This was supposed to be Ken Cheppaikode’s month to celebrate. The owner and sole employee of punk/garage rock-centric label Dirtnap Records had booked the packed, two-day Dirtnap Festival at the High Noon Saloon in his current home in Madison, Wisconsin, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the imprint, including a reunion of new wave dynamos […]
Grief is a process that everyone goes through, but one that people cope with differently. Artists can often find a way to express their sorrow through their work, to channel pain into something constructive. But after the death of his Nirvana bandmate, Kurt Cobain, in April 1994, drummer Dave Grohl sunk into a deep depression […]
If you’re a Rush fan, you know Hugh Syme and his dynamic covers for the iconic prog-rock band. But there are many more memorable images that Syme has created that you might not realize are his. He has had a long-term relationship with Dream Theater that has lasted nearly 20 years. His work has graced […]
As the world continues to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic, Bandcamp has also continued to do a pretty cool thing. One Friday in March, the distribution platform waived its revenue share so artists could make more money off of their music and merch sales through the site. It was so successful — to the tune […]
I have been a hip-hop head as long as I can remember. OK, that is a lie. It goes back to when I was about 10 years old. My cousin had brought a piece of cardboard and a pair of fingerless gloves to Thanksgiving. After we ate our meal, we went out to my grandmother’s […]
Every music-based forum, including Discogs, is filled with posts from people wanting advice about buying their first turntable, upgrading their existing one, or putting together a complete system. It can be daunting, especially these days. When brick-and-mortar stereo shops were a normal part of the landscape, you could spend time actually listening to components and […]
The other day, I posed a hypothetical to my husband: “What if vinyl records get recalled because the material is needed for human survival?” I was imagining records being turned into some fuel or heat source. He didn’t find this very likely. I tried another: “What if the record collectors of North America are forced […]
I lived in San Francisco for over 15 years. June was, of course, the big kick-off of summer for those lucky days we got sun; I lived in Glen Park for most of my time in the city by the bay, the fog so thick at times that we nicknamed our apartment Skull Mountain for […]
With all this talk of Beastie Boys in the context of the Spike Jonze-directed 2020 documentary, Beastie Boys Story, there isn’t a better time to revisit one of the most underrated facets of the band’s legacy. Launching with their seminal third album, Check Your Head, Grand Royal would become a full-fledged boutique label by late […]
The 1990s were a pretty dark time – not exactly dark in the 2020 sense of global pandemics and international demonstrations, but dark in a literal palette. I think about dirty flannel and gangster rap, about children’s cartoons that preached a healthy distrust of commercialism and radio hits that, rather than run from politics into […]
