Although chosen for its deliberately nondescript qualities, in retrospect the name American Music Club was the perfect moniker for the lauded San Francisco-based band led by singer/songwriter Mark Eitzel: over the course of seven acclaimed albums, the group tied together the disparate strands of the American musical fabric -- rock, folk,... [+] Read More

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Dinosaur Jr. were largely responsible for returning lead guitar to indie rock and, along with their peers the Pixies, they injected late-'80s alternative rock with monumental levels of pure guitar noise. As the group's career progressed, it turned into a vehicle for J Mascis' songwriting and playing, which had the ultimate result of turning... [+] Read More

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Howlin' Maggie is a Columbus, OH, four-piece featuring multi-instrumentalist and singer Harold Chichester, guitarist Andy Harrison, bassist Jim Rico, and drummer Jerome Dillon. A music industry veteran, Chichester has also performed with the Afghan Whigs (both in the studio and in concert) and has a side project with Whigs-vocalist Greg Dulli... [+] Read More

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Hurry Up Shotgun is a pop-noisy trio from Oakland, CA with a self described sound akin to an asthmatic chest rattle in the summer heat run through a Marshall stack. Hurry Up Shotgun songs are short, catchy, and noisy. Think Mudhoney meets the Minutemen by way of Winger....no that's not right.....shut up.....

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Nirvana may have been the band that put an entire generation in flannel, and Pearl Jam and Soundgarden both sold a lot more records, but Mudhoney were truly the band that made the '90s grunge rock movement possible. Mudhoney were the first real success story for Sub Pop Records; their indie-scene success laid the groundwork for the movement that... [+] Read More

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Maybe there’s just a feeling something is missing. It’s hard to pin down, difficult to articulate; a matter of lying in bed at night, kept awake by a mysterious yearning for more Wallace Stevens quotes set to low-down combustible grooves. Maybe it’s a sudden desire to hear words like “myxamatoid” and “spraddle” deployed in popular music instead... [+] Read More

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Prior to Nirvana, alternative music was consigned to specialty sections of record stores and major labels considered it to be, at the very most, a tax write-off. After the band's second album, 1991's Nevermind, nothing was ever quite the same, for better and for worse. Nirvana popularized punk, post-punk, and indie rock, unintentionally bringing... [+] Read More

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Unlike the overwhelming majority of songwriters, who get next to the darker side of life but never quite break the door down, Paul Kopasz has lived as part of the fringe element, and his career has evoked comparisons to Townes Van Zandt, Lou Reed and Merle Haggard, three artists known for drawing from their own shady experiences for song... [+] Read More

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Long before the riot-grrrl movement opened the floodgates for the widespread emergence of female artists in the male-dominated world of indie rock, the Columbus, OH-based trio Scrawl carved out their own tough-minded yet feminine niche within the underground community. Formed by singer/guitarist Marcy Mays, bassist Sue Harshe, and drummer... [+] Read More

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Where many of their Seattle-based contemporaries dealt in reconstructed Black Sabbath and Stooges riffs, Screaming Trees fused '60s psychedelia and garage rock with '70s hard rock and '80s punk. Over the course of their career, their more abrasive punk roots eventually gave way to a hard-edged, rootsy psychedelia that drew from rock and folk... [+] Read More

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Soul Asylum are the quintessential little band that could; it only took ten years to turn them from a teenage garage band into multi-platinum-selling rock stars. Guitarist Dan Murphy, bassist Karl Mueller, and drummer Dave Pirner formed in 1981 as Loud Fast Rules in Minneapolis, MN. When the shambolic, no-longer-teenage band burst onto the scene... [+] Read More

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Portland, OR's Thirty Ought Six fused elements of emo's past and present, drawing from the likes of Sunny Day Real Estate, Fugazi, and even the genre's spiritual forefathers, Hüsker Dü. Founded in 1992, the band consisted of vocalist/bassist Sean Roberts, guitarist David Blunk, and jazz-trained drummer Ryan Paravecchio. The group gathered a... [+] Read More

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Few bands ever lusted after rock stardom quite as blatantly as Chicago's Urge Overkill. Although they draped their quest for stardom in a cloak of ironic detachment, it's quite clear the trio expected that if they acted like stars, they would become stars. For a while, their stylish, retro-'70s outfits, matching medallions, and heavy Cheap Trick... [+] Read More

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