The Curmudgeon Rock Report

In which The Curmudgeons look back on perhaps the grunge phenomenon's most fascinating 12-month period. Nirvana's Nevermind overtook Michael Jackson's Dangerous as the top-selling album in the U.S. on January 7, 1992. The paradigm shift for popular music could not have been starker, and the nation fell head over heels in love with their new emotive, intense choice of rock 'n' roll...as well as its...

In which Curmudgeon Arturo reveals and discusses our choices for the best couplets of hits from specific artists. Notice we say the best, not the most popular or ubiquitous or cheekiest. So no Smash Mouth and no Men Without Hats. In their stead, though, are artists like Gerry Raftery, Gloria Gaynor, Matthew Sweet, Golden Earring (a favorite of Curmudgeon Chris's), Suzanne Vega, The Romantics, Blue...

In which The Curmudgeons continue their revisitation of the marvelously strange but often gorgeous rock subgenre we call glam rock. Last episode, we covered the genesis of glam rock via the artistic genius of Marc Bolan, David Bowie, guitarist Mick Ronson and producer Tony Visconti. We also shared a bunch of great hit songs and great glam-rock albums released between 1970 and 1972. Now we do the s...

In which the Curmudgeons tease out our hair, wear tons of makeup and celebrate the most sensual, most decadent brand of rock 'n' roll ever conceived. The glam rock of the early 1970s was an outgrowth of the 1960s psychedelia in which the vibes shifted from a mind trip to a soul trip, one in which androgyny, visceral pleasure and a focus on the cosmos and man's place in the universe thrust front an...

In which The Curmudgeons get funky like a chunky monkey, if you will, and show off their knowledge of the music of professional wrestling and how it adds to the over-the-top pageantry of one of our shared beloved pastimes. The goal of a wrestler's theme music is two-fold. First, the audience should know who exactly is coming out to the ring within three seconds--and they should be damned excited a...

In which the Curmudgeons commune with their once-and-forever inner 16-year-olds to celebrate the most important cultural shift of our lives. And indeed, that shift happened when both of us were 16 years old. The fall of 1991 unleashed pure magic into our lives when Nirvana's Nevermind, Pearl Jam's Ten and Soundgarden's Badmotorfinger hit record shelves (remember those?). Grunge became a THING in t...

In which The Curmudgeons revisit the most popular and epic music from most of the year they both turned 16 years of age. Why most? Because on September 24,1991, a whole hell of a lot changed. That was the day Nirvana's Nevermind hit record-store shelves (remember those?). Before then, the world was inundated with diva pop from Mariah Carey and Paula Abdul, the embers of pop metal from the Scorpion...

In which The Curmudgeons share their reverence for one of modern indie rock's most singular and iconoclastic talents. Kurt Vile has worked hard from his native Philadelphia for nearly 20 years now to build for himself an idiosyncratic, shamanistic style that melds folk, psychedelic, classic rock and pure pop into something wholly his own. As Curmudgeon Arturo Andrade puts it, "Imagine Lou Reed and...

In which The Curmudgeons revisit the year before grunge exploded into the mainstream. And 1990 was indeed a really important year for the development of our beloved genre. Mother Love Bone was on the cusp of hitting it big until frontman Andrew Wood, a beloved figures in the Seattle scene, died of a heroin overdose. The band's album Apple, in the can but not yet released, was effectively tanked by...

In which The Curmudgeons express deep appreciation for how Kendrick Lamar both honors and respects hip-hop as an artform and continues to move it forward--even as the rest of modern hip-hop stagnates, suffers and embarrasses. We cover the span of his entire career and analyze each of his official album releases musically and artistically. This includes discussion two absolutely staggering achievem...

In which the Curmudgeons express awe and amazement over the musical innovation and rebellious spirit of one Fela Aníkúlápó Kuti. Already an established jazz-fusion bandleader in his native Nigeria, a nearly year long stay in Los Angeles in 1969 exposed Kuti to the thrilling sounds of that era's soul and funk music and to the rage and purpose behind the politics of Black empowerment. Kuti returned...

In which the Curmudgeons meditate on the year in which grunge as a movement officially entered the universal rock consciousness. The Seattle rock scene in the mid-to-late 1980s was defined by a bunch of smart, ambitious wiseasses who were in a virtual competition with one another to find the truest sweet spot between punk and metal. However, it was not until the band Mudhoney found an enthusiastic...

