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Young, aggro, and from Los Angeles--it's tempting to put Incubus in the already crowded category populated by Korn, System of a Down, and their other loud and heavy brethren. But that would sell Incubus short, because Make Yourself, the quintet's sophomore album, is a strong progression beyond their 1997 debut, S.C.I.E.N.C.E.. More like Faith No More than Limp Bizkit, Incubus still have that teen-mosh appeal, though the songwriting and...
Weezer was one of the unlikeliest success stories of the post-Nirvana alt. rock boom, a band whose initial multi-platinum success (spawning the successful singles "Buddy Holly," "Undone," and "Say It Ain't So" and high-profile videos by Spike Jonze in its wake) was arguably its most ironic aspect. Indeed, the band's geek-appeal was refreshingly organic, a charm that came sharply into focus on leader Rivers Cuomo's painfully sincere,...
Everything about Tool's fourth album is an experience, starting with the packaging, which consists of liner credits printed on a translucent plastic sleeve over the CD and a booklet that layers anatomical representations atop one another--the first page pictures musculature and blood vessels; the next, bones; the third, internal organs; and so on. It's worth describing the packaging of Lateralus because it says much about the astonishing music...
Australian Re-issue, featuring Seven Tracks Including Sweat, Hush, Part of Me, Cold and Ugly (Live), Jerk off (Live), Opiate, and Gaping Lotus.
No stranger to the realm of children's records, They Might Be Giants have seen success with their CD No! and the book-and-CD combo Bed, Bed, Bed. Their latest CD, Here Come the ABCs, offers up 25 alphabetically themed songs. However, as is their charming way, the two Johns (Flansburgh and Linnell), use the letters as merely the connective tissue, allowing them to pursuit intriguing flights of fancy that consider everything from the relative...
Hello Avalanche, The Octopus Project's third proper full-length on Peek-A-Boo Records, is a bold step forward musically and artistically for the band, whose recent successes include playing the Coachella Festival and several sold-out nationwide tours, receiving a proclamation as one of Rolling Stone's five stand-out artists at SXSW by Senior Editor David Fricke, and sweeping the Austin Music Awards (Best Experimental Band, Best Indie Band, Best...
Loneliness, boredom, and random observations have been at the heart of Modest Mouse's skewered musical universe through all their releases. The Issaquah, Washington-born trio has also been able to spin very-long-playing albums that catered to the group's core obsessions, with both its full-length Up Records releases--This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About and The Lonesome Crowded West clocking in at more than 70 minutes in...
Originally released in 1976, Moondawn is an early highlight of Schulze's voluminous discography, regarded by many as among his best work. Released one year before his breakthrough album, Mirage, this album marked the first usage of the Moog synthesizer in a way that would establish Schulze firmly in his career as a solo keyboardist. Klaus Schulze first attracted attention as a member of the German progressive rock band, Tangerine Dream....
The most important and consistently underrated space-rock unit of the '70s, Cluster (originally Kluster) was formed by Dieter Moebius, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Conrad Schnitzler as an improv group that used everything from synthesizers to alarm clocks and kitchen utensils in their performances. Continuing on as a duo, Moebius and Roedelius eventually recorded many landmark LPs - separately, as a duo, and with all manner of guest artists from...
No wave without the self-conscious pretension, avant garde composition compressed into one-minute-or-less bursts, urgency, intricate destruction, pure glorious abandon. Melt-Banana play the same way that Repulsion, Naked City, The Ruins or The Boredoms all make you want to scream and dance and kill your neighbors. A-Zap. 2003.
Having successfully fused music and politics from their start, inspiring both moshing and young minds in the process, Rage Against the Machine emerges in peak form with merely their third album in seven years. Guitarist Tom Morello is one of the most distinctive and innovative players of his era, and his foil, vocalist/lyricist Zack De La Rocha, is as unrelenting and inspiring as ever on The Battle of Los Angeles. Rage, whose past antics include...
English version featuring different cover art.
When people talk about Jakob Dylan these days, they're less likely to refer to his famous father than to his band, the Wallflowers, and their breakthrough album, Bringing Down the Horse. Not only a staggering commercial success, the disc is also a superb example of the folk-rock Jakob's daddy helped pioneer more than 30 years ago. The Wallflowers don't need family relations to command respect. When the Wallflowers recorded their self-titled...
