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Breaking Up With Pete Yorn
I’m in the middle of a fairly awful day. My tooth is killing me. It’s a baby tooth, a molar, one of four or five that never fell out. So they need to be pulled and replaced with implants. Neither cheap, nor fun. So, of course, I’ve been procrastinating well over a year. But it’s…
Read MoreThe Soundtrack Of My life
It was cold and snowing this morning, gray outside. I woke from a dream where some girl was smiling at me amidst great flooding. I had a major headache (vodka), way back in the gray matter (where the dream came from). I was drinking coffee and reading Rolling Stone. I don’t know if it was…
Read MoreCrash Site: Extraordinary
This chap Benjamin Wagner has been sending me demos of his music for about five or six months now. And a week or so ago he finally sent me an album that he is self-releasing and that he is selling on his website and at gigs. It’s an album that has been a year in…
Read MoreRock & Scroll: The Intel Music Fest
If someone yells out “Free Bird” at a computer screen, does it still make a sound? In the Internet era, rock tours are coming to homes (and offices) near you; this summer’s websites range from glorified souvenir programs to on air concerts. The latter concept remains in the developmental stage, but certain traditions remain: Even…
Read MoreIn Heavy Syrup, Wagner Yo-Yos Back Into Saratoga
The last time 25-year-old guitarist, singer/songwriter Benjamin Wagner played at Caffe Lena he says, “people felt I was too ernest.” On Sunday, he will appear with A Pop Band to emphasize that his heart is musically in the groove. The former city resident, Uncommon Grounds employee and Saratogian freelance writer returns to promote his new…
Read MoreThey Might Be Giants Welcome 1996 With Levity
They Might Be Giants ushered in the frenetic descent towards a new millennium New Year’s Eve at New York City’s Tramps, stampeding with reckless wit and scathing intelligence through nearly thirty of their eccentric pop gems in just over two hours. Charging through a raucous set that borrowed equally from TMBG’s seven hit-strewn LPs, frontman…
Read MoreGoo Goo Dolls Live At The Academy: Less Noise, More Melody
Though their whistful acoustic hit “Name” has catapulted Goo Goo Dolls from obscurity to ubiquity, the Buffalo-based band is better known for the seering, Replacement-inspired clamor evidenced on their post-punk LPs Jed and Hold Me Up. Tuesday’s racous audience at New York’s Academy, however, were not soley MTV converts and had obviously hung with the…
Read MoreAni Difranco’s Wake Up Call: Battered-Eyed Crooner Is Ready To Kill
It’s still morning when Rolling Stone Online correspondent Benjamin Wagner puts a call in to folk-punkster Ani DiFranco. The 25-year-old singer/songwriter — asleep somewhere in Connecticut — is touring in support of her seventh independent release in five years, Not A Pretty Girl. While DiFranco’s confrontational songs have drawn criticism for their incisive edge, she…
Read MoreMoonpools & Caterpillars: The Peak Of Nothingness
The married half of L.A.’s Moonpools and Caterpillars — singer Kimi and guitarist Jay Jay — are lounging in their label’s Manhattan offices. Fresh from a massive spread of Indian cuisine, the fledgling popsters, whose debut Elektra release “Lucky Dumpling” is moving steadily up Billboard’s Heat Seekers chart, chart the course of their new careers…
Read MoreBen Folds Five: Wonder Bread Alternative To Alternative
Heavy skies are falling onto gray concrete outside as members of Ben Folds Five loiter unnoticed in their Midtown Manhattan hotel lobby. Though tired and haggered from their sold-out, industry-packed Irving Plaza performance the previous evening, the Chapel Hill-based trio is heavily caffinated and anxious to move onto their next gig in Philadelphia. Since forming…
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