Jimi Hendrix

10 Best Dive Bars in New York, Readers' Edition

When we recently shared our 10 Best Dive Bars, including classics like Sophie's and the Times Square hole Jimmy's Corner, we also asked readers to nominate their own choices, via hashtag #vvdivebars and comments. Dive bars are personal -- every neighborhood has a great one, and every New Yorker has ... More >>

Live: George Thorogood Lights Up B.B. King's

George Thorogood & The Destroyers w/Tom Hambridge & The Rattlesnakes B.B. King Blues Club Wednesday, August 8 Better than: Jack White. The last time I was at B.B. King Blues Club in Times Square (right next to the Sanrio store, across from Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum), I saw Napalm Death. From the ... More >>

Live: Imani Uzuri Brings The Gypsy Life To Joe's Pub

Imani Uzuri Joe's Pub Friday, June 1 Better Than: Being sad that Alice Coltrane and Cesaria Evora are dead and that Erykah Badu and Lauryn Hill don't make albums together. The Gypsy Diaries is North Carolina homegirl Imani Uzuri's second self-produced release, and it proves that major-label suppor ... More >>

Live: Paul Shaffer And Others Pay Tribute To Gil Evans At Highline Ballroom

Gil Evans Centennial Celebration Highline Ballroom Monday, May 21 Better than: Never witnessing a world-class band in action. I'm actually fortunate enough to have caught the Gil Evans Orchestra in the '80s, before it became a ghost band. Back then, when the slew of clubs lining Seventh Avenue Sou ... More >>

Miles Davis (2) Meets Cyndi Lauper (15) In SOTC's Search For The Quintessential New York Musician

​The Round of 64 for Sound of the City's own version of March Madness—in which you, the Sound of the City voting public, help determine the quintessential New York musician—finishes this weekend, with the Round of 32 hicking off Monday. (The schedule and results so far are here; the fu ... More >>

FREE LOVE

Three days of peace and music in one night

Live: Winter Jazzfest Breaks Down Boundaries And Confounds Expectations

​Winter Jazzfest Friday-Saturday, January 6-7 Better than: Summer Zydeco Fest (assuming such a terror exists). After a discordant, twisted reimagining of Jimi Hendrix's "The Wind Cries Mary" by his trio Ceramic Dog, guitarist Marc Ribot slyly reminded the audience at Sullivan Hall Friday wha ... More >>

NYC's 10 Weirdest Restaurants

​Hmmmm, will flying to Mars for dinner make me seasick? There has always been an element of zaniness in the New York dining scene, ever since pretty girls started selling hot ears of buttered corn down on Delancey Street in the 19th Century - or maybe even before that, because a restaurant b ... More >>

MEET THE PARENTS

Terry Richardson’s tribute to his folks

Amy Winehouse Found Dead; Overdose Suspected [Breaking]

​ We're hearing reports that R&B singer Amy Winehouse has been found dead in her North London home. The suspected cause is an alcohol or drug overdose. The singer had long been known to struggle with substance abuse issues. We'll update when more information comes through; if you have a tip, ... More >>

El Ten Eleven+Some Cat From Japan+Wolf!

The Top 10 Christmas Albums Of 2010

No.​Ah, another shitty year is ending, and we find ourselves trying to buy our way out of it with Christmas presents while struggling to block out the same old endless stream of yuletide muzak. Luckily, there's always a few notable holiday-album standouts to break the tedium, this year includi ... More >>

Losing Satchmo and Jim Morrison The Same Week

​Clip Job: an excerpt every day from the Voice archives. July 15, 1971, Vol. XVI, No. 28 Jim Morrison By Don Heckman It was another one of those times, last week. In one day the papers reported the deaths of Louis Armstrong, jazz trumpeter Charlie Shavers, and rock star Jim Morrison. Only t ... More >>

Woodstock: 'Outrageous by Anybody's Standards'

​Clip Job: an excerpt every day from the Voice archives. August 21, 1969, Vol. XIV, No. 45 The 10th Largest City In the United States by Steve Lerner The Aquarian Exposition at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair was fairly outrageous by anybody's standards. Stoned silly most of the time, more ... More >>

