AltWeeklies Wire
Good Times, Great Oldies
Bonnaroo 2012 brings out a few old friends.
YES! Weekly |
Ryan Snyder |
06-19-2012 |
Concerts
Tags: Bonnaroo, Bonnaroo 2012
School’s in: Alice Cooper defiling a new generation
Alice Cooper hates you, he hates your music and he especially hates golf.
YES! Weekly |
Ryan Snyder |
06-19-2012 |
Profiles & Interviews
Tags: Alice Cooper, bonaroo
No Grammy, but Eric Church is still our ‘Homeboy’new

You could say that Eric Church's North Carolina homecoming went a lot like the lyrics to his recent No. 1 country single "Drink In My Hand." He filled it up, he threw down and, judging from the careful attention he paid to the red Solo cup full of whiskey on his mic stand, he likely got a little hungover.
YES! Weekly |
Ryan Snyder |
02-27-2012 |
Reviews
Tags: Eric Church
Jeff Mangum Thrills Chapel Hill Crowd

It took some coaxing from the unassuming Jeff Mangum before the murmur of voices was mildly audible, and it wasn’t until nearly the end of his set that his hundreds of new back-up vocalists actually raised their voices to meet him.
YES! Weekly |
Eric Ginsburg |
02-16-2012 |
Reviews
Tags: Jeff Mangum
Paying Respect to the Queen of Soul

She sang at Obama’s inauguration. She sang at King Curtis’s funeral. She even sang at Wrestlemania in its golden years, but after a lengthy wait and serial cancellations, Aretha Franklin finally came back to sing for North Carolina.
YES! Weekly |
Ryan Snyder |
02-16-2012 |
Reviews
Tags: Aretha Franklin
Get to know this guy A$AP

By about 12:10 a.m. early Saturday morning at Greene Street Club, the scene on stage had essentially crumbled. What was at one time a sold-out hip-hop show by one of the brightest up-and-coming rappers out there had become an unidentifiable onstage cluster of iPhone documentarians, dumbfounded security, a few random dudes smoking kush, and the show’s headliner hovering in the mix. Dirty South hip-hop is legendary for shows like this, but that it was Harlemite A$AP Rocky is what makes it all the more curious.
YES! Weekly |
Ryan Snyder |
02-16-2012 |
Reviews
Tags: A$AP
The Passion of the Whites
“I can’t half see straight,” Mamie White declared the moment after being handed a microphone Friday night at Johnny & June’s Ultra Saloon. “I’m just kiddin’.”
YES! Weekly |
Ryan Snyder |
02-16-2012 |
Reviews
Tags: The Whites
My Morning Jacket Buck Rock Traditionnew

Twenty years from now, when classic-rock radio is still on an endless rotation of Steppenwolf and Deep Purple and My Morning Jacket is a nostalgia-fueled arena headliner without a nationwide FM presence, the cold reality of obsolescence might finally dawn upon the rockists of yore. Since their earliest years, the Louisville band have possessed all the makings of what made the Allmans, CCR and Led Zep so great: tunes that latch on immediately and don’t let go, audacious ideas about the conventions of American music, massive guitar solos and, of course, lots and lots of hair.
YES! Weekly |
Ryan Snyder |
12-22-2011 |
Reviews
Tags: My Morning Jacket
Pres. Hall Leader on Big Easy Christmasnew

For all that hurricanes and oil spills can take away, tradition isn’t among them. At least not while institutions like Preservation Hall exists. After a series of commemorative shows at home, the famed jazz club’s house band is preparing to celebrate 50 years as the standard bearers for New Orleans jazz by doing what they do best: hitting the road for a special performance at Carnegie Hall in January. Until then, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band is evangelizing other Big Easy musical traditions with their Creole Holiday tour, coming to SECCA in Winston-Salem this Friday. Below, Preservation Hall Cre- ative Director and tuba player extraordinaire Ben Jaffe, son of hall founder Allan Jaffe, waxes on NOLA holiday traditions influenc- ing seasonal music and how relationships formed during the recording of the band’s 2010 benefit album have shaped the institu tions future.
YES! Weekly |
Ryan Snyder |
12-15-2011 |
Music
Hall & Oates: Guilt, Pleasurenew

In a more reasonable world, no one would ever have to closet their love of Hall & Oates.
YES! Weekly |
Ryan Snyder |
12-14-2011 |
Reviews
Tags: Hall & Oates, Guilty Pleasures
Laurelyn Dossett’s Gathering

From the Green Room in the basement of Meymandi Concert Hall in Raleigh, a cascade of banjo notes can be heard trailing down the hallway from the dressing room shared by Joe Newberry and Mike Compton. Soon, the virtuosic voice of Rhiannon Giddens Laffan — classically trained but steeped in traditional music practices — fills the air with operatic scales.
YES! Weekly |
Jordan Green |
12-03-2011 |
Music
Tags: Banjo, Laurelyn Dossett
Rob Halford Hammering Away on Well-Tempered Metal
With screaming twin lead guitars, jackhammer rhythm, songs glorifying reckless badassedness and a four-octave-range frontman clad in more leather than Ron Burgundy’s book collection, Judas Priest have been objects of profane idolatry for nearly four decades.
YES! Weekly |
Ryan Snyder |
11-28-2011 |
Profiles & Interviews
High Point honors Coltrane, Lupe rocks a fiasconew

In one corner, the inaugural John Coltrane International Jazz and Blues Festival experienced a healthy turnout and relatively smooth production in High Point’s Oak Hollow Park on Saturday.
YES! Weekly |
Ryan Snyder |
09-07-2011 |
Reviews
Seven to See at Hopscotch 2011new

To put it simply, Budos Band is unstoppable.
YES! Weekly |
Ryan Snyder |
08-31-2011 |
Concerts
Archers of Loaf on Point in Homecomingnew

Archers of Loaf were never, ever going to be confused with a “cool” band in their heyday. They were the kind of band you sat in a beanbag chair with massive cans on your ears and blared because there were better things to do than having an afterschool job.
YES! Weekly |
Ryan Snyder |
08-24-2011 |
Reviews