Pat Blashill
Pat Blashill (selfie'd here in 1986) wrote about rock and pop music for US magazines like Rolling Stone, SPIN and Details from 1987 to 2003. He grew up in Texas, consuming a steady diet of Butthole Surfers records and Ed Wood movies. He now lives in Vienna, Austria, and still writes about stuff for the Munich newspaper, Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
51 articles
List of articles in the library
Guide by Pat Blashill, Details, November 1993
RICHARD JAMES has seen the future and it's nothing special. In fact, it's nothing at all. Nothingness itself. Vast, blank wildernesses, majesticaly vague cityscapes, machines ...
Retrospective and Interview by Pat Blashill, unpublished, 1995
NOTE: I conducted these interviews and more for a magazine story that never ran. What follows is a rough, incomplete edit of the piece. I ...
Review by Pat Blashill, Rolling Stone, 8 November 2001
Bad-trip music that's just bad ...
Overview by Pat Blashill, Details, December 1996
PAT BLASHILL TRACES THE HISTORY OF ELECTRO, THE UNSUNG SOURCE OF RAP, TECHNO, AND TRIP-HOP ...
Guide by Pat Blashill, Wired, 5 January 2002
EVER SINCE Sam Phillips stuffed some wads of paper into an amplifier, inadvertently creating the fuzzed-up, overdriven electric guitar sound on Ike Turner's 1951 rave-up ...
A Tribe Called Quest: Hits, Rarities & Remixes
Review by Pat Blashill, Rolling Stone, 24 June 2003
THE TIP-OFF TO all of a Tribe Called Quest's considerable talent was the grainy, mischievous curl in rapper Q-Tip's voice: Tribe were abstract imps who ...
The Beastie Boys: Triumph of the Ill
Report and Interview by Pat Blashill, Details, June 1994
They make music, movies, magazines, and menswear. And the Beastie Boys still find time to fight for the right to be stoopid. Pat Blashill discovers ...
The Big Boys, Butthole Surfers, Scratch Acid: Someday All the Adults Will Die!
Book Excerpt by Pat Blashill, 'Texas is the Reason' (Bazillion Points), February 2020
THE MISFITS had never been to Texas. They were just four lunkheads from Lodi, New Jersey, who had heard about punk. They had black leather ...
Jeff Buckley: Songs To No One: 1991-1992
Review by Pat Blashill, Rolling Stone, 31 October 2002
IN THE EARLY '90s, two restlessly inventive musicians, Jeff Buckley and Gary Lucas, both haunted by phantoms from the '60s, crossed a generation gap and ...
Donald Byrd, Digable Planets, Guru: Digable Planets: Cool Like Us
Report and Interview by Pat Blashill, Details, July 1993
B-boys in berets and turtlenecks. Rappers with hippie tattoos. Gangstas with saxophones. What is rap coming to? Pat Blashill hangs with the Digable Planets and ...
David Byrne: Grown Backwards (Nonesuch)
Review by Pat Blashill, Rolling Stone, 29 April 2004
Ex-Talking Head – and the most cosmopolitan man in New York – continues his global luau. ...
The Chemical Brothers: Dark Side of the Rave
Report by Pat Blashill, Rolling Stone, 11 November 1999
Drug deaths and police crackdowns threaten the national rave scene ...
The Chemical Brothers: Chemical Warfare
Interview by Pat Blashill, Details, April 1997
THEY DON'T PLAY ANY INSTRUMENTS, BUT THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS HAVE INVENTED DANCE MUSIC'S BRAND-NEW BEAT. PAT BLASHILL MIXES IT UP WITH ELECTRONICA'S PREMIER BOOGIE BAND. ...
The Clash: London Calling (25th Anniversary Legacy Edition)
Review by Pat Blashill, Rolling Stone, 22 September 2004
IN 1979, London Calling was sold with a sticker declaring that the Clash were the only band that matters, and they acted as if they ...
Leonard Cohen: The Essential Leonard Cohen
Review by Pat Blashill, Rolling Stone, 22 October 2002
THE DARK, POETIC music of Leonard Cohen should be listed on the table of periodic elements — when you discover it, it suddenly seems as ...
