Red Jumpsuit

“MTV Rocks”, a new album from UMOD set to be released on January 19th, brings rock fans a collection of 54 of the biggest Pop Punk hits, from iconic artists and bands like Blink 182, Good Charlotte, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, Crazy Town, Evanescence, Finch, Ash, 3 Doors Down, Seether and more.

With Joan Jett witnessing something of a revival thanks to the recent Runaways biopic, the original leather-jumpsuit-wearing rock icon Suzi Quatro returns to prove that nearly 40 years on from her self-titled debut, she can still pack a few punches herself. Co-written with previous collaborator Mike Chapman (Blondie, Mud), In the Spotlight, her first album since 2006's Back to the Drive, shows that unlike many of her counterparts, the contemporary pop scene hasn't completely passed her by…

Even the man himself has admitted to making some uneven albums. In the end the result is a very divided opinion on Rod Stewart's talents. But much the same as that occurred with the Rolling Stones a few years later on their Dirty Work could easily apply to this. The influx of electronic/synthesizers into music,especially with rock almost guarantee's a lot of negativity from writers,critics and cultural analysts even today. Worse part is,most of them aren't willing to examine the flaws in their own flaws the way Rod himself apparently has…

By 1981, Frank Zappa’s Halloween shows in New York were already legendary – a rock and roll bacchanalia of jaw-dropping musicianship, costume-clad revelry, spontaneous theatrical hijinks and of course a heavy dose of Zappa’s signature virtuosic guitar workouts. Eagerly anticipated every year, fans never knew exactly what was in store but knew it would be of epic proportions and one-of-a-kind experience that only Zappa and his skilled group of musicians could provide. When Zappa returned to The Palladium in NYC in 1981 for a five-show four-night run from October 29 to November 1, the nearly-annual tradition was even more anticipated than usual as the 1980 concerts were cut short due to Zappa falling ill. Curiously there was no fall tour the previous year and thus no Halloween shows.

Suzi Quatro is a performer as famous for her image as her music; Quatro was rock & roll's prototypical Bad Girl, the woman in the leather jumpsuit with the enormous bass guitar (well, it looked enormous, given that Quatro is only five feet tall), looking sexy but ferocious as she banged out her glam rock hits in her '70s glory days. Quatro is a woman who titled one of her albums Your Mamma Won't Like Me for a reason. But there's more to Suzi Quatro than all that, and she seems determined to show off the full range of her 50-year career in music on the box set The Girl from Detroit City. Quatro is a rocker but she's also a showbiz lifer, and the music spread over these four discs is the work of someone up to do a little bit of everything, and along with Chapman/Chinn thunderboomers like "Can the Can," "49 Crash," and "Daytona Demon," you also get vintage garage rock (three numbers from Quatro's first band, the Pleasure Seekers, including the gloriously snotty "What a Way to Die"), easygoing pop numbers like "Stumblin' In" (her hit duet with Chris Norman of Smokie)…