We revisit and rank the 50 best hits from the year 1995, plus interview artists like Alanis Morissette, Garbage, Monica, Kylie Minogue, Seal, Saint Etienne, Ace Of Base and more in the process. More »
Somehow the script for Nick Cave’s sequel to the Russell Crowe epic Gladiator leaked a year ago, and this review of the script that asserts its high quality but wonders if it wouldn’t be just a little too supernaturally based to be a sequel was written back then, but it’s just hitting the music-journalism transom now. The coverage for the script is thorough, revealing lots of Caveian details (including a closing battle in which “the grounds [of the Coliseum] are completely flooded with several ships battling hundreds of alligators with fireballs and arrows,” and the notion that Russell Crowe’s Maximus has been damned to being a warrior for eternity as a way of atoning for his past crimes. Unfortunately, the person reading the script didn’t go out of his way to transcribe too much dialogue from Cave’s script, but he did include this speech from the anti-Christian leader Lucius, which is really really hard not to read in Cave’s bellow: More »
Between this Monday’s release of the latest covers-stuffed War Child charity album—which includes the Yeah Yeah Yeahs‘ take on “Sheena Is A Punk Rocker” and Lily Allen‘s drowsy reworking of “Straight To Hell”—and the “what are your favorite cover songs” meme going around Facebook lately, I figured it would be fun to have us all share some of our favorite reworkings of popular songs. A few of mine after the jump, presented with minimal comment because after a week of scandals and Grammys and people not being dead I am wiped out. Feel free to share yours! The newer the better!
In this week’s top 12: A song that was thought to be lost to the demise of the VHS era, Justin Timberlake pouring out his heart, televised baseball signaling the possible thawing of the northeast, and Nick: The Twitter.
Just wanted to chime in with my disappointment at the news of the departure of Mick Harvey from Nick Cave’s ace backing band, The Bad Seeds. It stung when Blixa Bargeld left in 2003, but this one really hurts.
When Ozzy Osbourne declared himself “the prince of fucking darkness” on a 2002 episode of The Osbournes, he may as well have simultaneously relinquished the title. The MTV hit quickly dissolved 30 years’ worth of mystique and danger as it revealed him to be in reality a doddering old family man. But when Ozzy rose to fame in the ’70s, every other rock star had an interest in the occult (or at least Hobbits), and heavy metal was still genuinely thought of as the province of Satanists, not nerdy gearheads. But who could be pop music’s reigning prince of darkness in the era of rock star transparency, when every famous musician has a whiny MySpace blog? Since it’s Halloween, we decided to think of a few options:
Just wanted to chime in with my disappointment at the news of the