“The frightening afterbirth of grunge lives on with bouncers enforcing photo policies with the death penalty.”

That leadoff track adds up everything in its unequal-length verses, the pieces of a life, the happier bits fallen out, rotten pieces in a too-humid jigsaw — and every equation equals no peace. That’s the …

Having gigged with everyone from Robyn Hitchcock to R.E.M., Scott McCaughey brings his Minus 5 to Balboa Theatre downtown on March 24. He took some email questions from the Reader. What San Diego music memories …

Gang of Four just released the year’s best album so far, What Happens Next. They play Belly Up March 25. Guitarist Andy Gill chimed in over email. What are your memories of playing San Diego? …

Let’s talk about space. I could talk about the sticky funk (not stinky — funk’s already a mite impolite), the stickwork (Billy Martin so light on the skins I do believe he’s learned from writing …

“Slow” opens and sets the tone — not, oddly enough, a tone of “slow” but a statement of intense personal vision, with humor, with openness, but only partial openness. This is how I’m doing things, …

“Wimps,” Robert Christgau sneered, comparing them to Talking Heads — who were wimps, he proclaimed, without “vagueness or cheap romanticism.” But that was ’77; the Heads (whom I love) left us; and four Englishmen, fronted …

The too-expensive deluxe version, which this isn’t, adds two of the most righteous songs, including one about a rendezvous with God; neither version omits the weakest cut, “Cathouse Blues,” an arched cat back before the …

A wonderful friend of mine, gay, wants to know what the new Judas Priest album is all about (lyrically). I tell him that (lyrically) it’s about blood, glory, bloody glory, steel blades, fighting and dying …

Bassist Peter “Hooky” Hook, best known for his work with Joy Division and New Order, split from his former bandmates in a rip heard ’round the world back in 2007. He’s currently touring with his …

Anton Barbeau’s second album with his Three Minute Tease (no hyphen) comes dedicated to his great friend and all-around under-hyped genius, Scott Miller (late of Game Theory, late of the Loud Family, late of the …

Vince Clarke, the keyboardist/non-singing half of synth-pop duo Erasure, called in to the Reader having “just arrived in Chicago.” His half-continent connection’s a bit scratchy, with dropouts, but he seems alert and earnest. He looks …

Vince Clarke promises us a disco extravaganza on this tour, and truth to advertising, this new set’s got plenty of shake. The slip-sliding slightly less-than-booming bass beat, a legacy from the new EDM and the …

Some of the righteous ones, this season, hurt to listen to. Barb Jungr’s been threshing splendor out of Dylan, Cohen, and a few others, many seasons now, and so this one comes acutely calibrated. She …

“He’s not a metronome,” volunteered one of my resident jazz experts on Billy Hart, age 73, who’s logged time with Wes Montgomery, Stan Getz, Chico Freeman, and three of Miles Davis’s straightest-up hardest-rockin’ sets. And …

“I found a dead body in the doorway. It was gone in the morning, and no one believed me.”

The misogyny trilogy still rankles, lyric-wise anyway, although “All the Girls Love Alice,” which can’t even decide if Alice’s customers rank with the young girls or “middle-aged dykes,” seems to have grown some cred of …

Nik Turner, Hawkwind founder, amphetamine mystic of space rock, nominally of England but probably from a few solar systems over, has been known to sport full-head makeup, paisley camouflage, and alien armature. But according to …

Ian Anderson’s second solo album since quietly deep-spacing the Jethro Tull band moniker, and to boot his third excursion into his avatar Gerald Bostock, a child prodigy turned troubled adult. Only this time Bostock mostly …

“I usually am backstage furiously learning something before I walk on.”

“Not sure if there was a specific point. Just like loads of relationships...it kind of gradually happens before your eyes but when the time came it seemed to come from nowhere.” That’s Lindsay White, half …

San Diego jazz guitarist and singer Chuck Perrin admits that he wasn’t initially transfixed by the poetry of Pablo Neruda. “I do not speak Spanish,” he explains, “[so] I didn’t really come to appreciate the …

Lee Fields, bringing his stomp-down soul funk revue to the Casbah on June 30, doesn’t so much mind being called “Little JB” — in homage to James Brown, in whose shadow all soul-funk revues do …

They’re a working band. But they’re still in high school. They’re coming to the San Diego County Fair this year. Twice. And, they are not afraid to bossa nova. Half Moon Portrait, with guitarist/singers Ari …

Forged in the horror of the Kent State shootings, bolstered with bracing irony and a handful of religious and pseudoscientific screeds, Devo (short for “de-evolution”) took showmanship, synthesizers, and science fiction to the masses. They’re …

Dayton, Ohio’s Guided by Voices burst onto the indie scene in 1994, though obsessives and the faithful will note that they’d been together 11 years by that point. After decades of chaos and ever-shifting lineups, …

