The Curmudgeon Rock Report

In which The Curmudgeons pay loving tribute to one of our favorite bands. Built to Spill is the brainchild of Boise, Idaho, native and guitar maestro Doug Martsch, who's been banging and crunching his way through indie-rock anthems for more than three decades now. As Arturo Andrade likes to say, BTS, as we call them for short, taught indie-rockers everywhere that classic rock and guitar solos were...

In which The Curmudgeons take a big ol' dukey on that most prominent of rap-metal bands Limp Bizkit. The band is surely one of the worst hard-rock outfits to make it big since cranking up guitars real loud became a thing. Its plodding, uninspired riffage was eclipsed only by its misogynistic, corroded worldview and ultra-dumb lyrics. We dive into the rock's dregs here, analyzing the band's origins...

In which The Curmudgeons trip out through outer space and rock out to Hawkwind, one of the most singular psychedelic rock bands of all time. And in which we do it completely sober! This band practically invented what is known as space rock, a jammy, propulsive brand of heavy metal that focuses its gaze firmly on the cosmos and all the alien beings and strange phenomena the Great Beyond can generat...

In which The Curmudgeons give loud, deserved props to one of modern rock's most influential bands. Hûsker Dû started out as a revered hardcore punk band in Minneapolis in 1979, but by the mid-1980s, the band had veered toward a style that became known as punk-pop--loud and abrasive but also unquestionably melodic and heartfelt. During this episode, we extol the virtues of Hûsker Dû and what made t...

In which The Curmudgeons continue their exploration of the City of Angels during arguably its most fertile period, namely the decade of the 1980s. Last episode, we established that the glam metal and punk scenes gestated based on a similar us-against-the-world ethos, albeit expressed much differently from one another. By the late '80s, glam metal had become a bona fide global commodity and its pun...

In which The Curmudgeons travel back to sleazy, sweaty streets of Los Angeles to celebrate the music emanating from the City of Angeles. On one end, you had the burgeoning glam metal scene, a parade of excess and depravity in leather, chains and spandex--and some glorious, decadent riffage. On the other end, you had the DIY punk underground, led by hardcore punk stalwarts Black Flag and their SST...

In which The Curmudgeons end their dynamic 3rd Golden Age of Rock series with a loving reexamination of the year 1980. The year stands as crucial pivot point for the development of rock 'n' roll culture. Punk and post-punk were becoming Gothic rock and New Wave. The Clash was serving as a virtual world jukebox. Talking Heads was virtually doing the same. And everyone was serving up their tunes and...

In which The Curmudgeons honor one of hip-hop's most tragic figures. Big L was a hip-hop savant from Harlem whose flows were endlessly inventive, whose lyrics walked a fine line between pathos and shock value and whose professionalism allowed him to dominate any beat and any style. His star was on the rise in early 1999 before disaster struck and Big L was murdered. We'll closely examine his brief...

In which The Curmudgeons passionately laud, lavish and defend one of the true gentle giants of popular music--and certainly its most underappreciated. Curtis Mayfield was an absolute pioneer of soul, R&B and funk. Mayfield produced an astonishing body of work, first as the bandleader for soul trio The Impressions in the 1960s, and then as a prolific solo artist in the 1970s. He tempered the an...

In which The Curmudgeons honor one of the most important years in all of rock 'n' roll history. Through the greatest albums and songs of 1979, we hear the sound of one decade fading and another decade splashing into full color and light. Post-punk, for instance, reached its most glorious heights, with bands like Public Image Ltd. and Gang of Four offering up a danceable yet jagged concoction. Ther...

In which The Curmudgeons examine the last great era for hip-hop, namely the years between 1999 and 2008. After the catastrophe that was the murders of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls, hip-hop could have imploded and or lost its footing--or even its respect as a genre. Instead, the movement throughout the 1990s, in which the hardcore went mainstream, carried over in the new century. In fact, hip-hop...

In which the Curmudgeons know it's going to be a long, long time before the heavens produce a young man as preternaturally gifted as a songwriter and performer as Elton John proved to be back in the early 1970s. John's output during the early part of that fabled decade was routinely incredible, possessed with both a swagger and a tenderness that shone through in gorgeous melodies and the often pro...

