With Hate For Sale, the 68 year old Chrissie Hynde proves that her band (Martin Chambers, drums, James Walbourne, guitar, and Nick Wilkinson, bass) are as important and vital as ever.  It’s great to hear a guitar rock band …Read more

 

 

Robyn Hitchcock and Emma Swift Live Quarantine Show Part 14 - Element Of Light (bonus tracks)  Tonight’s stream, featuring bonus tracks from Robyn and The Egyptians’ second album, was delayed for an hour as Emma Swift was streaming a performance …Read more

    When you read a well-crafted book, see a compelling movie, or in a few rare cases, watch a particularly special television series, you feel you have made friends. When you have read the last page, left the …Read more

 

 

This is an odd story. Ultimate Fakebook are a very, very good pop-punk band that broke up sixteen years ago. The Manhattan, Kansas based band had a short-lived deal with Sony music. My friend and drummer nonpareil Kevin Heuer introduced …Read more

 

 

I’ve been reading a lot about the Athens, GA music scene and how it came to be. Grace Elizabeth Hale’s Cool Town is a fantastic, scholarly treatise on how a scene formed in Athens (review at tinyurl.com/zubathens). Right now …Read more

 

I’m a big fan of Vivian Howard. Her show A Chef's Life ran for five seasons on PBS and I’m sure I’ve seen them all. She is a classically trained chef that cut her teeth in New York City but …Read more

 

There’s something about great art that makes you think and re-evaluate your positions. When listening to Emma Swift’s new all Bob Dylan covers record, Blonde On The Tracks (which is as fine a record as I’ve heard this year, but …Read more

 

 

This compilation was a great idea. The Cat’s Cradle, in Chapel Hill/Carrboro North Carolina, is a true rock institution. If you think your city has a good club, it’s not as cool as The Cradle. They’ve been around since 1969. …Read more

 

There can be no argument that John Lydon is a polarizing figure. I think you are generally with him or against him. So, I’m firmly in the Lydon fanboy camp. The Sex Pistols were a big deal to me and …Read more

 

 

Sturgill. He is the man. After having his most recent tour cancelled halfway through due to the pandemic, a tour that I saw in Asheville, he contracted COVID-19 and was out of commission for a few weeks. Then he stirred …Read more

 

What a lockdown gift! This is a download-only release from Yep Roc Records via Bandcamp, made available in the midst of the stir-crazy spring of 2020. This show was recorded in 2019, the night after we saw Nick and Los …Read more

 

 

Robyn Hitchcock and Emma Swift Live Quarantine Show Part 10 - All David Bowie Requests  I’ve really come to look forward to these streaming sessions from Robyn and Emma’s couch in Nashville, and they never seem to disappoint. After the …Read more

 

I don’t really think that our Zub Alert blog is a particularly sports-friendly space. Everyone knows sports, and sports podcasts (along with murder podcasts) are consistently toward the top of ratings with most listeners. I myself am a sports fan, …Read more

 

Who lives, who dies, who tells your story... is one of the amazing lyrics from Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical Hamilton (tinyurl.com/zubmyshot), adapted from the biography of Alexander Hamilton written by Ron Chernow. Chernow’s last book, Grant, was a …Read more

 

May 18, 1980, was a terrible day: the day young Ian Curtis, frontman and lyricist for Manchester, England’s Joy Division, took his own life. Thus began the ‘myth’ of Joy Division (see our Unknown Pleasures reissue review tinyurl.com/zubunknown, our …Read more

On my continuing effort to learn a little more about the New York rock that I play in my new band (we are named Babylon, after the Dolls song, after all) I have gone from the Walter Lure Heartbreakers’ book …Read more

 

 

I somehow got in the habit of picking up historical biographies. I have never been one for the “Great Man” theory of history (if anything, I am a dialectic stan), but my favorite local bookstore and Costco always have a …Read more

 

 

Power, seduction, and lies. All are on painful display in Mrs. America.  Dahvi Waller, a producer and writer on Mad Men, created and runs this astounding show. The show is set during the second wave of the Women’s …Read more

Fear presides over these memories, a perpetual fear.  -- Philip from Philip Roth's The Plot Against America  This is a tough one. Philip Roth's book The Plot Against America was published in 2004, it is a re-imagining of history where …Read more

 

 

I recently reviewed American Valhalla (tinyurl.com/zubvalhalla),  the amazing film about the making of Iggy’s landmark comeback record Post Pop Depression. The band is led by Queens Of The Stone Age frontman Josh Homme and features QOTSA members …Read more

 

 

This was one of my early pandemic television series binges. There’s no doubt that writers/actors Bashir Salahuddin and Diallo Riddle are on a hot run. These two came up as writers on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon and currently have …Read more

 

 

Our “brief” at Zub Alert is to write about all things “zub”: cool, masterly, paradigmatic works, no matter the field or subject. The common thread is that we like them and want to make sure you know about them too. …Read more

 

 

 

Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift - Live From Home Sweet Quarantine Beatles By Request Part 6  I’ve been following Robyn and Em’s streaming shows from the beginning, using the StageIt platform (www.stageit.com). This one had to be one …Read more

Okay, they got me on this one. I realize that Stephen King is an icon in America. Of course I never have been interested in him. I have not read one of his books. I loved The Shining, but …Read more