The Pixies' Doolittle

I am the type of person who really loves going to record stores. There is something about the feeling of holding a record that you have never heard of before. Once you purchase the record, you find out that you either love it or hate it. I picked up the Pixies' album, "Doolittle" without ever hearing a Pixies song before. It turns out that I now love the Pixies, especially the third track off "Doolittle", "Wave of Mutilation".

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony

I attended the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony last night, and the experience was amazing. Although the event was filmed for the television audience (not many people acknowledged that there were about 15,000 rock music fans in attendance), the event was still really cool to experience.

I was there mainly for Nirvana (who put on an excellent performance), however the other acts were really great too. Nirvana performed "Smells Like Teen Spirit" with Joan Jett, "Aneurysm" with Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, "Lithium" with Annie Clark of St. Vincent, and "All Apologies" with Lorde.

All of the songs contained women on vocals, probably because Kurt Cobain was a huge feminist. My favorite performance of the night was "Lithium". It surprised me because St. Vincent makes alternative pop songs, so I did not think that Clark would do a great job perform
ing Lithium, which is a hard rock song. However, she did a really great job with the performance.

The most bizarre guest vocalist was Lorde. Although her performance during "All Apologies" was fine (I am not a huge fan of Lorde's music) and it was done in "typical Lorde style" (dreary and sleep inducing), she was an odd choice because she did not influence Nirvana's music. However, neither Annie Clark did not influence Nirvana's music either.

It was really cool to be apart of this once in a lifetime opportunity, for the surviving members of Nirvana will probably never perform Nirvana songs together again. My only regret is that I was not able to attend the after party, because it was invitation only. The after party set included other fan favorites, like "School", which the band performed with J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr.

Watch J Mascis perform a great version of "School" with the surviving members of Nirvana here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=092bFcVqT5s

Concerts to see this year

Nine Inch Nails:
The industrial rock band are going on a co-headlining tour with grunge band, Soundgarden this summer. The bands are going all around North America to many amphitheaters, including Susquehanna Bank in Camden.

Queens of the Stone Age:
The band just announced a show in Philadelphia at the Mann Center. It is quite surprising considering the band's last experience in Philadelphia was negative. Queens of the Stone Age performed in Jay Z's Made in America Festival. The band was not happy with the security at the festival. Maybe this time around, the band will enjoy being in the City of Brotherly Love.

Arcade Fire:
The indie rock band have embarked on a massive world tour to promote their album, Reflektor. Although the band already came to The Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia on March 17 of this year, they are coming back to the Northeast to perform in New York City for two nights at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

Kurt Cobain remembered on the anniversary of his death

Today, 20 years ago, Kurt Cobain committed suicide through a self-inflicted bullet wound to the head (or as conspiracy theorists think: he was murdered). No matter how Cobain died, there is no doubt that he was a very talented musician.

Cobain grew up in a small town in Washington: Aberdeen. There, he met Krist Novoselic, another Aberdeen native. Novoselic and Cobain soon formed a band, which would later become known as Nirvana.

Cobain and Novoselic worked well together, however they could not find the right drummer. After going through many drummers, the members of the band finally settled on a scrawny man from the Washington D.C. punk band, Scream. This drummer's name? Dave Grohl.

Cobain, Novoselic and Grohl formed a band that many people know to be the core of Nirvana. The band would simply not sound like Nirvana without any of the members.

After the very popular album, Nevermind came out, the band became a household name. At their live shows, the band started to see the types of people who beat them up in high school: the jocks. This was unusual for a grunge band. Usually the band would see people with Black Flag or Melvins t-shirts creating mosh pits at their shows, not jocks.

Soon, the fame became too much for Cobain to handle. By the time the band's third studio album, In Utero was released, Cobain did not enjoy being famous at all. A few months after the album was released, Cobain was found dead in his home.

Wasting Light

The third anniversary of the Foo Fighters' seventh studio album is coming up on April 12. The album was released along with a documentary entitled, Back and Forth showcases the history of the band and the making of the record.

The documentary shows how the album was recorded uses tape, instead of digital. In other words, when recording to tape, there is no room for mistakes. The producer can not put an okay guitar track into Pro Tools to make the guitar sound perfect. Mistakes are what makes an album great and unique when recording to tape.

The album starts off with "Bridge Burning". A fun track which starts off "introducing" every instrument. First comes Dave Grohl's rhythm guitar, then Nate Mendel's bass, Chris Shiflett's lead guitar, Taylor Hawkins' drums, and then Pat Smear's rhythm guitar. This sounds like a lot of musicians and instrumentation, and it is. One of the final tracks on the album, "I Should Have Known", is a slow song, which includes a string section. Wasting Light has a lot more instruments than the band's previous six efforts.

The album is still being sold online and at local record stores.