Jennifer Freytag

Five years ago, Brian Transeau was programming soon-to-be-famous techno dance mixes in his bedroom. Now, he has snubbed a big-boy contract with Warner Bros. to sign on with ultrahip Nettwerk Records. BT, as Transeau is known, has taken some lumps, most coming in the City of Angels. In a phone...

An enigma never tasted sweeter than Blue October. A titillating jumble of alternative rock and trancelike mood music, wounded-child vulnerability and gut-wrenching misery, Blue October's sound gnashes at anyone who'll listen. After all, been-there, done-that front man Justin Furstenfeld has got an angst-y tale for every Gen-Xer: addiction, family woes,...

If there were still a place where cowboys scraped their mud-caked work boots on the brass rungs of an old barstool, toweled themselves off with a faded bandanna and bellied up to the bar to sip an ice-cold Lone Star and contemplate their loneliness in this harsh world, Two Tons...

Big Ass Truck -- If by bong hit number 50 nobody has thought of an appropriate band name, any sphincter allusion, it seems, will do. Hence Butt Plug, Ass Ponys, Butthole Surfers, etc. While Big Ass Truck is certainly nowhere near as graphic as the aforementioned, the moniker could cement...