They’re too young to hold office and at least two of them can’t vote, but the Regrettes, four teens pushing back against conventional notions of beauty, status, and worth, have a Warner Brothers recording contract, …

Back to work on Ratt and related projects, singer Stephen Pearcy celebrates the release of a new solo album, Smash, on January 27. The former San Diegan took some questions from L.A. Been back to …

“Over the Rainbow” would be the last piece he’d play in public for a few years. As he remarks in his liner notes, he was already sick when he did these concerts. He didn’t know …

Ex–Black Crowes singer Chris Robinson brings the Chris Robinson Brotherhood to the Observatory North Park on December 16. In between the phone signal cutting out in Appalachia, he took some questions. Where am I reaching …

Out-and-proud punk-poppers Pansy Division hit Soda Bar November 4. Co-founder Chris Freeman took some email queries. What are the band’s most memorable San Diego gigs? “Opening for Green Day at the Sports Arena on Halloween …

Drummer Terry Bozzio’s survived playing with Frank Zappa, Jeff Beck, and a slew of prog-rock lineups. He brings a concert-length solo performance on “the world’s largest tuned drum and percussion” set to Dizzy’s on October …

Cyndi Lauper’s sung R&B, electronica, classics, obscurities, and picked up a Grammy and a Tony for writing the Kinky Boots musical. She brings her new country album, Detour, to Humphreys by the Bay October 3 …

Still catchy, still creepy, still obsessive, still (mostly) masked, still rocking the white-framed cat’s-eye sunglasses he’s favored for decades, longtime San Diego resident Gary Wilson has a new album out, Friday Night with Gary Wilson, …

Ishmael “Butterfly” Butler, having spent many years with the psychedelic hiphop team Shabazz Palaces, reunited with his earlier band, Digable Planets, for their first tour since 2005. They land at Belly Up on August 20. …

Guitarist/singer Julia Shapiro, guitarist Lydia Lund, bassist Annie Truscott, and drummer Gretchen Grimm formed Chastity Belt mostly for laughs at Whitman College, then moved to Seattle and got serious. They visit the Casbah on Wednesday, …

We won’t have the new Meat Loaf until the kids go back to school this September, so lucky for us the Suede decided to carry on in the face of lineup changes and, dare I …

Duran Duran, still Duranimal after all these years, brings their new multimedia blitz and their new album, Paper Gods, to the Sleep Train Amphitheatre Tuesday, August 2. From his home near Hammersmith, London, drummer Roger …

When not writing, singing, sharing one-act plays or investigating psychic phenomena (see below), Sonny Smith from Sonny & the Sunsets stumps for his new album Moods Baby Moods. The band hits Soda Bar on the …

Coltrane was dead. And flautist Herbie Mann's band didn't boast the jaw-dropping hive mind of Miles Davis’s Second Great Quintet. What Mann had was a splendid band of creative misfits. Among others: incendiary guitarist Sonny …

From the streets of Jersey City came guitarist Al Di Meola, who toiled in the fusion group Return to Forever, at age 20, and eventually went solo, combining rock, jazz, classical, and electronic approaches. He …

It might have been fate, it might have been celestial machinations, it might have been the two bands’ mutual love, but Earthless and Harsh Toke, two of the heaviest, THC-est bands on the San Diego …

In 1987, R. Budd Dwyer, state treasurer of Pennsylvania, climaxed a press conference by killing himself with a revolver. Filter’s signature tune, the facetious-but-still-regretful “Hey Man Nice Shot,” released in 1995, is about Dwyer, who …

Two key points about the Residents: nobody knows who they are after 40-plus years (though they’ve taken to calling the three people on stage “Randy, Chuck, and Bob”), and they always employ masks, costumes, and …

“You’re not my friend/ and that is fine,” croak-warbles David Thomas for starters. Circa 35 years ago, longtime Thomas-watcher Greil Marcus summed up the then-new music of Thomas’s Pere Ubu band, as someone who’d been …

Heavier, and, I must say, humbler than ever, San Diego’s own Joy comes fulminating back with their latest platter, Ride Along! Originator Zachary Oakley took some queries via email. The new album’s out on 4/29. …

Third Eye Blind took six years between their last album, Ursa Major, and their new platter, Dopamine, owing in large part to leader Stephan Jenkins’s struggles with writer’s block, a problem he tried to cure, …

Even the most conceptually aggregated rock bands usually stop short of creating their own language. Call them prog, call them avant-garde, call them way out, but Magma founder Christian Vander took that plunge decades ago, …

Eleanor Friedberger first went around the world as half of the Fiery Furnaces, which cut nine albums covering almost every base of Western music. The band went on hiatus in 2011. Friedberger comes to the …

“He lost his arm in an arm accident,” as the noted futurist Mike Hamrick noted about Def Leppard’s drummer Rick Allen — but that’s left Allen stronger. Given pedals to cover his missing left appendage, …