There's a classic episode of The Little Rascals where one of the gang can't join everybody else on the ballfield because he has to stay home with his younger brother, who has the croup. "I can't come out and play," he whines. "I've got to stay home and grease Wheezer!" Nobody at Geffen Records knows whether this was the inspiration in naming Weezer, but it makes sense. Like many of their peers, the members of the Los Angeles quartet seem to have...
The perfect soundtrack for a summer roadtrip in an old car across Death Valley. Calexico's musical textures are woven out of a dazzling array of instruments and styles, including mariachi trumpets, countrified pedal steel, Latin jazz percussion, and carnival organ, just to name a few. The songs move at siesta speed, casually looping and loping along, never getting overheated. Bandmates Joey Burns and John Convertino have their hands in so many...
Well before the release of this solid but slender debut, the Brooklyn-based Yeah Yeah Yeahs were the subject of so much international press hype that the White Stripes were probably taking quick, nervous peeks over their shoulders. But while Fever to Tell captures a lot of what's good about the trio--mostly the caterwauling energy of their club shows--it also exposes the band's limitations. Singer Karen O is the undeniable star here, contorting...
The songs are familiar carols, but A Windham Hill Christmas retains the Windham Hill Winter Solstice series tradition of unusual arrangements and performances that evoke the mood of the season, especially if your take on that mood is a Northeast, snow-covered landscape, like that depicted on the Hallmark card-like cover. The usual bevy of Windham Hill sampler artists are all here, but it's some of the secondary cast that give the most innovative...
During the last three years of Montreal have been on a tear: releasing 2004's Satanic Panic in the Attic and 2005's The Sunlandic Twins and spreading their dance party-inducing live shows to the masses. Now, of Montreal have created their masterpiece with Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? It's an irresistible and remarkable album, sounding like a logical extension of the erratic indie-disco sounds of The Sunlandic Twins. However,...
Vitalogy reaffirms the Seattle quintet's status as the principled, proudly confused voice of a generation. On their third album, they've found their footing as a raw, forward-looking '90s rock act that fearlessly tackles the Biggest Questions. Lead track "Spin the Black Circle" celebrates the healing power of Eddie Vedder's LP collection, but it is overshadowed by such masterstrokes as "Immortality" (which can be read, right or wrong, as a...
Fiona Apple, brooding, brainy belter and capital-A artist of near forbidding depth, begins her much gossiped-over third CD on a lark. The title track, one of two songs produced by Jon Brion before the label dispute that prompted hip-hop producer Mike Elizondo (50 Cent, Eminem) to step in, sounds like a Judy Garland number slathered with irony or something Rufus Wainwright might have had a hand in--strings soar, beats bump around skittishly, and...
Between their name, the album title, and the cover art of embracing lovers done in that flat-perspective, Indian style of painting, Rasa's Devotion looks like one of those New Age Indian sacred chant albums, and in a way it is. But Indian devotional music has rarely sounded this sensual. These are traditional songs, but performed in a modern, world-fusion style. Singer Kim Waters intones these hymns in a breathy, embracing soprano, falling...
Though Morning View follows hot on the heels of Incubus's breakthrough single, "Drive," it doesn't feel rushed. After all, their previous album, Make Yourself, was released nearly two years ago. Like fellow Los Angeles metal pioneers System of a Down, Incubus find themselves lumped in with the nu-metal fraternity merely because they're young(ish), angry, and very loud. That's more than a little unfair, because their sound owes more to the clever...
Not since the days of the Clash and the MC5 has rock seen such political force as in the uncompromising debut from this L.A. quartet. Expanding the hip-hop/metal style of bands such as the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rage tap the spirits of vintage Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, coupled with hardcore punk intensity and Public Enemy-style grooves. "Bombtrack" opens the LP with a shot of adrenaline and singer Zack de la Rocha's infuriated chorus of...
Digitally remastered collection of rare, live and unreleasedacoustic material handpicked by Belew himself. 17 tracks. 1999 release.
Some albums really can change the world, and in 1989 this was one of them. The psychedlic dance extravaganza that was The Stone Roses ushered in the era of Madchester, baggy trousers, Kangols, and the Hacienda. From the magnificent protracted opening of "I Wanna Be Adored" (where, for once, the arrogance wasn't overdone) to the dying seconds of "Fools Gold," every note was perfect. Jon Squire's guitarwork was a thing of magic, a new hero for a...
