Jay Babcock

Photo by Christopher Woodcock “There’s those moments in life where you’re just killing time between one thing and the next,” says Andy Cabic, guitarist, singer and songwriter of Vetiver, on the phone from the folk-rock band’s San Francisco home. He’s explaining the origin of “Further On,” a particularly wistful song......

Photo by Wild Don Lewis It’s never enough for some people. I’ve explained to Jesse “the Devil” Hughes, singer of the Palm Desert/Los Angeles rock & roll band Eagles of Death Metal, that I’ve seen his group perform not once, not twice, but three times in just the last six......

Photo by Chris Cuffaro THE TWILIGHT SINGERS at Spaceland, April 15 When the Twilight Singers (ex–Afghan Whigs leader Greg Dulli’s new five-piece) saunter in from the Greyhound-size band van parked ostentatiously in front of the club, it’s close to midnight. That is, it’s long past twilight — appropriate, given the......

Photo by Wild Don Lewis When we’re backstage and the lights go out and the manic roar of the crowds begins, it doesn’t affect me the way in which it did for Freddie Mercury . . . I can’t fool you, any one of you. It simply isn’t fair to......

Photo by Kevin Westerberg SPIRITUALIZED at Avalon, November 13 The opening pomp of Spiritualized’s spaced-country ballad “Hold On” prompted a whisper of “Stoner prom!” from the peanut gallery. The comment began as a snicker but ended with a smile . . . because a lot of blissed-out stoner couples were......

One of the most memorable e-mails I’ve ever received arrived one morning this past April from Andrew Male, my colleague at Mojo magazine in England. It read: “Sunn0))) at the Camden Underworld played inside me, slowly shifting all the internal organs around (no light show, just burning candles on stage)......

THE HISS at Spaceland, July 10 It happens every once in a while: an incredible, hotly tipped American band, already feted overseas, slips into Los Angeles and plays a gig almost unnoticed. In March 2001, it was the Strokes playing to a few random people at the Dragonfly, a club......

Marina Chavez NEAR THE END OF THE 88's BRILLIANT DEBUT, Kind of Light, at the coda to "Melting in the Sun," the band kicks into a primo piano-horn-rhythm boogie groove straight out of the Stones' "Loving Cup." More homage than rip-off, the lift is the kind of deceptively simple, in-the-pocket......