Posts by Zach Johnson

With today being the first official day of Spring (which technically arrives tonight), our trip down MTV Spring Break memory lane continues with this iconic performance of “Creep” by Radiohead when they were practically at their infancy as a band. What’s particularly striking about this performance is just how at odds the band is with […]

Pushing our spotlight on Irish bands to it’s questionable limit this week, today we offer up this peculiar performance from a band you’ve probably never heard of: The Sultans of Ping (which, yes, is a play on the Dire Straits song “Sultans of Swing”). The band’s relative obscurity outside of Ireland probably has a lot […]

On Manic Monday we offered up an alternative Irish option to avoid the clichés of the season, but today’s edition of Tuesday’s Gone is kind of the antithesis of that idea. Indeed, this is definitely a very Irish song with a very Irish cast, but with one important caveat: it’s paying tribute to a legend […]

As we head into the thick of March, it’s that special time of the year when everyone and their mother tends to over-celebrate the 1%-10% of their genome that may or may not have some Irish component by partaking in all the stereotypes that characterize the season. Indeed, in some parts of the country (like […]

On John Frusciante’s 54th birthday today, we’re paying tribute by throwing it back to his earliest days with the Red Hot Chili Peppers by serving up this saucy performance from 1990. At the time, the band was simultaneously recovering from the tragic death of Hillel Slovak and coalescing as a new unit into something that […]

This week marks the 30th anniversary of Nine Inch Nails’ seminal release, The Downward Spiral. Not only was it a huge conceptual leap forward for NIN’s mastermind Trent Reznor at the time, but, with the benefit of 30 years of hindsight, still stands as perhaps his greatest artistic achievement. And that’s saying something, considering Mr. […]

News that Power Trip will reform for this year’s No Values festival (which features an absurdly stacked lineup) can’t help but be met with mixed feelings for many longtime fans of the band. While, on the one hand, it’s great they have decided to keep their music alive and persevere despite Riley Gale’s death, it […]

In honor of Michael Gira’s 70th birthday today, we dug up this delightfully demented treasure from Swan’s pivotal Children of God era, circa 1987. This clip of “New Mind” (the type of video that you’d be lucky to see at 2:00 AM on MTV back in the day) captures the band in all their disturbingly […]

We don’t like to get too sappy around here, but with Valentine’s Day right around the corner, it’s only fitting that we serve something up a little heartwarming in the lead-up to February’s corniest day. But, alas, who are we kidding? This is Manic Monday after all, which of course allows us to offer up […]

Rumor has it that Talking Heads recently turned down upwards of $80 million to reunite and play various festivals (namely Coachella) across the country. That’s a lot of money, but if any band were ever more about their art than fame and fortune, it was probably Talking Heads, or at least David Bryne in particular […]

Speaking of cocaine (see Manic Monday), does anybody else out there miss the late great Lou Reed? From his groundbreaking years fronting The Velvet Underground in the 60s, to his storied solo career that featured classic albums like “Transformer”, the underrated “Coney Island Baby”, and his late-career triumph “New York”, the man’s impact on music […]

“Cocaine’s a hell of a drug.” That’s a Rick James quote, and while he was speaking from personal experience, the phrase can’t help but come to mind after witnessing this clip of the Bad Brains performing “Big Takeover” live at CBGB in 1982. Everything about this performance reeks of awesomeness…and B.O…but in any event, this […]

Do you ever get “Bored”? Iggy Pop sure did, at least back in the day. So bored that he felt compelled to write a pretty amusing/catchy song about the very subject way back in 1979. And while the song itself is pretty entertaining in its own right, this performance on an Australian TV show from […]

Sticking with the theme of impromptu outdoor concerts in the dead of winter (see Manic Monday), a mind-boggling 55 years ago today, a band by the name of The Beatles performed what turned out to be their last ever concert on the rooftop of their Apple Corp headquarters in central London. It’s become the stuff […]

There’s been a fair amount of improbable reunions of legendary underground 90s bands lately (like Mr. Bungle and Unwound, just to name a couple of examples), but at the top of many people’s wishlist would be punk-rock legends Fugazi, who have been on an “indefinite hiatus” since wrapping up their last tour way back in […]

Kraftwerk is a band that, in many ways, personifies the notion of “weird”. And that’s not just the case from an aural perspective, but really, their whole aesthetic defies easy categorization or explanation. In a nutshell, they sound like the most extreme version of what you would expect an electronic band spawned from Germany in […]

Killing Joke is one of those bands who seem to be somewhat underappreciated despite the massive influence their music had on subsequent genres they helped inspire into existence (like alternative-metal and industrial for example). Granted they were always pretty bleak and dingy to begin with, but their ability to inject a sinisterly dancey groove into […]

Brian Eno is perhaps best known for his groundbreaking ambient albums like Another Green World, but you could make a strong argument that his debut solo album Here Come the Warm Jets (released in 1973) is the most interesting piece of music in his entire catalog. While admittedly not as cerebral as his purely ambient/mental […]

Often overlooked in the lexicon of revolutionary bands that burst onto the scene in 1977 is UK’s Wire, probably because they evolved so drastically from an excellent punk band to a brooding post-punk band within the first 3 legendary years of their existence. In fact, after the release of their classic debut album Pink Flag […]

The middle of January can be a cold, dark, and often brutal time of the year depending on your particular latitude, which naturally makes the pulverizing intensity of a band like Godflesh the perfect aural companion to suit the harshness of the season. Indeed, ever since their groundbreaking debut album Streetcleaner dropped way back in […]