. If there is any humanity or intelligence left in this world, it marks the end of his career. This isn’t about anything rock related, but I felt the need to write my thoughts regarding West’s temper tantrum.
In a surprise win, 19 year old Taylor Swift won “Best Female Video” for her song “You Belong to Me” at the MTV VMA Awards. The shock and joy on her face when the announcement was made was sweet and genuine. Swift took the stage to accept her …read more

Back in 1994, G. Love and Special Sauce released its self-titled debut LP to very little critical fanfare. However, the album almost went gold on the merits of the song “Cold Beverage”, which wound up in heavy rotation on MTV. The band has since gone on to record six more albums together and is currently signed to Jack Johnson’s Brushfire Records. However, it is the belief of this blogger that the band’s first album represents its best creative effort and is largely overlooked as a seminal album of its time.
There is a fleeting rawness to this album; the kind of …read more

The year was 1969. America was in conflict in Viet Nam, the African-American civil rights movement was “over” according to our history books and a sexual revolution was still taking place. Musicians were writing music not to make money and records, but to make a statement…well, some of them were anyway. They were writing songs of inspiration, political disgust, and love and equality for human kind. It was an era that will be forever imprinted in the history of America.
When most people think of Woodstock ‘69 and that time of revolution, they only think of drugged up hippies. Those …read more

For a long time I have had a love/hate relationship with Scott Weiland. Not like a real, personal relationship but like as a fan and music lover. When the Stone Temple Pilots first became big on the radio back in the early 90’s I was kind of digging their sound. It wasn’t the typical grunge or glam rock sound that was plaguing the airwaves during that time. It was a breath of fresh air. I liked them, but never enough to buy their album, Core. I was in a phase at that moment where I would mainly listen to …read more

Check out this screen-shot of Robert Plant’s picture next to a picture of King Theoden from The Lord Of The Rings. I thought it was pretty funny. You can see more people that look just like other people and things at Totallylookslike.com. You can view this one HERE.

Image: Screen-shot of Totallylookslike.com

When everything else you try fails and you don’t want to get a real job…just reunite with your defunct band. It’s sure to be a hit no matter what myself or anyone else says. No matter how much hate you see on the internet, it’s your best bet. There are still fans out there that will kiss the ground you walk on and groupies that will do perverse things to roadies to get back stage at your shows.

Plagiarism in music has been in the spot-light since the beginning of recording music. Everyone wants their due and doesn’t want anyone else to rip them off and/or get credit for their work. As much as we’d all love to believe that our guitar heroes and favorite bands are all original, the truth is a lot of copy-cat and riff theft has been going on since the invention of the guitar…or any musical instrument for that matter.
How many acoustic songs could be dubbed as rip-offs? There are only so many chords and notes and you can only put them in …read more

Remember when you were in school and you used to write things down in a  notebook but would often rip out the pages in fear that someone might find this notebook and judge you? You might have written songs or letters to someone but it wouldn’t make it to them? Doodles and drawings, random words and stupidness? Remember that? Imagine if you didn’t tear them out and just kept saving them as life went on, sort of like a journal. Kurt Cobain kept dozens of notebooks with this kind of stuff in it.

Nickelback’s song structure is almost all the same. Whether it be for on of their faster songs of one of their slower song. I was in the car the other day and a song was playing on the radio. When it was over the d.j. says that it was Theory Of A Dead Man or someone, honestly I can’t remember. I said to my wife, “I thought that was Nickelback” and she did too. Bands and labels see the popularity in Nickelback and if you sound remotely like them, chances are you might get signed. They’re the Pearl Jam …read more

Seether: Finding Beauty In Negative Spaces is an album that I bought earlier this year when I took over The Rock Dose. I’ve only listened to it a few times but I was writing a few things on Metal Martyr this morning while listening to Samhain, an old favorite of mine. After Samhain and breezing through a few other “S” bands like Scar Symmetry, Scorn and The Scorpions, Seether came on and I just let it play from the beginning instead of skipping to the “hits”.