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Well, 2021 has been … something. Just about everyone is ready for it to be over, and we’re ready to let down our hair and usher in the new year with a bang. Whatever you do, please be safe. Get a COVID test, plan for safe transportation, bring your vax card or negative test results,…

by Chronicle Staff

Heart-Shaped Box Sets

Hüsker Dü’s history, 1979-87, represents a concise evolution of American indie rock. Beginning as Ramones and Johnny Thunders progeny in the heart of Minnesota, recently deceased drummer/co-singer/composer Grant Hart’s tempos, bassist Greg Norton, and guitarist/main singer-songwriter Bob Mould’s amp tones quickly turbocharged as punk went hardcore. Heavily influenced by Sixties folk-rock, the trio’s keen melodic…

by Tim Stegall

Heart-Shaped Box Sets

Romantic, explosive, misanthropic: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds are so volatile they should’ve imploded decades ago. Instead, the Australian poet laureate and his fluid collective have sustained a 30-plus-year career at least substantial enough for a 3-CD/1-DVD box. A visionary songwriter individual enough to rate alongside Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, and Joni Mitchell, Cave…

by Michael Toland

Heart-Shaped Box Sets

As definitive as Automatic for the People became, it’s difficult to reassert how dramatic a statement the LP was for R.E.M. in 1992. The previous year’s Out of Time signaled a mellower direction but still wore a pop shine. Both were upended by Nirvana. Having graduated from raw college rock to mainstream success, the Athens,…

by Doug Freeman

Heart-Shaped Box Sets

By 1977, the Thin White Duke was dead, David Bowie having ditched his cocaine-ravaged body somewhere in Los Angeles before setting out to find a new identity in West Berlin by way of Switzerland. Rather than finding another creature to hide behind – Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane – Bowie found Bowie. And this Bowie bustled…

by Lauren Modery

Heart-Shaped Box Sets

If Bob Dylan’s salvation period, 1979’s Slow Train Coming through 1981’s Shot of Love, is considered less controversial than the watershed of his going electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, it’s only because his trio of albums at the turn of the Eighties were so widely dismissed. The latest 8-CD/DVD offering from Columbia’s…

by Doug Freeman

Heart-Shaped Box Sets

The Creation would be a Sixties footnote if not for Pete Townshend, Jimmy Page, Paul Weller, and Alan McGee singing the UK foursome’s praises. Additionally, 1967 single “How Does It Feel to Feel” was covered by both the Godfathers and Ride, and 1966 debut 7-inch “Making Time” appears prominently on the soundtrack of director Wes…

by Michael Toland

Soccer Watch

Most of my soccer attention this week has been on the rapidly evolving Columbus Crew soccer stadium situation. See “A Tale of Two Stadiums,” Dec. 8, for an update. Meanwhile, Toronto FC will host Seattle Sounders in the MLS Cup final this Saturday, Dec. 9, at 3pm CT on ESPN, in a rematch of last…

by Nick Barbaro

Mr. Smarty Pants Knows

They make potato puffs in the shapes of ghosts and pumpkins in Germany for Halloween. According to National Geographic, bananas account for about 75% of the tropical fruit trade, and more than 100 billion are eaten annually – 1,000 varieties grown in 150 different countries. It takes nine months to grow a complete bunch, up…

by Mr. Smarty Pants

Headlines

City Council has a full plate for the next two weeks (final meetings of the year) with today’s session (Dec. 7) teeming with contracts, zoning cases, and perhaps revelation of the finalist candidates for city manager. And next week will likely feature an extra Wednesday meeting to spread the work, and the public testimony concerning…

by Chronicle Staff

Heart-Shaped Box Sets

Any pantheon of essential extremities short-lists Black Sabbath’s Paranoid for its political doom, Slayer’s Reign in Blood for annihilating conciseness, and Iron Maiden’s The Number of the Beast for the commercial, conceptual, and intra-band paradigm shift of all time. Then there’s Metallica’s Master of Puppets (1986), eight individual instances of psychotic-break paranoia that along with…

by Alejandra Ramirez

Heart-Shaped Box Sets

The Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Deluxe Edition (Capitol) The Rolling Stones Their Satanic Majesties Request 50th Anniversary Special Edition (Abkco) Since all matter corresponds to equal amounts of antimatter, the mother of all modern art-rock LPs famously birthed a bastardized inversion. Their deluxe reissues now meet at an unexpected middle ground. Anyone…

by Raoul Hernandez

Heart-Shaped Box Sets

Since the early Nineties, Mary Timony has quietly claimed an essential place in the rock canon. Before her current band Ex Hex, the guitarist/vocalist led Boston trio Helium from 1992-98. As the riot grrrl scene raged in the Pacific Northwest, Helium produced a strikingly cerebral and influential math-prog-grunge racket that still sounds urgent. It’s the…

by Libby Webster

Heart-Shaped Box Sets

In 1976, the Ramones reduced rock & roll to a high-speed chase defining both them and punk rock. On the releases that bookended the genre’s mythic year of arrival, 1977, January’s Leave Home and November’s Rocket to Russia, da brudders’ methodology was perfected. As demonstrated across 3-CD/1-LP anniversary editions, the production team of Tony Bongiovi…

by Tim Stegall

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