I’m always intrigued by the early phases of a band. Once a band is famous, their sound has usually solidified into a known quantity, the line-up becomes relatively sacrosanct, there’s maximum attention and minimum mystery. The early days, however, are where there are the crucial left tur...
If punk rock told the youth of the day that anything was possible, then grunge – or ‘pain rock’ as the press first called it – spoke of impossibility. The Melvins were drowning in it, Mudhoney were choking in it, and Nirvana made pop from it: the sensation of wading through t...
and he didn’t know. There’s one song of his that I’d be proud to sing.” Seven years later, he’d introduce the Mother Love Bone song “Crown of Thorns” into Pearl Jam’s live show, finally letting Andy Wood’s music into the stadiums and arenas it was always destined to ...
Judas Priest said they dug out an old cassette for inspiration on this comeback single. The bass line, however, bears a striking likeness with Jane's Addiction's "Mountain Song." "I do know that 'Mountain Song' contains the 'Metal 101' chords and progression," Jane's guitarist Dave ...
Jazz harmony is the theory and practice of changing chords, where major and minor scales share the same space in a timeless bond… progressions depart in thirds and stacked fourths favoring harmonic progressions where tensions in intervals of 9th, 11th, or 13thabound. ...
On'OnAPlain','Somethingintheway'and'AllApologies'Kurt playswithDropped-Dtuning(DbAbDbGbBbEb). On'Plateau','Ohme'and'LakeOfFire'heletstheMeatPuppets playtheguitar. Thepositionsofthechords,asplayedbyKurt,aregivenforeach song.Thesearethesocalledvoicings.Fromlefttorightarethe positionsontherespective...
nobody's going to get fooled into thinking that I'm Jim Morrison." I used to complain about Steve Albini's vocal mixes. It was all about really slamming drums and guitars and stuff like that. And I love Steve, but I was like, "The vocals kind of suffer because everything else is ...
While Elden has recreated theNevermindcover several times throughout his life — with clothes on — and tattooed the image on his chest, he appears to have changed his mind about the cover in recent years. "Recently I've been thinking, 'What if I wasn't okay with my freaking penis being...
Pink Floyd (1994):Populated by long keyboard moments -- with echoing, sustained guitar chords and segmented song-cycles effortlessly flowing into one another -- ‘The Division Bell’ plays like a long, slow exhale after the Roger Waters-era novelization of Floyd on albums like ‘The Wall’ an...
“They were playing a mixture of punk and hard rock at a time when nobody cared.” Indeed, it’s pretty easy to hear Nirvana’s power-chords-by-a-power-trio roots in this dark tune originally off of the seminal Portland punks’ 1980 LP Is this Real? . As future In Utero producer ...