John Albert

Features

John Albert
Losing His Religion The first time I saw John Macias, the hulking skinhead pictured here with Greg Graffin of Bad Religion, was at a club called the Starwood, which no longer exists. I remember looking down upon the crowd in the pit and seeing this enormous kid with a strange......

Features

John Albert
Long Live the King Rozz Williams, the king of death rock, hanged himself in 1998. I read about it in the newspaper with my morning coffee and I cried. Not so much for the influential cult figure and Christian Death front man adored by black-clad fans throughout the world, but......
(Illustration by Ronald Kurniawan)

Steak Me Out for the Ball Game

John Albert
All great cities have their architectural jewels — Paris has the Eiffel Tower, London the Tate Modern, Venice its canals, all wonderful places. But to be honest, none of them has ever taken my breath away like Los Angeles’ own modern-day Mount Olympus: Dodger Stadium. Now, I have no idea......
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Lose Your Illusions

John Albert
Los Angeles metal legends Slayer have evolved into something of a cultural icon — the de facto musical champions of the great unwashed, suburban underclass in this country. The band, during its two-decade career, has provided a life’s soundtrack for all the crystal-meth snorting, Ozzfest–attending, disillusioned, no-future, blue-collar kids —......
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Mickey Avalon’s True Hollywood Stories

John Albert
The blond girl is reaching toward the stage, trying to grab the singer’s partially exposed ass as he leans out over the crowd. The tight jeans he’s wearing are now strategically torn in back, and she can see the pale skin just inside. She screams out to him, “Mickey!” But......
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Lost And Found

John Albert
Photo by Kevin ScanlonRock & roll’s dead, it’s all in your head! Thespian city Now all the real music lies underground. It’s only living on tape It’s lost and found. —Ariel Pink, “Thespian City” Nothing is new and everything has been done. So goes the constant lament of rock music......
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It Comes From the Garage

John Albert
Photos by John AlbertChris Pederson and his sidekick, Gunnar Ristroph, are standing in a vast expanse of nothingness somewhere outside of Barstow, where the temperature is around 112. Any hotter and they might start breathing fire. But when you’re on government business, these are the risks. Behind them on a......

Too Much Junkie Business

John Albert
Photos by Ted Soqui Of course, these things aren’t gender-specific, but we men, it seems, have a particular skill for seeking out and finding the end of our ropes. They call it hitting rock bottom, but it’s really more like scaling a mountain of broken dreams, broken promises and broken......
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The Voice of the Beast

John Albert
Photo by Sophie BassoulsEdward Bunker, actor and author of five books and three films, died in Burbank on July 19 at the age of 71, a free man. Most knew Bunker simply as the character Mr. Blue in Quentin Tarantino’s 1992 fame-making debut, Reservoir Dogs, and though he appeared in......

Rock Magicians

John Albert
Photos by Jack Gould Last year, when the drummer for the much-beloved but defunct Pixies performed a solo act at the ultrahip music festival All Tomorrow’s Parties, in the south of England, few expected that his performance would involve not a single note of music, let alone feature a glowing......