From the residue of Seattle band Pretty Girls Make Graves, the Cave Singers arose in 2007. Now they’re touring their fifth album and first crowd-sourced recording project, Banshee. They play the Casbah on Sunday, February …

From the Ben Folds Five through solo projects and rubbing shoulders with William Shatner, Regina Spektor, and Weird Al Yankovic, pianist/composer Ben Folds likes to keep folks head-scratching. In concert with the San Diego Symphony, …

Singer, songwriter, keyboardist Vanessa Carlton brings her new stark tunes from her album Liberman to the Casbah on Sunday, January 24. She took questions over email on working with producer Steve Osborne (New Order, U2), …

They’re missing Peter Hook. Without his bass leading the charge or waiting to, everyone lays back. Cool lapsing into cold. Heatless — but seamless — groove slipping between disco, disco with electronica synth touches, razor-chop …

Seattle’s Tacocat — singer Emily Nokes, guitarist Eric Randall, bassist Bree McKenna, and drummer Lelah Maupin — brings their surf/pop/throb/costume riot to the Casbah on December 7. Ms. Nokes sat for some email questions. Which …

Art Alexakis, leader of Everclear, brings the band to the Music Box on Saturday, November 21. Alexakis took time out from hunting down a Starbucks in Greensboro, North Carolina, to take a few phoner questions. …

L7, the loud and raunchy female quartet featuring guitarists Donita Sparks and Suzi Gardner, bassist Jennifer Finch, and drummer Dee Plakas, formed in 1985, broke big in 1992, broke up in 2001, and reunited last …

The Cult, fronted by Ian Astbury, invades House of Blues on November 19, stumping for their new album Hidden City, the final installment in a three-album trilogy. Astbury took questions over the phone — and …

Won’t say the guy’s name, but he was a drug dealer with a name fitting that occupation. He held down an all-nighter DJ slot at the campus station, and I sat up with him once …

Shirley Manson’s back together with her Garbage bandmates Butch Vig, Duke Erikson, and Steve Marker. They hit Humphreys Concerts by the Bay on October 6. She took some trans-Atlantic phone questions from the Reader. What …

"A truly good friend. He was truthful to the point of it being painful. A tremendous amount of fun, and up for anything. He would tell anyone anything, often to his own detriment.”

Something burning this white hot, might out-vie language itself. For those joining us late, the Sonics started out in Tacoma, Washington, as teenagers. They invented punk rock — and anyone who doesn’t believe that can …

Lou Barlow grew up in Massachusetts and stumbled into Dinosaur Jr., which helped define an era of alternative rock when they weren’t marinating in backstage passive-aggression. Solo, Barlow started Sebadoh, pioneered the entire “lo-fi” thing, …

Dumb Numbers’ Adam Harding, late of Australia, likes to make music with his funky friends, who include the Melvins, David Lynch, and Jesus Lizard’s David Yow — when he isn’t shooting videos with many of …

The rap is short! That’s a sop to you “rap-is-crap”-ers out there (God, so tedious). The rap is also funny and over after the first cut, so it’s out of the way quick. More urgent …

“Mister Sister,” hymn to a cross-dressing or possibly transgendered “you” who escapes to “everyone’s party wish list,” makes even more sense in the wake of the Surpreme Court decision in June, which applied specifically to …

“The only fans that come up to you after the show are music nerds or prog-rock dads.”

If you don’t know of the Violent Femmes, you surely know “Blister in the Sun,” so popular I once heard a frat-boy chug-a-lug singalong with it at my college — which doesn’t have frat boys. …

Kansas, the wayward sons of Topeka, carry on at the San Diego County Fair on Friday, July 3. And we’re told to watch for a new album in 2016. Founding guitarist Rich Williams took some …

Disco! Disco! Disco! Okay, provisional disco. With Andy (of all people) Taylor of Duran Duran at the board and onboard with song scribbling, the world’s two most creatively obnoxious long-in-the-tooth juvenile miscreants spend a half-hour …

“The big struggle to emerge in the film is print journalism versus the Video Age.”

Just for fun, try singing this set’s “Send in the Clowns” along with Paul Simon’s “Late in the Evening,” or versa vice. Pretty much the same song, yeah? Gets me each time around. Ferry, of …

Indie rock act remembers past San Diego shows while looking forward to two nights at Observatory North Park.

San Diego’s Eliot Wilder fooled around Grossmont High and then L.A. and ended up in Boston. His latest work, Quartet, fuses classical and hip-hop. He took questions over email. What was the music scene like …

OK Go pop-rocks stunning, single-take videos featuring everything from wait-a-minute optical illusions to chorus lines on Honda electric mini-scooters. They play House of Blues on May 1. Drummer Dan Konopka took some email questions. What …

“Would that make it a better song?” Lou Reed asked a caller into an NYC radio show. Caller wanted to know if the dead girl in “Street Hassle” was real. Lester Bangs didn’t print the …