Joe Donnelly

Citizen Beck

Joe Donnelly
When I moved here 10 years ago, Beck’s Odelay was a constant companion, like the sun, the smog and the Tapatío sauce in which I’d drown my tacos. Being a newbie, it seemed necessary to me that I digest Odelay, in the same way that other arrivistes feel like they......
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Eraserhead

Joe Donnelly
My favorite electronic music — Massive Attack’s Blue Lines and Mezzanine, The Chemical Brothers’ Surrender, and almost anything by DJ Shadow — melds rhythm, melody and atmosphere and transports you in visceral, mysterious ways that are no less profound for being somewhat inscrutable. It’s mood music that transcends language or,......
Vedder: Drunk and loving you

Soul Men

Joe Donnelly
Well past two hours into Pearl Jam’s show Wednesday night at the Henry Fonda Theater, Eddie Vedder paused to thank, well, everybody, including sound people, the people who opened up (Sonic Youth), the people who closed (the theater staff), the sun for getting up every day (“it’s so consistent, every......
Pel sells out... Yankee Stadium

Once Is Enough

Joe Donnelly
In 1975 two soccer players arrived on these shores from foreign lands. One would go on to help lead the Mount Lebanon High School Blue Devils to the championship of the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association (PIAA) championship. The other would go on to help lead the New York Cosmos to......
''Yes

Good Day, Jillian

Joe Donnelly
Monday morning dawned bittersweet. I woke up and turned on Good Day L.A., the semidiscombobulated morning news/gossip/chat show on Fox’s Channel 11. It’s something I once did reflexively, but only occasionally now, like checking in on an old friend. See, I had developed a deep connection to Good Day back......
Vaughn and Aniston

Where Is the Love?

Joe Donnelly
In The Break-Up, Vince Vaughn’s Gary Groboski is a Cubs-loving, video-game-addicted, mildly homophobic embodiment of man-child Americana who dreams of a world in which he can come home from a tough day guiding tour buses around Chicago, kick it on the couch with a beer and sports highlights, and not......
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Hey, Tool: Nice Package!

Joe Donnelly
Before the other day I’d only ever heard Tool on the radio, and the few songs I’d heard, “Sober” and “Stinkfist” from their earlier records, always sounded fresh and hard and raw and exciting: pulverizing bass and drums and heavy guitars leavened by the slight tinge of vulnerability in the......
Tusk

Middle-Aged Bastards and Still Monsters of Rock

Joe Donnelly
I’m telling you, listening to 28 Red Hot Chili Peppers songs in one session isn’t easy, and not just because the top-secret review discs of the just-released double album Stadium Arcadium were encrypted to such a degree they wouldn’t play in anything (not my home stereo, not my computer, not......

Punk Rock Royalty

Joe Donnelly
Okay, so I’m the last person in Hollywood to have developed a mad crush on Pleasant Gehman and Iris Berry, which is weird because Pleasant has had columns in mags for which I am or was an editor (including this one) and Iris did time with my wife, at a......
Illustration by Tra Selhtrow

33

Joe Donnelly
Thirty-three. It’s a tough one. A lot of all-time greats went down at 33. Jesus was 33 when they hung him up on that cross. So was Keith Relf of the Yardbirds when a high-voltage shock unplugged him forever. Rushton Moreve from Steppenwolf was born to be wild but not......