Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s Ruban Nielson doesn’t make eye contact as he holds his phone up to his face with both hands. He is at his Palm Springs home, where he lives when he’s not in Portland, Oregon, his residence since the mid-2000s after moving to the city from his native New Zealand. His setting is…
Two days after unveiling a surprise Minor Threat cover, Foo Fighters have returned with a new original, “Today’s Song,” which precedes the 30th anniversary of the Dave Grohl-led band’s self-titled debut album on July 4. It’s also the group’s first fresh music since the release of 2023’s But Here We Are and drummer Josh Freese’s sudden…
Bad Boy Records mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs was found not guilty this morning (July 2) on the three most serious of the five criminal charges filed against him last year involving sex trafficking and racketeering, but he was found guilty on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution. A sentencing date has yet to…
It’s been two weeks since Ken Casey flew across the North Atlantic Ocean, traveling over 4,000 miles to Warsaw, Poland, where he joined an aid group to drive first responder equipment into Ukraine. “We were donating ambulances [and] fire engines… because the Russians will target civilians working in those vehicles,” he tells me, from his…
For a band that announced its farewell tour three years ago, the B-52s are bidding quite the extensive goodbye. The self-proclaimed “world’s greatest party band” recently announced that they will be hitting the road again for a co-headlining tour with Devo in the fall. The B-52s have also released the 9-LP box set, The Warner…
On November 14, 1991, I attended the Los Angeles date of Blur’s first North American tour—just five stops—supporting their debut album, Leisure. It was at the Roxy Theatre and before the group took the stage, they wandered around the venue, blending in with the hyper crowd who were dressed in the regulation British indie garb…
Missy Elliott is a legend, the best-selling female rapper of all time and the first to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Born in 1971 in Virginia, Melissa Arnette Elliott began making music as a teenager, forming a girl group and drafting her friend Timothy “Timbaland” Mosley to produce their demos….
Rambunctious rockers the Mae Shi haven’t released a record since 2007’s HLLLYH, the California art punk collective’s most linear and acclaimed album. Following that, the group went on an extended hiatus so the members could focus on other musical projects, reforming only for a handful of one-off shows in the time since. The Mae Shi…
In the ongoing Battle of Los Angeles, even the foot soldiers of protest need an occasional break from the fierce urgency of now. And after a few hours of photographing demonstrators on the street during the city’s sprawling “No Kings” protest on June 14, I stepped into the ancient Redwood Bar a couple of blocks…
“Right before the breakdown hit, I would go: ‘Your dick smells like his asshole,’” says Heidi Shepherd, smiling warmly in her Miami hotel room. Later this afternoon she’s embarking on a Caribbean cruise, but for now she’s reminiscing about Mom and Dad first coming to see her perform. When her folks turned up to that…
