A Perfect Circle is the side project of Maynard James Keenan, best known as the lead singer of the progressive metal band Tool. I’m not really that familiar with Tool, aside from a couple of radio hits, “Sober” and “Schism,” that have become alternative rock classics....
Eminem struggled for years to get noticed in his hometown of Detroit, releasing an album called Infinite in 1996 that failed to garner any attention. (It’s now out of print. Only about 1000 copies were made.) When the album flopped, Kim, Eminem’s girlfriend and mother...
In 1969, a psychiatrist named Elisabeth Kübler-Ross first articulated the five stages of grief in her book On Death and Dying. There are many different forms of grief, however, and in 1970 guitarist Eric Clapton was in the throes of his unrequited love for Pattie...
In the decade or so preceding War, the world saw a decline in rock & roll as bands became more and more self-indulgent, with five-minute guitar solos and ten-minute drum solos that served no real purpose. The Ramones’ 1976 self-titled debut is generally considered...
Almost ten years ago, after seeing the first Lord of the Rings movie, I decided to read The Hobbit one summer since I had never read it, and though I have largely forgotten it, there is one passage that has always haunted me. It’s when Bilbo and the dwarves get lost...
As its cover suggests, Kid A is bizarre, icy and abstract, even by Radiohead standards. Their first three albums, Pablo Honey (1993), The Bends (1995) and OK Computer (1997), are more or less guitar-based and fit comfortably into the alternative rock canon. Radiohead...
Eminem burst onto the scene in early 1999 as the American Culture Wars of the ’80s and ’90s reached a critical mass. President Clinton had just been subjected to an impeachment trial for lying about Monica Lewinsky, and in those less-troubled days before 9/11 it...
It’s too bad that I came across Sgt. Pepper for academic reasons. Not that school had anything to do with it, because when I was fifteen or sixteen I decided that if I was ever going to learn anything about music, I was just going to have to teach myself. (It’s worth...
I went a long, long time without listening all the way through Electric Ladyland. As soon as I discovered that two of Jimi’s greatest tracks, “All Along the Watchtower” and “Voodoo Child (Slight Return),” were at the end I just listened to those, since the rest of the...
Steely Dan achieved early success with their 1972 debut record Can’t Buy a Thrill and in 1974 they released their biggest single, “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number,” off their third album Pretzel Logic. Squeezed in between was Countdown to Ecstasy, their sophomore effort...