In which the Curmudgeons revisit and marvel over one of the most amazing streaks a performer has ever had in the long history of this thing we love called rock 'n' roll. Belfast native Van Morrison enjoyed chart success early on in the mid-1960s with the hits "Gloria" and "Brown Eyed Girl" but then fell back into obscurity for a couple years before re-emerging with a mixture of bravado, introspect...

In which The Curmudgeons explore the work of the worst rock band of the 21st Century...so you don't have to do all the work yourself! Seriously, this is a public service we're doing here. Greta Van Fleet is a quartet from a small town in Michigan that did an admittedly great job of studying the style, technique and sound of the mighty Led Zeppelin. But then they mistook that for creative juice and...

In which The Curmudgeons set the dial back to 1988, when grunge started to become a real thing with real buzz and found itself no longer contained to just Seattle. Mudhoney kicked ass and triumphed in the U.K. with the gargantuan single "Touch Me I'm Sick" and their awesomely heavy debut EP Superfuzz Bigmuff. Soundgarden released its full-length debut album, which, while badly produced, found the...

In which The Curmudgeons introduce you--again--to your new favorite band. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club spliced the neo-psychedelic swagger of bands like The Brian Jonestown Massacre with the rawkin' menace of the Stone Roses, Oasis and other British bands to offer a maximal yet poignant vision of what rock 'n' roll should be. Their five-album output during the first decade of the 21st century is on...

In which The Curmudgeons show love for artists that are, well, falling out love. A great break-up album takes the listener on a journey through the complicated layers of our humanity and our very souls: Love, anger, betrayal, heartbreak, grief, forgiveness, false hope, celebrations of new love, reservations about getting back in the game and healing. The albums on our list all take us to these del...

In which The Curmudgeons revisit the goofy yet ambitious and thrillingly original dawn of grunge music. Unbeknownst to some, the story of what became the dominant mainstream brand of rock 'n' roll in the 1990s dates back to 1984, back when the Seattle area was cold, rainy, gloomy and also a sleepy outpost that was surprisingly actually skipped by major artists of the time. So what you do you when...

In which the Curmudgeons celebrated the 1970s output of one of soul music's loveliest and most powerful voices. Yes, Al Green could sing his ass off. His falsetto may be one of the most mimicked in all of popular music. But there was a depth to Reverend Al that stops us both in our tracks. His expressions of making up, breaking up, loneliness, fearless masculinity, spiritual vulnerability and pure...

In which the Curmudgeons go way back--all the way back to 1960 for starters--to celebrate the sounds, the innovations and the incredible legacy of the musicians--and the labels--that created and performed Memphis's soul music. Stax/Volt, as the production house was known as, originated as a source for a kind of counterprogramming to what Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and others were launching into cu...

In which The Curmudgeons out-list all of the other lists and show you the way to the REAL best albums that hit shelves in this grand year of 2025. Christopher O'Connor's list leans heavily toward power-pop and indie rock and features Geese's incredible Getting Killed as his number one album of the year. Arturo Andrade's own list veers generally in a weirder, more experimental direction, though he...

In which The Curmudgeons take a gigantic, cathartic dumpola on one of the worst bands of the late 1990s and early 2000s, namely the insufferable post-grunge Christian rock quartet Creed. We'll give the band credit for one thing: They proved there was still a market for grunge well after the luster of Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and other bands had faded. But, see, that was the problem. Creed could do a...

In which The Curmudgeons pay homage to one of the most storied--and notorious-indie-rock bands of their era. Starting in 1995, the Brian Jones Massacre unleashed a brand of retro-futuristic trance-rock that expanded the possibilities of the rock idiom. The band, led by enigmatic and perhaps troubled frontman Anton Newcombe, initially dabbled in the shoegazer genre defined by bands like My Bloody V...

In which The Curmudgeons take a chance, take a chance, take a chance on ABBA, one of the most endearing pop bands of its era. This Swedish quartet has taken its lumps from critics and snarky scenesters over the years, being labeled cheesy, or inauthentic, or too corny to be taken seriously. We think all of that flak nonsense. We love this band, who lit up the universe with their charming, smile-in...

In which The Curmudgeons honor one of the fiercest--and most fiercely independent--rock bands of all time. Fugazi erupted from the Washington, D.C., punk scene in the late 1980s.  They fashioned a brand of passionate, politically charged post-hardcore music that deftly weaved two guitars with a dub reggae-inspired rhythm section. Beyond the music, the band was known for an uncompromising vision: t...