Photo by Andy Sternberg/LAist A posthumous tribute wall dedicated to singer/songwriter Elliot Smith sat defaced by graffiti for months on end -- LAist said enough, so did the fans and city council.SFist was surprised to learn that chronic presidential candidate Ralph Nader picked former San Francisco Supervisor Matt Gonzalez as his running mate.Phillyist explored the possibilities of green cleaning.In the latest edition of Reel Toronto, a bi-weekly feature looking at films shot in Toronto......

Built to Spill’s Doug Martsch speaks on evil record companies, Phil Collins, the ugly faces of politicians, shitty guitar solos, future collaboration with Modest Mouse, and old reggae guys getting high. Alright, so Built to Spill is one of the greatest, most influential, and most acclaimed bands of the past fifteen years. There's really no way around it. And for those of you who are a little late to the love-in, here's a very small sample of some of the things that have been said about them:         "A band whose talent and proficiency at times seem[s] boundless." --Pitchfork Media         "Flawless." --Trigger Magazine         "In short, he's a talent more people ought to know about." --Rolling Stone, on Doug Martsch         "Better than getting laid, finding God and winning the lotto combined." --San Francisco Weekly, just last week when discussing their live performance...

The iconic Grant Hart, of well-earned Hüsker Dü fame, headlines for Grand Champeen and The Service Industry tonight inside the Mohawk. Hüsker Dü, for those of you who don't remember, or are merely too young to have been a part of their revolution, were one of the most influential hardcore punk bands in history. Not only were they one of the first underground successes to sign to a major label, but they were the first group to truly weave melody into the greater punkrock mentality. Basically, without their influence, we wouldn't have had bands like the Pixies, Green Day, and some little garage outfit called Nirvana. And Grant Hart, my friends, was Hüsker Dü's drummer and part-time songwriter....

Image courtesy Kill From The Heart fanpageAnyone who read the Meat Puppets cover story in the Austin Chronicle this summer knows that the brothers Kirkwood have had some serious ups and down in their 20-odd years together. From their belated arrival as grunge superstars in the mid-90s and appearing for a four-song stretch on Nirvana's Unplugged album to a heroin-fueled spiral into depression and bankruptcy, the Puppets have lived the kind of life most people......

A band name that evokes the high-schooler or naïve college kid in many of us, Helmet were a staple of the '90s “alternative” scene, a blanket term that covered everything from major-label juggernauts Nirvana to independent scene bands like Guided By Voices – basically anything that was rock but wasn’t explicitly metal or punk. Helmet, signed to Interscope, were something of a New York hybrid of hardcore, grunge and something else entirely, with reviewers often......

The Melvins have been around for over two decades and have influenced plenty of hard-rock acts in that period, either directly, or indirectly. Comprised of (permanent members) Buzz Osbourne and Dale Crover, the band recently added Coady Willis and Jared Warren to the line-up. The newer members will be on double duty tonight as they both make up 100% of the opening act Big Business. The Melvins’ brand of metal -- a droning sludge-fest......

Marfa, TX is a tiny, strange place crawling with perpetually drunk twenty-somethings that fancy themselves as misfit "artists". The weather is nice, though. It's still not enough to make us want to drive seven hours this weekend to celebrate the megalomaniacal minimalist Donald Judd's legacy by taking tequila shots around a maypole. We're gonna save ourselves the nightmarish Orwellian experience that is worshipping a yankee carpetbagger and stick around Austin. Who in the hell......

Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie and Postal Service fame played to a sweaty, sold-out crowd at a sweltering Emo's on Tuesday night. Openers Jonathan Rice and David Bazan (Pedro the Lion) opened the acoustic evening with solid sets and a profuse thanks to Gibbard for giving them the opportunity to tour. Gibbard's set was comprised mostly of Death Cab favorites with a dose of Postal Service thrown in for good measure. In......

Great Lake Swimmers Ongiara (Nettwerk) Ongiara sees Great Lake Swimmers move a little further into country with prominent banjo strums and unforgiving Nashville-esque male/female harmonies. The themes are still dark, open and intimidating, never belying the band's daunting name. Production-wise, the songs are gorgeous: layers of acoustic guitars over a banjo and reverberating snare never sounded better. Tony Dekker's voice is straight out of the old dance hall and as slide guitars subtly make......

We're back in New York where people are trying to recover from SXSW, here's the last entry of Nate from My Brightest Diamond's Austin tour diary he kept for us. Read the first part here. Over at Gothamist we've got Pela's tour diary...we totally snuck in to their hotel room and found it under their pillow. SXSW DAY 2: A DAY, A NIGHT TO REMEMBER In contrast to my first 24 hours here at the......

