In 1965, the biggest song in Peru was about blowing up a train station. “Demolicion” was a national radio hit, its band had its own television show, and its four members were teenagers from a middle-class Lima neighborhood who had never heard the American garage bands they are now compared to. Outside Peru, almost nobody [&h
The story of the Monks is almost always told as a costume. Five American GIs stationed at Gelnhausen, two German design graduates, shaved tonsures, black habits, a manifesto. It is a great story and it is also the least interesting thing about the record they made. What produced Black Monk Time was not an art […]
Fifty years after The Saints pressed 500 copies of (I'm) Stranded in Brisbane, the details show that almost everything later read as punk ideology was a practical workaround.
The Paisley Underground had no shared sound. What held the Dream Syndicate, the Bangles, Rain Parade and the Three O'Clock together was a 1972 compilation and a handful of terrible clubs.
Most rock scenes are born from clubs, labels, or a couple of bands who refuse to sound like anyone else. Zamrock was born from a policy memo. In the first turbulent decade after Zambia declared independence from British rule in 1964, president Kenneth Kaunda paired the slogan “One Zambia, one nation” with a broadcasting decr