In which the Curmudgeons revisit the underrated yet crucially important year of 1978. Punk rock had gone mainstream in the two years prior to '78, and true to the restlessness that defined the genre, the music was ready to morph into post-punk and New Wave. We marvel at the movement this pivotal year brought in this episode. We cover albums by Elvis Costello, Public Image Ltd., Patti Smith, Siouxs...

In which each of Yours Truly Curmudgeons offers our list of the ten best albums we consumed over the past 12 months. This was a surprisingly strong, deep year for new music releases...something exemplified by the fact that our lists share five entries in common. Here's a sneak peek: The top album on both of our lists is one of the greatest and most beloved superstars of all time. Shocking, but tru...

In which The Curmudgeons shout before all the human race like we'll never lose. Yup, we're discussing the mighty, mighty Queen on this episode, focusing on the band's undeniable greatness from their beginnings all the way through 1980, when they peaked commercially with "Another One Bites the Dust" and "Crazy Little Thing Called Love." The band managed to be unapologetically campy and occasionally...

In which the Curmudgeons continue to revisit the fertile fields of the late 1970s and land on 1977, one of the most explosive years in rock history. It's when the Sex Pistols dropped their album Never Mind the Bollocks, here's the Sex Pistols and set off a punk revolution. It's also when Fleetwood Mac, Kraftwerk and Bob Marley dropped genre-defining masterpieces. And that still only runs to the su...

In which the Curmudgeons dive into the little bit of the third installment of Neil Young's Archives that we can. The full 17-CD, five-Blu Ray Archives Vol. III is available for roughly $450, but only for 5,000 lucky customers willing to spend a small fortune. The rest of us get an album Young refers to as "Takes," which contains a 16-song sampling from The Neil Young Archives Vol. III. We describe...

In which The Curmudgeons worship at the altar of the mighty, mighty Led Zeppelin. With scorching guitar licks, torpedo-heavy drumming and sex-god screamer vocals, this band epitomized the sensuality and the swagger of rock 'n' roll, and in presenting their take on the genre, they helped create what we now call heavy metal. During this episode, we counter some unfair myths this band has saddled wit...

In which The Curmudgeons kick off its latest Golen Age series of episodes by revisiting the seminal year of 1976. It was a year that saw both The Ramones and The Sex Pistols break out. To say punk was the thing that year was an understatement. It was also was vital year for arena rock, as Boston and The Eagles both dropped classic albums. We also pay tribute to work from Bob Dylan, David Bowie and...

In which The Curmudgeons shake, shake, shake that booty and revisit one of popular music's most unfairly maligned genres. Disco was essentially funky orchestral music--grand, reverb-heavy, maximal, showy, dramatic. Yet it was also energetic and fun as hell. Here, we explore disco's birth as a movement of freedom and uninhibited expression in Black and Hispanic gay nightclubs and how, once a produc...

In which The Curmudgeons know you wanted the best so we're giving it to you. Long live KISS, whose live act and meaty, ferocious riffs are both legendary. Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, Ace Frehley and Peter Criss understood that rock 'n' roll, at the end of the day, is all about the show. And KISS, nearly 50 years ago, put on the greatest show on the rock 'n' roll earth--leather, makeup, fire, blood...

In which The Curmudgeons discuss the awesome power and influence of one of the innovators of the Southern thing, as The Drive-By Truckers refer to it. Lynyrd Skynyrd remains one of the most underrated rock bands of all time, a condition that is partially its own fault, given how it has tied itself in its most recent form to the worst of old Southern stereotypes. But there's no denying that the ban...

In which the Curmudgeons end their epic series of odes to the music of a nine-year period that transformed everything--and then some--in popular music. By 1972, the hangover from the revolutionary vibes of the 1960s had subsided, and that era's outgrowth of freedom and experimentation truly started to blossom. The Rolling Stones filtered American roots music through a dirty, sweaty prism to create...

In which The Curmudgeons stand up to the man and deliver the best of the best of a special era for both cinema and music, when African-Americans anti-heroes lit up the screens and imaginations of a generation of young Black people. And also young Black artists, who cranked out stunning funk, soul and disco anthems to accompany these films. Isaac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye, Donny Hathaway...

In which The Curmudgeons revisit an era where the streets soared to the top of the charts...and then unleashed their danger on hip-hop's finest artists. The success of Dr. Dre's 1992 album The Chronic ushered in an era where cursing, threatening lyrical opponents with violence, drug use and other chicanery became acceptable fodder for the radio dial. And it gave artists who might not otherwise hav...