John Newman’s debut opens with a slow string section, a voice that sounds like the singer reading out great acts of ages past, and an electronically whirl-winded “Crystal,” from the AT&T Natural Voices® synthesized voice …

Recalling previous trips to San Diego with his long-running, ever-heavier band the Melvins, Buzz Osborne, coming to the Casbah on June 10, tells the Reader that he remembers “lots of [gigs] over the years but …

Asked the origin of his signature stage move, combining an upstrum with a backwards stagger, Howlin Rain’s Ethan Miller specifies: “You gotta try and let yourself be natural and find some natural swing...with your playing. …

“Yeah, I’ve played a few times,” recalls Sean Lennon, of gigging in San Diego. Lennon, now touring behind his new album Midnight Sun, his newest collaboration with his girlfriend Charlotte Kemp Muhl under the name …

Former TV star (Drake & Josh, filmed in San Diego)–turned–plunking tunester Drake Bell has a new persona ready to spit-shine: rockabilly boogie! He took some questions from the Reader over email. What are your memories …

The Kinks’ “Sunny Afternoon,” with its grousing about the taxman taking “all my dough,” might refer on the sly to Drake Bell’s ongoing bankruptcy, just as sardonic observations elsewhere on the glitter life sound like …

Let’s assume he’s serious. Simplifies matters. And unlike his previous, Seeking Major Tom, this one has no well-known originals to brain-sprain yourself over. He’s by turns polemic, stumbling, provocative, gravely. You need his grit, too, …

After four EPs and three full-lengths, the Dum Dum Girls, masterminded by Dee Dee Penny (née onetime San Diego resident and Grand Ole Party drummer Kristin Welchez, aka Kristin Gundred), seems poised to go ubiquitous, …

Asked why San Diego’s School of Rock chose to open an new branch in Encinitas, music director Tyler Ward credits popular demand and sympatico vibe. “We have recently had tons of requests from families in …

Synthesizer maestro and resident alien of alienation, Gary Numan’s music was, and is, dark, strong, and rich — goth when goth wasn’t cool. He took time from touring behind his new album, Splinter (Songs from …

Pianist/composer Carla Bley, 77 years old now, knows outrage and energy; her early masterwork Escalator Over the Hill ends with repetition infinite — or at least, until the needle punches through the lock groove at …

Asked how San Diego treats his now-L.A.–based band Xiu Xiu, singer Jamie Stewart tells the Reader via email: “It has been mixed. There have been shows that were totally sold out and the people were …

San Diego’s own, here, live for the fumes. They live for each new spume. Imagine that perpetually smoking RV from Breaking Bad and substitute some stinky green, which at least won’t kill you quite so …

Juilliard-trained David Garrett won’t talk about departing the Royal College of Music in London after one semester, but he can play 13 notes in one second and is scheduled to play Balboa Theatre on January 26 — so what’s the big deal?!

Ratt frontman Stephen Pearcy talks about the ’80s San Diego glory days…but — BUT! — the band is getting to roll again. Can’t keep a good Ratt down. Take note, so-called “pest controllers”!

The bassist Scott LaFaro, whom Evans lost to a car crash prior to recording this, was staking out entirely striking counterpoint on his instrument, so anything without him was likely to seem a letdown. Evans …

“Loving Man,” with its ecstatic gender-blurring one minute (“I’m A boy/I’m a girl/Who has everything”), bipolar furor at rejection the next, and frustrating refusal to climax musically, sounds dragged in from another project, matching the …

Pere Ubu can and have been praised for their salvo of dark matter fired from America’s heart (their native Cleveland) starting with their first single “30 Seconds Over Tokyo” in 1975. They bring their Lady …

Almost every rhyme, predictable. Almost every sentiment, common (hopefully). But I am behind this one, and you should be, too. For commonality and for predictability, actually. Because rock and roll has come around to the …

They wouldn’t shell out for Bill Ward. That’s one obscenity. He’s the drummer for Sabbath, dunderheads, pull out the purse. Only excuse I can think of is Tony Iommi thought maybe he was down for …

Pitchfork, Drive Like Jehu, Hot Snakes guitarist Rick Froberg bashes and embraces San Diego.

Earthless drummer Mario Rubalcaba talks about the band’s new release, From the Ages. He also insists “That we are not a stoner rock band.”

Slow. Dissolve. As opposed to slow dazzle. Cinematic synth-pop owing at least as much to German Expressionism as the actually Krautrock Kraftwerk they salute through synth and textures. Impeccable ‘tis, in counterpoint and timbre, to …

Tift Merritt’s sounding more like Patty Griffin than ever, and the choice of a Griffin tune to this singular mind-meld of classical piano (Simone Dinnerstein) and whatever it is Merritt does, seems to wink conspiratorially. …