Animal Collective takes up where they left off with 2005's Feels, continuing with more traditional rock instrumentation (underlying a wealth of bizarre noises, rhythmic loops, and effects, naturally). The songs were written in a live setting (and polished on tours), and certainly convey that energy. They also convey the madcap experimentation that is the band's hallmark. As with Feels, or the preceding Sung Tongs, this is tempered by stellar...
From their arrival in 1992 with the 8x-platinum "CORE," Stone Temple Pilots have consistently been among the forefront of modern rock `n' roll artists. With each album, the California-based quartet - Scott Weiland, Dean DeLeo, Robert DeLeo, and Eric Kretz - has pursued their own unique musical vision, an inspired sonic approach merging metallic riffs and baroque pop melodies with a punk-fuelled energy and a gift for psychedelic experimentation. ...
Hailing from Athens, Of Montreal have carved their own niche in the indie-pop world, establishing themselves as a uniquely twisted band that thrills fans with compelling live performances, delights critics with their constant innovations and refinements, and continually showcases their musical evolution that culls together influences as varied as Brian Eno, Television, Prince, and The Shins. "The Sunlandic Twins" is their most cohesive and...
First CD from Nirvana, recorded for about $600 in a garage. This Sup Pop release includes 'About A Girl', 'Love Buzz', 'Negative Creep' & 10 more tracks.
New York City's Blonde Redhead developed a reputation as Sonic Youth imitators, because their sound originally depended on the same discordant guitar points and sexless machinelike rhythms. But over the course of five albums, they've grown out of that heady shadow. Incorporating sinister keyboards, conventional melodic guitar lines, and a stronger grasp of songwriting ("Melody of Certain Three," among others, is hummable), Blonde Redhead is...
ALBUM HIGHLIGHTS : The Modern Rock #1s are "Give It Away," "Soul To Squeeze," "My Friends," "Californication," "Otherside" and "By The Way" (also Top 40 Pop). The Top 20s are "Higher Ground" and "Suck My Kiss."
Looking at the cover images of a quartet of tattooed, Orange County-style punk rockers, one might be forgiven for assuming that Bowling for Soup is yet another band of Blink 182 wannabes. While A Hangover You Don't Deserve's chugging guitars, high-pitched vocals, tight playing, and rapid tempos are certainly elements common to the music of the Texas-based combo's Southern California brethren, Bowling for Soup's sharp songwriting places it in a...
The Seattle band once notable for its arena rock anthems is now remarkable mostly for its hushed melodies. On Pearl Jam's fifth album, the rockers seem slapdash ("Do the Evolution", "Brain of J"), and the arty experiments sound self-conscious (especially the 67-second knockoff, "-"). That leaves the ballads, especially the lovely lilt of "Low Light" and the clear-eyed lament of "Wishlist." On the latter song, Ed Vedder (as he now calls himself)...
There aren't a lot of musicians who actually start a trend, but as Delerium, Rhys Fulber and Bill Leeb can take credit for the ethereal-girl genre of dream-pop electronica. From early releases like Karma, which included singer Sarah McLachlan, they've specialized in a mixture of lush, almost romantic electronica coupled with female singers that tend toward the ecstatic. Their latest album, Nuages du Monde, is no exception. Fulber and Leeb bring...
Among its many virtues, the second album by John Lydon's post-Sex Pistols group has the most brain-devouring bass sound ever, courtesy of Jah Wobble, whose dubby throb overpowers Lydon's drugged-out wail and Keith Levene's spidery, modal guitar lines. Lydon's words and singing evoke unending horror--they're the voice of a man in hell who can barely understand what's happening to him--and the songs here cycle through a few notes over and over...
Way back in 1980, the original wave of Talking Heads fans were pleasantly stunned to hear Remain in Light, produced and co-written by Brian Eno, on which Byrne and company are joined by guitar god Adrian Belew, and funk legends Bernie Worrell (keyboards) and Steven Scales (percussion), among others, for a fuller, funkier sound nobody imagined they had in them. The first three songs are long, layered, full-body dance parties, with incessantly...
