Listen Hits | Just hits!

Hollywood ain’t what it used to be. Not more than a decade ago, the city resembled an open cesspool. Gangs ran the streets. Drive-bys were a regular occurrence. Hookers posted up on every corner. Drugs were everywhere. Tourists stayed away. However, in the last 10 years, it’s changed immensely. “Gentrification” doesn’t even begin to describe how the city has evolved. It’s a veritable haven for tourists, and the once bereft central spot of Hollywood and Highland now mimics Times Square. Other parts of the city have been Disneyified with malls such as The Grove sprouting up, and all seems to be well. However, Hollywood Undead have crawled up from the gutter to remind us of the bad ole days.

On their A&M/Octone debut, Swan Songs, the six-man masked militia Read the rest of this entry »

“Is my viciousness/losing ground, ground, ground, ground, ground?” croaks Trent Reznor on “Discipline,” the propulsive new single from Nine Inch Nails’ The Slip. It’s a question more than a few rock stars are asking themselves these days. Pop divas and hip-hop producers command the musical zeitgeist. The iPod long ago made albums, those supreme rock-era icons, seem as dowdy as Victorian whalebone skirts. In these dire times, what’s an old-fashioned Dionysian with a guitar and a messiah complex to do to stay relevant?Give away his music for free, apparently. “This one’s on me,” reads the note on Nine Inch Nails’ Website, where visitors can download The Slip in a variety of file formats — for nary a red cent. Reznor has been sticking it to the Man with distribution gambits for a while now. In 2007, he urged fans to Read the rest of this entry »