Author Archives: Dan Crossen

As the ’90s drew to a close, the homogenization of rock grew ever more pronounced and a series of bands in New York began playing in a style that was touted as a return to “real” rock ‘n’ roll, a style steeped in the garage aesthetics of punk and of the psychedelic movement. Bands like […]

Few bands in pop music history have undergone as profound a metamorphosis as Weilheim, Germany’s The Notwist. What began as nothing more than one more German hard core punk band has become one of the most successful acts to blend electronic music with pop songwriting. As one of the leading groups of the nascent lap-pop […]

Hey, remember “Footloose,” that classic ’80s flick in which city-boy Kevin Bacon moves to a small town where a local minister had banned rock ‘n’ roll and dancing? Remember how we laughed at the folly and thanked God nothing so ignorant and restrictive of personal freedoms could happen in the real freedom-filled United States? Last […]

At the end of last quarter I made a bold pronouncement. “Rock is not dead,” I exclaimed. But feeling particularly bitter that day (it was 10th week after all), I made my courageous claim only by way of introducing what I felt to be five of the biggest problems in music today. So to prove […]

It was, of course, too late; I was already hooked. But even as I settled in to watch, resigned to my latest addiction, the thought crossed my mind that perhaps reality television has finally gone too far. The latest phenomenon relied on months of hype (before the actual first episode) to establish a solid, if […]

The elusive female orgasm can be perfectly mimicked by a guy playing blues harmonica. Chances are few, if any, of the near-capacity crowd at Royce Hall on Thursday night being aware of this little-known fact, but by the time Charlie Musselwhite finished his set, no one had any doubts that it could, in fact, be […]

Rock is dead. It’s a cry that’s been repeated so many times it’s lost its meaning, become a caricature of its own weighty intent and earnest grievousness. Nevertheless, each new wave of rock “˜n’ roll invariably elicits the same doom-saying and end-of-the-world predictions. Critics have even had the audacity to dub an entire genre (or […]