Animal Collective member Panda Bear (a.k.a. Noah Lennox) boldly returns with his long-awaited third solo record Person Pitch. Years in the making, Person Pitch marks a dramatic departure from Panda Bear's previous solo record Young Prayer. The acoustic instruments of Young Prayer have been replaced with samplers and electronics. Fusing Panda's dramatic life changes over the past few years (marriage, moving to Lisbon, becoming a father)...
This double compilation CD from pioneering New Age label Hearts of Space is the perfect soundtrack for an escape from the pressure cooker of a frenetic world. With featured artists such as Mychael Danna, Robert Rich, Coyote Oldman, Rasa, Bill Douglas, Steve Roach, and Al Gromer Khan, Slow Music for Fast Times is a paradise of ambient, atmospheric music, ranging from the introspective to the dynamic. The music has been sequenced in the...
Ska music has been deeply ingrained in the punk rock culture since the Clash adopted their rude boy stance near the end of the British punk invasion and the 2-Tone label put ska on the map. Suddenly, punks stopped kicking the crap out of each other long enough to dance. The debut release by Orange County, California's Sublime is a positively infectious record that marries varied styles of dub, reggae, rap, sampling, scratching, and badass...
This is the Second of the Legendary Moog Albums of Popol Vuh after their Debut "Affenstunde" and was Released in 1972. Originally Just with Two Tracks and Now for the First Time with More Than 20 Additional Minutes. And this by Adding Two Previously Unreleased Moog Bonus Tracks of 1970/1971. This Has Been a Cult Album and Will Become a New One.
Sex Pistols singer Johnny Rotten made a definitive break from his past when he reclaimed his real name--John Lydon--and formed Public Image Limited. He was no longer a token punk rocker, but an artiste reveling in his newfound auteur status. The first six songs of this collection feature this vision of the group: hard, uncompromising, idiosyncratic tunes that turn pop music inside out with devastating results. "Public Image" is the residual fury...
The task: to explain to the uninitiated as well as those in the know what the new Primus record sounds like. Mission impossible. A discourse on quantum physics would probably make more sense. Weird, obviously, is a given. Reading Les Claypool's lyrics and listening to his Elmer Fudd vocals and indescribable slap-and-slash bass, one gets the sense that he's completely immersed in his own strange world. Though the album doesn't exclude the average...
Lost Dogs is a compilation album by the group Pearl Jam, released on November 11, 2003 through Epic Records. The album has been certified Gold in the United States.
The Central Scrutinizer is out to protect you from the harmful effects of that horrible force called music. Such is the premise of Joe's Garage, Frank Zappa's three-act concept album which explores the world of groupies, governments, sex toys, and Catholic school girls. As always, Zappa's aim is true and his scope wide, following Joe (voiced by his long-time co-conspirator, Ike Willis) as he starts a band, loses his girl, falls in love with a...
Led by Jeff Magnum, In the Aeroplane over the Sea finds the Neutral Milk Hotel assemblage loosely performing a series of narratives backed by folksy acoustic guitar. But from that springboard, a quiver of instruments (horns, organs, accordions, saws, banjo, zanzithophone, etc.) are layered into a sometimes rootsy, sometimes lo-fi, and often psychedelic mix. Contrary to most pop experimentalists, NMH songs stretch way past the two-minute mark:...
Sandwiched as it is between Freak Out!, Zappa's 1966 debut with the Mothers of Invention, and We're Only in It for the Money, arguably his artistic zenith, Absolutely Free comes in a distant third--but that's only because the competition is so darn fierce. Absolutely Free is a continuation of the weird freakiness--both in sounds and concepts--introduced on Freak Out! "Plastic People" and "America Drinks & Goes Home" continue the artist's...
If Monterrey, Mexico is, indeed, the center of the Latin alternative-music universe, then native sons Kinky are doing a great job of spreading the gospel. The five-piece collective's self-titled debut is an infectious collision of wah-wah guitars, pounding dance beats, and home-cooked rhythm and brass. The band injects just enough authentic tang in its music to raise an eyebrow with the traditionalists, while playing songs demented enough to...
An acclaimed debut prompts one of two kinds of follow-ups: either the band strives to broaden their palate or they attempt to deepen the colors they splashed all over that heralded first effort. The Strokes' second outing falls in the latter camp. In the tradition of the Ramones' Leave Home and Oasis' (What's the Story) Morning Glory, the Strokes largely stay the course with their second full-length release, producing an album that won't cause...
