I first met Bert McCracken about 10 years ago in Maryland when his band The Used was just starting to break.

He's got a personality that's always reminded me of a modern-day Cobain, but fortunately has recently managed to curb his own potential trainwreck and build something new and...

We are currently two guys working with a lot of incredible people to build something, in my opinion, great.

Because we're a bootstrapping, scrappy startup, we don't have cash to spend on publicity. I've been on both sides, and can say that operating with minimal resources gives you heart and...

"What are you going to do with the money?" Christina asked Jamie the night after his organization, To Write Love On Her Arms won $1 million dollars in the American Giving Awards.

"I'm going to do a tour. Will you do it?"

Two years later I'm at the second stop...

LA can be brutal.

What am I doing here? Why am I so far from home, living in an area primarily dominated by people trying to be famous? The stereotypes far too often ring true.

But when I arrived at Flea's Los Feliz house a few hours before his...

"We are a collaborative species. 'Putting our heads together' has literally gotten us from the shores of the primordial ooze onto the surface of distant planets. So when two big, stinky rock bands combine their efforts for a larger purpose it's only going to garnish a larger outcome than either...

Just so we're clear -- His name is actually Justin Vernon. Bon Iver means "good winter" in French.

This has nothing to do with Bon Iver though, but rather another Twin Cities band the mainstream may not discover until they also win a Grammy. Poliça (pronounced poh-lisa), is an autotuned-female-fronted,...

"Virgin America treats the 99 percent like the 1 percent," President Obama said over the intercom during the airline's inaugural flight to Reagan Airport in DC this past Tuesday.

No, it wasn't actually Barack. It was his freakishly identical impersonator, Reggie Brown.

Virgin always kicks off new routes with...

I was heading into the office on Monday when immediately following KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic, NPR begins with the headline "If not now, when?"

After spending the previous Thursday in a Los Angeles Miracle Mile art gallery watching the start to finish performance of an album titled the same...

When we make music we don't do it to reach a certain point, to get to the end of the song or composition. The journey or the playing itself is the point.

During which we come to feel our basic inseparability from the whole universe, wipe out identification with...

If you could learn one thing about Aloe Blacc, learn that he's great at what he does -- music.

On first listen, "I Need A Dollar" is instantly catchy, so it's no surprise the song keeps popping up in video games, on TV and of course the airwaves (just hit...

This year's Roast began with a bang, quite literally, as my stopped car still managed to get hit in the parking lot of Irvine's Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre upon arrival last Saturday.

Despite the setback, I still made it in time to catch LA locals gone national, Foster The...

We're fat. Really... really... fat.

The fattest, actually, internationally speaking -- Over 27 percent of adults are considered obese in the U.S., and perhaps even more depressing is that up to 33 percent of kids fit in this bracket as well.

Combine this eating...

"Listen to this with headphones" Causecast CEO Ryan Scott said in an email with a track called "I Love You" attached to it.

This was my introduction to 26-year old Christopher Mercer, known to most as Rusko, about a year ago.

It was unusual for my boss to bring...

I was honored last Wednesday to join the hands-down best airline, Virgin America, in San Francisco to celebrate the opening of SFO's new terminal "T2".

While I didn't know much about what to expect, I did know that I would be getting to follow KIPP...

Another South By Southwest here and gone.

And while it's the second year that the number of registrants for Interactive exceeded those for Music, the insurgence of music fans into Austin reached record highs.

To those unfamiliar, every March this great city is overtaken by some sort of twisted...

"We are blessed with technology that would be indescribable to our forefathers. We have the wherewithal, the know-it-all to feed everybody, clothe everybody, and give every human on Earth a chance.

Perhaps the music industry's most supported nonprofit, The T.J. Martell Foundation has raised more than $240 million dollars in its 35-year history to fund cancer, leukemia and AIDS research.

Their most famous fundraising tool is there annual star-studded gala, which took place last week in New York City and brought...

Dear Rock Stars,

Where have you gone? It seems your breed is dying. We need you.

Music, this "universal language," has the ability to rally a crowd the size of a small city, make a person dance, cry, fall in love or fight. It's an industry that generates billions of...

BREAKING NEWS: We're in the midst of a significant cultural shift.

There have been many trends and events in the past decade that have been very reflective of the current collective consciousness and have inspired a personal sense of urgency -- 9/11, the collapse of the music industry, Obama...

Starting with last year's Bonnaroo Music Festival, I've had the opportunity to conduct research with many of today's top musicians by disguising it in the form of interviews. While some of these conversations were focused on specific cause-related endeavors the musicians were involved with, we also asked many...