Category Lo-Fi
Absolutely Pre-Fabulous! The Messiahs Trip Back To The Future in Bobb’s Psychedelic Car
Back in 1981, when a phone call brought four kids at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts together to form a peculiar psych-pop outfit called The Prefab Messiahs, Ronald Reagan was in the White House, Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl” was topping the charts, and REO Speedwagon’s “Hi Infidelity” was one of the biggest albums of the year. Closer to home, Ed King […]
A SANCTIFIED RACKET REVISITED: Mr. Airplane Man Gets Set To Fly, Strafe and Stun Again
Before blues-punk deconstructionist duos like the White Stripes and Black Keys hit the big time, Cambridge Massachusetts’ Mr. Airplane Man had built a beautiful little buzz-bomb of a flying machine for two. The garage-blooze twosome comprised of singer-guitarist Margaret Garrett and drummer Tara McManus may have named themselves after a Howlin’ Wolf song during their bleary, brilliant, and all-too […]
NEW WAVES, OLD TRICKS, AND GETTING LUBED: A Rolling Stone Convo With GBV’s Bob Pollard
Happy 20th Anniversary to one of my best-loved albums of, well, the past twenty years: “Bee Thousand,” by the Dayton, Ohio indie-rock band Guided By Voices. Like my first mad crush, I remember hearing this 1994 cracked masterpiece soon after it was released on June 21, 1994, as if it were only yesterday. I had […]
TAILGATE BIRTHDAY SONGS: Wheat’s Raised Ranch Revolution Returns
“And suddenly after all this time, of waiting and wondering when and if they would return with their soft sparkle and gentle glamour intact, Wheat are back among us.” It is with much fuzzy-hearted happiness, optimism and okay, maybe even a dash of nostalgia, that I can report the following about one of my all-time favorite […]
LIFE AFTER DEATH (THEN & NOW): The Sad and Beautiful World of Sparklehorse
To mark the supremely sad occasion this week four years ago (March 6, 2010 to be exact) when we lost Sparklehorse’s Mark Linkous to suicide — he had battled depression and other serious health problems over the years leading up to his death — here’s the full-length “Director’s Cut” of a feature profile I wrote on […]
GUIDED BY BOB: A Salty Salute to GBV’s Robert Pollard Who Turns 56 (which is less birthday candles than he’s made records)
A very Happy 56th Birthday to Robert Pollard of the long-running Dayton, Ohio rock band, Guided By Voices. Pollard is, at this point, one of the few indie-rock artists who’s always made me feel young. Not because he’s even that old, or his music or sensibility is old, mind you. Naw, it’s just that, when you’re […]
ELVES & ELEPHANTS FLY IN AN AEROPLANE OVER THE SEA: Neutral Milk Hotel Soars Again
The recent news that members of the once-vaunted Elephant Six musical collective — Neutral Milk Hotel and Elf Power, chief among them — are reuniting for a series of U.S. and international tour dates that will take them into 2014, brings back wonderful memories of the time when their alternately sun-splashed and dusk-toned hues of […]
RPM: Jonathan Perry's Life in Analog 