Dave Navarro, Perry Farrell: Dave Navarro: Trust No One (Capitol)
Review by Pat Blashill, Spin, August 2001
JANE'S ADDICTION WERE a darkly brilliant band, but they weren't radical. ...
Flaming Lips: The Flaming Lips: Finally The Punk Rockers Are Taking Acid 1983-88
Review by Pat Blashill, Rolling Stone, 14 November 2002
FOLLOWING THESE fearless alterna-rockers on their path from '80s weird to pop bliss, few would have thought in the late '80s that the Flaming Lips, ...
Live Review by Pat Blashill, Rolling Stone, 30 September 1999
ON THE second date of a two-night New York stand, the First International Music Against Brain Degeneration Revue has morphed into a comedy skit of ...
Galaxie 500: Satellite of Love
Interview by Pat Blashill, Spin, December 1989
Based in collegiate Boston, Galaxie 500 favor New York because it's the town the Velvet Underground left cold and lonely. Haphazardly purposeful and accidentally poetic, ...
Jimmie Dale Gilmore: Space Cowboy
Profile and Interview by Pat Blashill, Details, February 1994
From Texas to the ashram and back again: the earthbound adventures of country rocker Jimmie Dale Gilmore ...
Interview by Pat Blashill, Rolling Stone, 2 September 1999
MEET BRITAIN'S GREATEST LIVING SPACE-ROCK HOOTENANNY BAND ...
Al Green: Call Me/Explores Your Mind
Review by Pat Blashill, Rolling Stone, 29 June 2004
WHEN WRITER Toni Morrison said that black artists always seem to move with ease, she was talking about someone like Al Green. He sings from ...
Green Day: Irving Plaza, New York
Live Review by Pat Blashill, Rolling Stone, 28 October 2004
GREEN DAY'S New York show, one of four small venue dates the band played before its fall arena tour, felt like it was shot out ...
Ben Harper: Diamonds On The Inside
Review by Pat Blashill, Rolling Stone, 25 February 2003
EVEN AS HE invokes folks such as Bob Marley and Jimi Hendrix, Ben Harper turns rock clichés inside out until they mean something new again. ...
Review by Pat Blashill, Spin, June 1990
ENGLAND BREEDS pop sensations almost as efficiently as the American suburbs birth thrash metal bands. And there's a time delay: American cultural ambassadors like Anthrax ...
Natalie Imbruglia: White Lilies Island (RCA)
Review by Pat Blashill, Rolling Stone, 28 March 2002
'Torn' pop starlet gets less convincing ...
Review by Pat Blashill, Rolling Stone, 16 October 2001
FOR A NEW-METAL band competing in a field of alpha males with pierced, sloping brows, the supple, even delicate Incubus have an awful lot of ...
Jay Z: Jay-Z: Hammerstein Ballroom, New York NY
Live Review by Pat Blashill, Rolling Stone, 8 November 2001
Jay-Z Hustles ...
Kraftwerk: Trans-Europe Express
Review by Pat Blashill, Rolling Stone, 22 October 2002
WITH THEIR 1974 international smash hit 'Autobahn', Kraftwerk had coolly demonstrated that an experimental electronic group from Dusseldorf, Germany, could kick out perfect pop on ...
Review by Pat Blashill, Rolling Stone, 2 July 2002
FOR ANYONE who's already screaming "Enough!" whenever Avril Lavigne's supernaturally catchy single 'Complicated' comes on the radio, the news is all bad. ...
Les Rythmes Digitales, Jacques Lu Cont: Jacques Lu Cont: The "French" Prince
Interview by Pat Blashill, Spin, November 1999
LES RYTHMES DIGITALES' JACQUES LU CONT IS AN '80s-LOVING FAUX-FRENCHMAN WITH A FORBIDDEN LOVE FOR PHIL COLLINS. HE'S ALSO MADE ONE OF THE MOST IRRESISTIBLE ...
Ludacris: Word of Mouf (Def Jam South)
Review by Pat Blashill, Rolling Stone, 17 January 2002
The South's most freewheeling mouth? ...
Mobb Deep: Infamy (Loud/Columbia)
Review by Pat Blashill, Rolling Stone, 31 January 2002
Rappers ride spooky thing into ground ...
