Ric Ocasek

Motion City Soundtrack is often pigeonholed as a pop-punk band. But when was the last time you sweetened your pop-punk with a heavy dose of Moog keyboards? This Minnesota quintet put the focus plainly on the pop with last year's "Even If It Kills Me,"...

IN APRIL, Greg Graffin, a professor in the UCLA life sciences department, arrived on the campus of Harvard University to accept an Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism, an honor that had gone to Salman Rushdie the previous year. The...

On Saturday night, a target audience gathered at Irvine's Verizon Wireless Amphitheater that would set aflutter the heart of any marketer worth his metrics. The joyful tribe of 15,000 tweens was bound by the bright garb of Hot Topic, Abercrombie & Fitch...

Justin Pierre, lead singer of the Minneapolis, Minn., buzz band Motion City Soundtrack, says their latest record was inspired by "failed relationships." And really, what record isn't? But it takes on a whole new meaning—and even more raw emotion—when you...

ALBUM: "Even If It Kills Me" Backstory: Two years ago, this Minneapolis collective released "Commit This to Memory," a brilliant Weezer-meets-Blink-182 concoction of three-chord punk, shiny pop melodies, vintage synths and, on second listen, a very...

New York Daily News Every year, the avalanche of big-name CD releases buries some worthy ones in its path. Here are a few that deserve much more attention than they got. LYDIA LUNCH "Smoke in the Shadows" (Atavistic) Lydia Lunch's new music reeks...

The Music Quarterly staff gives you the low-down on CDs, DVDs and more. Compact discs The Eagles of Death Metal "Death By Sexy" Forget the band name, there's no death metal to be found here (and thank goodness for that!). Take a healthy dose of...

If Scarlett Johansson is the sexiest woman in the world, who is the man she'd most likely give the Rejection Hotline number to? Squinty-eyed comic Gilbert Gottfried tops the list of the 100 Unsexiest Men in the World, according to the good folks at...

IN CASE YOU missed it - and chances of that are pretty good - I promised to produce answers today to the Winter Day Quiz, presented in this space Monday as a public service to snowbound readers of The Sun. Some of you might have found the quiz through...

While you may be coming to Maryland to earn your fame and fortune, the majority of the Free State natives listed below took their talents elsewhere. The exceptions are marked with asterisks. Actors/actresses Bess Armstrong, John Astin, John Wilkes Booth,...

Did you know Tori Amos received a citation from the Mayor of Baltimore for a song about the 1980 Orioles? Or, that before Tupac Shakur was "West Coast," he was "East Coast" and a student at the Baltimore School of the Arts? Baltimore has been home to a...

Fountains of Wayne, the band that takes its name from a lawn ornament store in Wayne, N.J. (a town "Sopranos" fans will recognize), has become the master of super-tight, shimmering three-minute pop songs during its seven-year, three-album career. The...