Euro Version with Exclusive Enhanced Video Track of "if You Are Gone", a Live Full Band Performance from Aol Sessions.
U.S. edition of the debut EP for this hotly tipped Scottish band. The title track, taken from the self titled 2004 debut, is b/w four non-album tracks, 'Van Tango', 'Shopping For Blood' + two US exclusive tracks, previously only available as download, 'Tell Her Tonight' (Home Demo), & 'Dart's Of Pleasure' (Home Demo)! Domino. 2003.
On their sixth full-length studio release Melt Banana exercise a hitherto undetected area of their musical musculature: the "rock" region. Summing up an entire album, and one as diverse as Bambi's Dilemma, with such a pedestrian qualifier is risky business, agreed, but it seems to fit like never before. The band, of course, refuses to accommodate any such pigeonholing: "Maybe it is rock, but maybe not. We just make whatever we want. We...
It's fitting that Grizzly Bear has titled their 10-song EP Friend, as the thing sounds like it was recorded specifically for the band's buddies. We have alternate versions of songs from their previous LP Yellow House, some of their indie-rock friends covering their own songs, and a home demo version of one song. That said, if you are the type to buy a record for just one song, the group's wonderfully produced cover of the controversial, spooky,...
Though there are still hints aplenty of the subtle beauty that adorned big chunks of "Rock Action" and "Happy Songs For Happy People", there's an equal portion of head crushers on this one that'll leave you gasping for air. "An ultramodern rock masterpiece" - Mojo. "The Stephen Kings of menacing post-rock" - Pitchfork. Formats include standard CD in regular jewelcase, limited edition deluxe CD + DVD in a hardbound book, and double LP in a...
Overwhelmed by sudden success, Nirvana promised to take a harsher, more abrasive route on their second major-label release. Enlisting Chicago-based noise maven Steve Albini (of Big Black fame), Kurt Cobain and company succeeded in producing a record that was violent, disillusioned, and deeply moving. Every song reads like a commentary on the cost of fame ("Serve the Servants") and the unhealthy relationship between performer and fan ("Milk It")....
The Definitive Portrait Of A Rock 'N' Roll Genius! Roky Erickson is one of the most influential cult artists of all time. His work with the '60s Texas group The 13th Floor Elevators bridged garage rock and psychedelia, and cast a long shadow over the punk and post-punk movements. After a 1969 drug bust, the already mentally fragile Roky chose a stay in a mental institution instead of doing jail time, but was subjected to electroshock therapy...
When the Velvets recorded this debut, they were best known as the protgs of Andy Warhol (who designed the sleeve), and as a grating, combustive live band. Fueled by drummer Moe Tucker's no-nonsense wham and John Cale's howling viola, some of the straight-up rock & roll and arty noise extravaganzas here bear that out. But before Lou Reed was singing about sadomasochism and drug deals and writing lyrics inspired by his favorite poets, he was a pop...
"Now, I could tell you about BBQ (aka Mark Sultan), his past in bands like Les Sexareenos or The Spaceshits or his solo records on labels like Bomp. I could tell you about King Khan's pseudo-celebrity in Europe, or his past in The Spaceshits, or how his band, The Shrines, are a ten-piece soul-funk revue that have been described as the tightest band in the world. But these names and facts probably mean nothing to you, so let's talk about the real...
The ageless Sonic Youth return with a new, yet familiar, excursion into their own particular brand of ultra-amplified, dissonant rock. The quartet's CD A Thousand Leaves evokes fond memories of yesteryear's noisy, now-classic, avant-garde approach, while retaining snippets of traditional pop elements heard on several of their previous major-label releases. As Sonic Youth's music has gained a larger audience, they've preserved doses of the...
Nothing in their debut could really have prepared fans for the sonic assault the Velvets unleashed in White Light/White Heat. Freed from Andy Warhol's patronage (and Nico's vocals), Lou Reed and company strip production values to a minimum and turn out a primitive rock & roll masterpiece: everything on this record sounds distorted and abrasive. Depending on how you feel about these sorts of things, this makes it either their best or their worst...
