Tag: Brainstorm

There is simply not enough hip-hop on this site. Let’s fix that! I grew up in a small, very monochromatic town in Oklahoma, where most of the people had my skin color. In that part of the world, there were two kinds of music–country and heavy metal. In the 80s, a few of my friends who were more hip had started getting into this new “rap music” that I knew very little about. But growing up in a country-western family and then discovering rock on my own, I wasn’t really predisposed to listen to rap.… Continued →

The funk-punk and funk-metal scene(s) rose quickly in the early 90s and then disappeared just as quickly. At one point, it was looking to be the next big thing, but as a genre it never dominated alternative rock as it once looked like it would. In fact, aside from Red Hot Chili Peppers and Jane’s Addiction, few in the general market ever made it big, even though bands like Fishbone and 24-7 Spyz were just as talented. However, the fusion/hybrid genre did help pave the way for other crossover genres to gain steam, particularly third wave ska (with its derivatives ska-punk and ska-core), rap-core, and industrial metal.… Continued →

I suppose that the first time you hear a band forever affects the way you think or feel about them. Although Undercover already had a long history behind them when I first heard them in 1990, I was completely unaware of it. I didn’t know the huge impact they’d made in the Christian alternative and punk scene in SoCal through Calvary Chapel, Ministry Resource Center, etc. through groundbreaking albums like God Rules and Branded. They had already morphed from a bubblegum-punk/new wave sound to darker, post-punk tones across the span of 4 albums.… Continued →

Bloomsday’s debut “The Day the Colors Died” was brilliant, if a little disjointed. The trio ambitiously covered indie rock, shoegaze, jangle pop, slow-core, lo-fi, and emo all in the span of 10 songs. Amazingly, 20+ years later it still holds up. But it was their second release, this time an EP, that really caught listener’s ears and held them in a death grip. It was much more focused this time around–emotionally charged indie rock that somehow managed to merge emo and shoegaze into a singular, cohesive unit that was both of those things and yet neither of them entirely.… Continued →