Mobb Deep: Infamy (Loud/Columbia) **½
Review by Pat Blashill, Rolling Stone, 31 January 2002
Rappers ride spooky thing into ground ...
Interview by Pat Blashill, Details, April 1995
First a DJ saved his life. Then he found Christ. Now, after years of raving, Moby is ready to become techno's first pop star. ...
Mudhoney: Psycho Dirtbag Blowout
Interview by Pat Blashill, Spin, April 1989
MARK ARM and Steve Turner are the Mutt and Jeff of distortion. He's Super Fuzz, I'm Big Muff, they'll say. Fuzz and Muff work for ...
My Bloody Valentine: My Waking Dream
Interview by Pat Blashill, Spin, May 1989
My Bloody Valentine are black sheep grazing the English countryside with the subconscious as their shepherd. ...
Willie Nelson: The Great Divide
Review by Pat Blashill, Rolling Stone, 8 January 2002
SUNNY AND UPLIFTING are not words generally associated with Willie Nelson, but that's not the only reason some will be surprised by his new album. ...
Pavement: Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: L.A.'s Desert Origins
Review by Pat Blashill, Rolling Stone, 25 November 2004
PAVEMENT MAY have been alternative rock's most notorious mess, but this deluxe reissue of their best album, appended with nearly forty extra tracks, illuminates one ...
Report and Interview by Pat Blashill, Details, April 1994
Pavement practice the art of falling apart with wrecking-ball rock 'n' roll and an apologetic postmodernism ...
Review by Pat Blashill, Rolling Stone, 2 July 2002
IN 1987, BACK when alt-rock was called "college rock," the Pixies loomed large, like a bizarre crossbreeding of pop sensibilities, art-rock conceptualism and nasty guitar ...
Radiohead: Band of the Year: Radiohead
Report and Interview by Pat Blashill, Spin, January 1998
Thom Yorke is one paranoid android: freaked out by cars, haunted by houses, suspicious of everyone. You couldn't ask for a better rock star. ...
Shonen Knife: Rock Animals (Virgin)
Review by Pat Blashill, Details, February 1994
SHONEN KNIFE are insanely cute; it's both their blessing and their curse. ...
Review by Pat Blashill, Spin, July 1999
TWO YEARS AGO, when Smash Mouth snuck into the upper reaches of the Top 40 with a bit of '60s-damaged pop-rock called 'Walkin' on the ...
Smashing Pumpkins: Out on a limb
Interview by Pat Blashill, Details, October 1996
Billy Corgan is the zero who became a hero. But when Jonathan Melvoin died and Jimmy Chamberlin was dismissed from the Smashing Pumpkins, the world ...
Steely Dan: The Greatest Albums Ever Made: Steely Dan's Countdown to Ecstasy
Review by Pat Blashill, Rolling Stone, 30 October 2003
WALTER BECKER and Donald Fagen were wiseass New York musician nerds stranded in L.A. in the early '70s, and they poured all the cynicism and ...
The Stone Roses: Stone Roses: Would You Like Some Candy?
Interview by Pat Blashill, Spin, October 1989
Manchester's Stone Roses sing about hate, death, violence and idealism while running a guitar-driven machine. Their single 'Elephant Stone' was produced by New Order bassist ...
Throwing Muses: House Tornado (Sire)
Review by Pat Blashill, Spin, July 1988
FIRST THING you hear is this voice. Singing or babbling like a little girl alone in the back yard, trilling like a crazy old woman. ...
Interview by Pat Blashill, Rolling Stone, 10 June 1999
THE VENGABOYS' 'We Like To Party!' is a Big Gulp of bubblegum techno and the goofiest, most ubiquitous beach-party anthem since 'Rock Lobster'. But the ...
The White Stripes: White Blood Cells
Review by Pat Blashill, Rolling Stone, 25 June 2001
THE WHITE STRIPES play gothic garage punk strictly by all the best and baddest rules. Detroit's Jack and Meg White, allegedly brother and sister, look ...
List of genre pieces
Loud, Fast, and Out of Control
Report by Pat Blashill, Spin, August 1999
Welcome to the Hardcore Rave scene, where the DJs throw meat, the kids stick their heads inside speakers, and the scent of grape lollipops mixes ...
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