Live: Tom Petty Looks Like an Anorexic Monkey, Sounds Like a Champ at Madison Square Garden

Another time at MSG Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers Buddy Guy Madison Square Garden July 28, 2010 Tom Petty looks like an anorexic monkey, and his voice is so nasal it makes Bob Dylan sound like a death-metal grunter. But he's a hell of a songwriter, and the Heartbreakers are one of the two or thre ... More >>

Live: Janelle Monáe, Cheerfully Confounding At Highline Ballroom

​ Janelle Monáe Highline Ballroom Thursday, April 8 Bad Sign #1: We are greeted in the Highline Ballroom atrium by a cardboard cutout of Janelle, sci-fi r&b heroine extraordinaire, holding a sign informing us that we must listen to The Archandroid (that's her upcoming album) from beginning ... More >>

Lenny Kravitz

Taking Woodstock Recycles 60's Tropes

Who knew three days of peace & music would oppress us for 40 years? (Plus: this movie)

GOD OF SURF

Dick Dale's still riding

Michael Jackson: The Man in Our Mirror

Black America's eulogies for the King of Pop also let us resurrect his best self

¡Ask a Mexican! Was Walt Brown?

Disney's heritage, and a really bad film

The Old Scumbags of Mötley Crüe Nearly Burn Down Madison Square Garden

photo by David AtlasVince Neil Mötley Crüe Madison Square Garden March 16 Two slabs of pure California white trash, their retarded friend on drums, and a snake-eyed, mercenary guitarist more than a decade older than his bandmates: Mötley Crüe were a bunch of scumbags back in the '80s. Their de ... More >>

X-Ray Spex Plus Mozart: A Night with Karole Armitage

Fashion Week: Paris Hilton at Justin Timberlake's William Rast Show; Carolina Herrera Gets Younger; Carlos Miele's Lame Guitarist

Is that the real Paris Hilton?David Wentworth With an intro of Jimi Hendrix's "Star-Spangled Banner" and a soundtrack made up of the Black Keys and the Rolling Stones, Monday's William Rast show has got to be the biggest fashion rock spectacle of Fashion Week. It's the line co-designed by Justin Ti ... More >>

Game Rebellion Party for Their Right to Fight

Brooklyn crew's furious rap-rock taps a new, fresh vein of gangsta militancy

The Woodstock Museum: Because You Weren't There

A myth, and a vivid reality, await you

Toumast's Ishumar

African rebels fight intolerance with guitars

El Cantante

Purple Drizzle

Prince's fair-to-middling latest is a sad sign o' the times

Totally Use Your Illusion, Dude

Rap stars see how the other half lives

Proud Marys

Three queens and a pair of plays equals a royal flush

Future Troubles

Three "golden age" hip-hop compilations remind us when now is

Harmolodics Redux: James Blood Ulmer's Greatest Moment Recaptured From Sludge Blues

Hell No, I Won't Go

End the War on Drugs

Mixed Mulatto

Melting ZZ and Jay-Z and all kinds of purple haze into the pot

Mourning Glory

A British video artist engaged with history both as a participant and as an outsider

Gtr

Guitarists Bill Frisell and Charlie Hunter both do their level best to bring jazz up to 1995

Where's the Beef?

Dave's Butcher shop-sneaker store; the lush life in Herald Square

Party Politics

At Last I Am Old

Patchily focused and unfinishable work from a slow-laboring ghost among the living

Music

The Buzz Bin

Pugilists at Rest

Forked-Tongue Warriors

In the Battle for Hearts and Minds, Watch Out for the Psy-Ops

Ramone

Marking the Identity of an Original Rock and Roll Group of 1975

Best in Show

The Memory of All That

Dendy Serves Rum and Cock at the 'Altogether Different Festival'

Hendrix From Heaven

Trimpin Whips Up a Tornado of Guitars

Music

Let's Get Busy in Hawaiian

100 Years of Ragged Beats and Cheap Tunes

Really Gone, Man