It would be hard to go wrong by attending Sub Pop's SXSW showcase on March 14th. Seattle's little label that can has released some awfully wonderful records in their day: Nirvana, The Shins, The Postal Service, and Band Of Horses to name just a few. Don't you owe these guys the benefit of the doubt? This year's Sub Pop party at Emo's IV will feature Oxford Collapse, Kinski, and Tiny Vipers, a one-woman band......

Austin's Explosions In The Sky play powerful instrumental indie-rock that has been compared to Mogwai and Sigur Ros and are widely lauded by critics. Their live shows have become so popular that their Emo's show in March has been sold out for weeks, and multiple-night runs are now needed in cities like New York and Toronto. After a three-plus year wait, EITS's new album All Of A Sudden, I Miss Everyone arrives on Tuesday.......

Jona Bechtolt is no more a normal human being than a toaster is a Ferrari. His eye and ear-boggling work with his pet project YACHT testifies to the hamster on acid that is constantly running in the wheel full speed in his head. As part of the duo that is The Blow, he is at least partly responsible for last year's awesome Paper Television. We e-cornered him to share a bit about himself and......

President Bush and former President Clinton could be heading to Texas to stump on behalf Rick Perry and Chris Bell. Should Lance Armstrong do more to clean up his dirty little mess? Four ramps near State Highway 45N and I-35 interchange are to be closed this week in preparation for the opening of new connector ramps to SH 45. Iraqi leaders have agreed to develop a timetable for taking over security duties to protect......

Remember when these guys were all over MTV and sold millions of records? Yeah, us neither, but don't even front like you didn't spend your whole senior year tooling around in your El Dorado, singing along to Ruby Soho and putting Kool Aid in your hair. Way back in 1992--allegedly the "year punk broke"--cult punk revival bands from California were a dime a dozen, and they were all being offered millions by major labels to......

We once had the good fortune of living in Italy, and there are times we miss it terribly. What is it we miss, you ask? The emasculated, gelled-hair twenty-something guys on their mopeds smoking cigarettes and pleading on the cell phones with their mothers to let them stay out just another hour so they can sit around the fountain in Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere and butcher Nirvana/Bob Marley songs on an acoustic guitar?......

Science magazine proclaims Evolution the Breakthrough of 2005 New York City's transit system is back on schedule The National Geographic reports that the Hubble telescope has discovered several new moons, rings around Uranus. Oh, stop giggling. Long-irrelevant fashion label Tommy Hilfiger is sold to Apax Partners, part owners of Calvin Klein Is Courtney Love selling her rights to Nirvana's catalogue to fund her drug habits? Brad Renfro is arrested in an undercover drug sting......

There is a parallel universe where metal is still king. Nirvana never happened. Black shirts and acid-washed jeans are still in style, but most importantly, Bob Rock never worked with Metallica. In this parallel universe, Metallica still pays homage to Black Sabbath and Thin Lizzy. The music is loud and fuzzed out and it kicks your ass – hard, and it wears a mullet – while driving a 1985 red Firebird. And in this......

Two weeks ago, we sat down for a chat with Lillian Berlin, frontman of Living Things, a rock band whose emphatic liberal leanings all but scorn the conservative suburbs of St. Louis from where they came. Touring for the past two years with the likes of The Libertines, Velvet Revolver, and The Vines, the quartet - brothers Lillian, Eve and Bosh Berlin and guitarist Cory Becker - earned the respect of music critics, the......

MONDAY [music] The Fags at Stubb's [film] A Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake at Alamo Drafthouse Downtown, 9:45pm. One Dollar! [film] East of Eden and Rebel Without a Case at The Paramount Theatre. Through Thursday. [reading] BookPeople's UTTER Reading Series, 7pm TUESDAY [music] Neko Case at Antone's [film] Austin Film Society screens Godard's Une Femme Est Une Femme at Alamo Drafthouse Downtown, 7pm [art/books] Luis Alberto Urrea discusses his novel, The Hummingbird's......

Staind has a built a career on radio hits that shows rockers can also have an emotional side. A very deep, dark, emotional side. Sevendust is known for haunting melodies that lodge in the listener’s brain. Anyone who’s been to a Korn concert cannot deny the power of their live show. But what is the one connection all three platinum-selling artists have in common? They all owe a deep debt of gratitude to one......