Results tagged “thewhitestripes”

Last night, yin and yang kept coming to mind as we watched Rodrigo y Gabriela. From the first song, their opposite, yet interdependent styles of playing guitar became apparent. Her: Manic, creative energy that threatened to incinerate her guitar. Him: Intense, with a laser focus and skilled attention to detail that kept the performance grounded. Above all, both are consummate musicians who have retained their love for their art. Their excitement was contagious, but when they played it was as if they needed no audience. Rocking the shit out of their guitars is what they live for.

We were worried that, since we didn’t have time to write a preview for Friday’s Of Montreal show at First Unitarian Church, nobody would come see one of our absolute favorite indie bands.

If you tuned into 100.3 FM on your radio dial a few months ago, there was a good chance you would have heard Modest Mouse or Queens of the Stone Age. There was also a chance that you would hear that “Closing Time” song that has somehow survived as a jukebox legend (we point the finger at drunk sorority girls). But, that’s the tradeoff, as is the case with almost every radio station: take the good with the bad. But Radio One had the notion that Philadelphia needed yet another hip hop station and turned Y100 into The Beat, which apparently bangs the best hip hop and R&B in town. So Phillyist asks you, “Whatever happened?” It’s a cliché, it’s tired, and it’s true: you really don’t appreciate things until they’re gone. Alternative music fans throughout the city mourned the day Y100 died. Not because it was the best station, but because, for all its flaws, it was the only station playing alternative music. Now that it’s been killed we’re realizing how devoid our airwaves are of alternative rock options. The other rock stations, 93.3 WMMR and 94.1 WYSP, have tried to accommodate this gaping hole by mixing in some newer stuff that we may have heard on the fallen Y100 like the Foo Fighters, The White Stripes, and Stone Temple Pilots. Classic rock, though, is their thing. Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, AC/DC, and Aerosmith are too popular with their listeners for them to make any drastic changes. New and alternative, while not entirely accurate in its application to Y100, is something that this city’s radio dial desperately needs. It makes no sense that the 5th largest city in the country doesn’t have an alternative music station. At last count we’re up to 27 hip hop and R&B stations, one good college station, one oldies station, and a handful of others constantly rotating Three Doors Down and Nickelback. What we need is another option. We need a station like Y100 to come back, even if they have to play Semisonic from time to time. Image credit: Matt Groening (The Simpsons)