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A Brief History of Controversy-Courting Band Names

By Tom Hawking on

Tomorrow marks the release of Strapped, the new album by Californian noiseniks The Soft Pack. (You can stream the record at Spin right now, if you’re so inclined.) For those not familiar with the band’s history, they used to be known as The Muslims, a name that caused them all sorts of predictable problems and was eventually ditched in favor of their current moniker circa 2009. So, to celebrate The Soft Pack’s new record, we thought we’d look at some of music’s other great controversy-courting band names. Warning: naughty words abound. … Read More

Music

Famous Bands and the Indie Musicians Who Should Open for Them

By Tom Hawking on

You may or may not have seen that new show called Opening Act last night, wherein a team of “industry judges” – viz. Mary J Blige, Olivia Lee, and that unpleasant English guy from Popstars and So You Think You Can Dance – judge various hapless bands for the right to support huge stars like, um, LMFAO or Jason Mrazzzzzzzzzzz. Still, the show did get us thinking about how plenty of great bands have started their careers by playing some support slots that seem hilarious in retrospect, from Radiohead opening for Alanis Morrissette to Jimi Hendrix opening for the Monkees. And that, in turn, got us thinking about support slots we’d love to see some of our favorite bands play. In view of this, we thought we’d amuse ourselves by looking at some dream hypothetical line-ups, featuring some big-name (or biggish-name, at least) headline acts, past and present, along with the indie bands we’d love to have seen open for them. … Read More

Music

Flavorpill’s Underrated Awards 2010: Albums

By Zoë Leverant on

We’re as addicted to end-of-year list-making as your average bloggers. But after a while, we get sick of seeing the same names over and over again. Hey, did you hear about that Kanye album? How about The Social Network — pretty great, huh? That’s why Flavorpill is launching a new yearly tradition: The Underrated Awards, honoring our favorite people and things from the cultural universe that we feel have been criminally under-appreciated. Our second installment focuses on 2010′s most unfairly overlooked albums, from records released early in the year that were forgotten by the time best-of season rolled around to releases too strange to garner much attention outside of a small niche. … Read More

Music

The 5 Best Music Videos of the Week

By Aaron Gonsher on

A child cult, dusty oscilloscopes, and an extremely lecherous dinosaur puppet all make an appearance in our roundup of the best music videos of the past week, all of which have absolutely nothing to do with the actual musical or lyrical content of their videos. Still, if Mew want to disappear into some spinning dream machine, The Black Heart Procession want to be pursued by massive rats with red glowing eyes, and the Black Keys want to throw a pool party populated by prehistorics, then who are we to argue with artistic intent? … Read More