Author Archives: Bill Wyman

Time has not been kind to the Gang of Four, a band whose angular and extraordinarily danceable instrumental attack and rigid polemicism utterly defined, for a while, the promise of postpunk. Their preeminence, for me, was enhanced by the fact that in the town where I lived at the time, the band’s first appearances were […]

A pop generation ago, Manchester, England, produced a crop of bands whose churning dance rock and puree of influences both modern (hip-hop) and ancient (60s classic rockers) combined to create an intense and seemingly portentous branch of pop music. Among these were the Charlatans (the “UK” is a legal nicety in the U.S.), who were […]

Blur is the most intelligent of the current crop of British bands; where imports like Bush or Oasis proffer that bottom-heavy rock the kids like these days, Blur’s singer-songwriter, Damon Albarn, places himself firmly in the tradition of social-pop tunesmiths like the Kinks’ Ray Davies. Albarn’s efficient mimicry of pop styles and ready ability to […]

Henry Rollins’s latter-day career rests on twin pillars of cheesiness. For the first, there’s the onetime Black Flag front man’s “art,” currently equal parts ponderous, strained metal and humorless stand-up comedy–I’m sorry, “spoken-word performance.” The second is his reprehensible work as a tool of advertisers (the Gap, Apple) looking for youth credentials. We’re supposed to […]