In response to Courtney Love’s protests that she had nothing to do with the likeness of her late husband, Kurt Cobain, being used to sing Bon Jovi songs in Guitar Hero 5 and subsequent lawsuit threats in regards to that matter, a statement has been released by Guitar Hero manufacturers Activision in concert with Nirvana’s Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic. What does the statement sound like? A denial, a denial, a denial, of course. More »
Were you kind of cheesed off when you found out that the Kurt Cobain avatar in the forthcoming installment of Guitar Hero would be able to sing songs by the likes of Bon Jovi and Bush? Well, it turns out that Kurt’s widow Courtney Love is none too pleased about the development either, as evidenced by a string of Tweets she sent earlier today that complained about this appropriation of her husband’s license and foresaw an awful future in which he’d be forced to virtually mime Madonna. Not that! More »
Clear Channel has flipped one of its Louisville stations to a format called “Louie,” which the bigwigs are actually saying is the first firmament in what will be come to known as “Gen X radio.” Yes, the generation that inspired so much Boomer disdain is finally getting a format to call all its own, although the music associated with it may not be what you necessarily think of when you think of slackers and Singles. Quoth CC market president Bill Gentry: “It’s focused on a musical experience… [that] crosses cultures from grunge, hip-hop, hair bands, boy bands and more.” And another CC higher-up has this to say: “[Louie will] capture how 30-somethings listen to music, and it ignores genres and categories.” Sounds sorta Jack-y to me, but then again, perhaps that ill-conceived marketing will inspire further nostalgia for those 30somethings who remember all too well being ineptly pandered to back in the day. The playlist of Louie’s inaugural hour after the jump. More »
Despite attempts to quash the Internet trend of Rickrolling—which included Twitter whacking of Rick Astley—the phenomena of playing “Never Gonna Give You Up” at odd moments is still making enough people on the internet snicker for the meme to persist. Keeping that in mind, here is “Never Gonna Give Your Teen Spirit Up,” a blend of Astley’s 1987 track with the song that broke a little Washington band called Nirvana only a few years later. After the jump, hear why this mash-up was basically concocted for the purposes of making its creator, DJ Morgoth, have his 15 seconds of Digg fame and little else. More »
Lately, I’ve been thinking about the narrative surrounding the ‘90s alternative rock boom, and how oversimplified it’s become over the years. Too often, we get a simple line like “Nirvana changed everything,” and if we’re lucky, a little follow-up along the lines of “Limp Bizkit ruined everything.” So I decided to identify the scenes, subgenres, and trends that most influenced the Modern Rock charts over the past two decades; I figured I’d come up with a dozen or so. Instead, I ended up with almost 30, which I’ve broken down below. (I’m sure in the comments we can argue about which ones I left out, or which bands shouldn’t have been lumped together.) More »
When a friend of mine sent me today’s installment of the Web comic Penny Arcade, which is a joke centered on the “special accessories” that come with the still-theoretical Nirvana edition of Guitar Hero, I said, “Oh, ouch.” “Everybody says ouch,” he replied. And why is that? More »
This week marks the 15th anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death in 1994. You could argue that Cobain’s suicide was a generation of late-twentysomethings and early-thirtysomethings’ version of the JFK assassination… and pretty much remained our defining cultural event until 9/11. So, we’d like to hear your stories. Share where you were, what you were doing and how you felt. Maura and I will start the ball rolling with our own anecdotes, as well as a few we gathered from members of Pelican, Throw Me The Statue, and Oxford Collapse.
Forget all that talk about whether Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion is the best album of 2009. The real competition—the Worst Music-Related Article Of 2009 That Somehow Still Managed To Earn A Paycheck In This Completely Devastated Writing Economy—has already been sewn up, thanks to the new “conservatives can be cool and comment on pop culture too, man” blog Big Hollywood. Congratulations, Fox News pundit Greg Gutfeld: Your recently horked-up “Conservatives Rock” is not only headlined by perhaps the worst verb ever to use atop a music-related story, the underlying conceit is about as dumb as, well, a story entitled “Conservatives Rock” might ever hope to be.