Nirvana changed the course of popular music forever and remains an inspiration to those who have followed. The band's musical legacy was illuminated further in November 2004 by the release of the 3-CD/1-DVD box set With the Lights Out, the definitive collection of rarities and outtakes. Now the 22-song, single-disc Sliver: The Best of the Box offers fans audio highlights from With the Lights Out with the bonus inclusion of three unreleased...
Weezer, those geek rockers who topped mid-'90s charts with those oh-so-precious pop fables "Undone (The Sweater Song)" and "Buddy Holly," were almost undone by 1997's bombastic Pinkerton. Their sophomore release turned its back on the band's clean-cut debut, with a thrash approach more influenced by Sabbath and Kiss than the Beach Boys. On their third album (self-titled, like their first, but referred to as the "Green Album"), the band makes a...
Recorded live in 1973, Rock N Roll Animal is Reed's glam-rock sneer back at his Velvet Underground legacy. Four tracks are VU classics (two about the redemptive power of rock, two about the transformative power of dope) dressed up into slick, flashy twin-guitar noodle-fests, with big riffs and showboating solos and Reed practically phoning in his vocals. It was something of a hit at the time, and it's easy to hear how the simple forcefulness of...
Part of the '90s Seattle grunge triumvirate completed by Nirvana and Soundgarden, Pearl Jam debuted with Ten, their most accessible, least self-conscious album. Over time, PJ's rep as a politically correct band just a little too above it all to prostitute its music on MTV has nearly superseded the music. But before that, they were a simply an in-your-face, in-your-head, loud, melodic rock band. And lead singer Eddie Vedder was known for his...
This is his fourth studio album and first in the US through XL Recordings. Devendra exploded on the international music scene three years ago, quickly accumulating devoted fans as well as an unusually hefty amount of critical kudos with his debut and subsequent releases. "There's something about Banhart's muse that defies words and logic, something to these songs that hints at a deeper connection to the cosmos than most of us share. Jeff Buckley...
The Darla archives contain many unreleased early My Morning Jacket recordings, the best of which have been compiled for release along side all the hard to find favorites previously available only on singles and compilations. Highlights include beautiful covers of, Elton John's 'Rocket Man', Jefferson Airplane's 'White Rabbit' along with three tracks, previously only released on the sought-after 'Heartbreakin' Man' EP, 'Old Sept. Blues' (ga-ed...
Shellac consists of Steve Albini on guitar, Todd Trainer on drums, and Bob Weston on bass. This is their fourth and longest release and all the songs are about Italy or greyhounds. Both the CD and LP come packaged in a beautiful full-color gatefold sleeve. The LP also includes an OBI or slipcover that was drawn and hand-silk screened by Jay Ryan. The CD has a non-hand-screened OBI.
The legendary DON CABALLERO has re-emerged! Inarguably one of the most celebrated, influential and innovative bands in recent times, DON CABALLERO is the vanguard of progressive, instrumental music. With World Class Listening Problem, its first full-length album in almost 5 years, "DON CAB" proves once again that they are head and shoulders above their peers. The bands powerful, percussive-heavy sonic advance is more dense, more expansive, and...
This Icelandic marvel is such an original that, even after four Sugarcubes albums and a brilliant solo Debut, she remains an acquired taste. "Army of Me" is a turbulent, darkling tune that's almost conventional next to the gloriously eclectic material that follows. Working with Tricky, Soul II Soul/U2 producer Nellee Hooper, and string arranger/one-hit wonder Deodato, Bjrk looses her helium-fueled voice and surreal wordplay on Gershwinesque pop...
Klaus Schulze's second album was originally a double L.P. released in October 1973 and the new Revisited Records definitive release finally places the tracks in the correct sequencing, previously impossible to due the time constraints of the vinyl running time. Schulze fans who have yet to discover his very early work really should give this a listen; Cyborg is certainly a stunning recording, always challenging, often preposterous, sometimes...
Detroit's The Sights play a high-spirited brand of aggressive '60s-pop, garage rock, and Brit-inspired psych, drawing on a transmogrified gene-splice of British freakbeat, new wave/punk, and rock influences, including the early Beatles, Pink Floyd, the Who, the Creation, the Yardbirds, the Jam, and the Buzzcocks. Guitarist Eddie Baranek -- whose rousing lead vocal talent seems unusually sharp for his age -- and bassist Mark Leahey formed the...