Alt. Rock

Iggy Pop – Taming the bark of Naughty Little Doggie

NICK KREWEN Hamilton Spectator March 14, 1996     At one time, Iggy Pop was rock ‘n roll’s quintessential angry young man. It was a common sight at his concerts to watch Pop flail about on stage, throwing on-stage tantrums, lacerating himself with glass and lashing out at the audience. A punk prototype whose behavior later set the stage for the antics of The Sex Pistols and Richard Hell &…


Red Hot Chili Peppers Sporting a Jane Addiction

NICK KREWEN The Hamilton Spectator, Thursday, March 7, 1996       Dave Navarro considered it a lucky break. Not his joining up as guitarist with California’s The Red Hot Chili Peppers — arguably the hottest funk rock band on the planet, mind you — but drummer Chad Smith‘s snapped wrist that resulted in the postponement of the group’s mid-Autumn North American tour. “I tell you, when Chad broke his…


Matthew Sweet

  NICK KREWEN Hamilton Spectator Thursday, July 13, 1995     Somewhere deep inside Matthew Sweet, there’s a young filmmaker just waiting to escape. “It’s something I’m thinking more and more about,” concede the singing and songwriting native of Lincoln, Nebraska over the phone from Los Angeles digs. “I’m thinking of getting involved in making a movie, some way some day. I haven’t really figured out what my place is…


Much-Travelled Mike Watt Gets Help From Famous Friends

PUBLISHED IN THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR APRIL 27, 1995   BY NICK KREWEN Ball-hog or Tugboat? Mike Watt, the legendary the bass-playing linchpin who anchored San Pedro underground collage masters Minutemen for six years and followed it up with flannel rocking fIREHOSE for seven, has named his first solo album after one of his favorite armchair hobbies: wrestling. “It’s the only TV I watch, besides Soul Train,” said Watt, recently in…


Radiohead finding its honey with “Creep”

    NICK KREWEN The Hamilton Spectator April 6, 1995   Being ignored at home was the best thing that ever happened to England’s Radiohead. Unlike other Johnny-come-latelys of the British pop scene, the five members of Radiohead weren’t former plastic surgeons who got bored with their professions, nor are they the byproduct of some horrible laboratory accident. They’re simply a handful of normal school friends from Oxford who practiced…