There is no denying that there has been a wave of '90s nostalgia in the music world lately, and some of the most beloved bands from 20 years ago are reuniting and releasing music to cash in on the craze. But some bands from the decade have been consistently going strong and evolving without slipping into obscurity. One such band is The Offspring, those punk-drenched dudes from California with huge hits like “Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)” and “Come Out And Play,” among many others. The band is not only celebrating the 20th anniversary of its second album, “Ignition,” this year, but...
What is there to say about Bob Dylan that hasn’t been said before? In a career that has spanned some 50 years, he’s seen the dizzying highs and the withering lows. He’s tasted the rewards of success and the bitter sting that accompanies the fall to obscurity. Despite his legendary status, his more recent records have fallen from their once-lofty perch, critically acclaimed but no longer the momentous albums of their predecessors. Yet his legacy is so ingrained in the social subconscious that new singer/songwriters of any weight instantly become fodder for comparison. “To be the...
This Canadian metal band was on par with the likes of Motorhead and Bon Jovi in the early 1980s but never quite managed to make it professionally, instead fading into obscurity. Someone decided to make a (frankly very touching) movie about the band in 2008 and BAM! Lips, Robb and Glenn Five are back! ...
Anvil is coming to Cleveland. You don’t know Anvil from any of their 14 albums. You don’t know them as the Canadian thunder gods who influenced the likes of Anthrax, Slayer and Metallica. You don’t them as the band that spent the early ’80s holding their own against, if not outright upstaging, some of the decade’s biggest metal acts. If you know them at all, you know them from Sacha Gervasi’s 2008 acclaimed documentary, “Anvil! The Story of Anvil,” a movie The New York Times called “possibly the greatest film yet made about rock and roll.” In the early 1980s, everyon...
Over the years, Akron has produced the occasional musical success story. Devo’s quirky, tongue-in-cheek lampooning of the American Dream has solidified its place in pop culture. After relocating to London in the early ‘70s, Chrissie Hynde formed the Pretenders, who were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2005. More recently, the Black Keys have released seven studio albums (eight if you count 2009’s hip-hop collaboration Blakroc) since 2002, all of which have received widespread praise from both fans and critics. But, as it goes in the music business, for ever...
By D. Beall Hailing from Cleveland, this foursome has been garnering praise left and right from their mostly LGBT contemporaries and fanbase, and not without reason. This album stands up there with other artists in their hemisphere- the problem is, those artists are kind of hard to find unless you’re in that scene. The unfortunate by-product of their kind of obscurity: after reading a few glowing reviews, I wonder, where is their competition? Have I never heard of them because they confine themselves to queer-only venues? So I review mostly out of context. Fans of The Cliks or T...
