On the night of July 14, 1973, Clarence White played a pickup set at a bar in Palmdale, California, with his brother Roland. Shortly after 2 a.m. he was loading gear into the car when a drunk driver hit him. He died later that day. He was 29 years old. The obituaries filed him under […]
On 6 July 1992, Warp Records released a compilation with a picture of a sleeping android on the cover. The robot is slumped in an armchair. Two record sleeves lie on the carpet beside it: Kraftwerk’s Autobahn and Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon. A third, Pioneers of the Hypnotic Groove, is Warp’s […]
Riff genealogy is usually argued in court. This one was settled backstage, with a shrug and a grudge, and it runs through three artists who could not sound less alike. Start in June 1971. Joni Mitchell releases Blue. Track eight is “This Flight Tonight,” two minutes and fifty one seconds of guitar, voice and Sneaky […
Every scene has a label everyone name-checks and a label everyone actually stole from. In New York house, the first is Strictly Rhythm. The second is Nu Groove, and it was already finished by the time most people learned to say it. Nu Groove opened in New York in 1988, founded by Frank and Karen […]
Every heavy guitar tone you love owes a debt to a design brief that fit in a single sentence. In 1969, Mike Matthews, who had founded Electro-Harmonix in New York a year earlier, asked a friend for a circuit that would sing forever. That friend was Bob Myer, a Bell Labs engineer, and the answer […]
Most legendary venues start with a business plan. The Haçienda started with a slogan borrowed from the Situationists, “The Hacienda Must Be Built,” and a record label that had no idea how to run a nightclub. That naivety is exactly why it changed music history. Opened on 21 May 1982 in a former yacht showroom [&hellip
Rock is not dead, but it is not in charge either. An honest look at a genre that keeps growing its streams while losing its grip on the culture.
From a Fort Greene basement to Saturday Night Live, Geese are the most recent New York band to cross from independent obscurity to mainstream fame.
Music can turn a stadium into a single voice, but only a handful of bands ever reach that altitude. Here is what separates the few who move millions from everyone else.
On September 21, 1991, Nirvana played Les Foufounes Electriques in Montreal to about 150 people, three nights before Nevermind dropped. Inside the setlist and the night.
