The Witzard

Ben Merlis in a BOLD T-shirt pictured with Mr. T (CREDIT: Wyatt Lavasseur) I think about the intersection of Punk & Hip-Hop quite often. Both are street-level genres that were initially rejected by the mainstream, chided for not being "real music." Punks had to book shows at VFW halls and DJ crews set up in public parks well before most of the performers or audience was of drinking age. Both fostered fanatical devotees, who argue that these are, actually, all-encompassing cultures, rather than radio formats or sections in record stores. Being that Punk & Hip-Hop have so much in common, it shouldn't be a surprise that some of the first people outside The Bronx to be bit by "The Rap Bug" were Punks. Dante Ross, who grew up on The Lower East Side of Manhattan going to see bands like Sham 69 wound up doing A&R for Tommy Boy and Elektra, signing groups like Brand Nubian, Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth, and K.M.D. One of his bosses back then, Tommy Boy ...

Steve Haney is a drummer and percussionist widely known for his expansive body of work with Latin & Funk/Soul ensemble Jungle Fire. Haney's recording and performance highlights include Stevie Wonder, performing for President Obama at The White House with Oscar-winner A.R. Rahman (Slumdog Millionaire composer,) The Oprah Winfrey Show, Greyboy Allstars, The M-Tet, Joe Bataan, Quantic, Ozomatli, Kelly Finnigan, and GRAMMY-winning vocalist Gregory Porter. However, in addition to his musical endeavors, Haney moonlights as visual artist VISIONS COLLAGE (@visionscollage) tranforming mixed media into paper-cut collages. We've, personally, been Following Steve Haney's various VISIONS COLLAGE & Jungle Fire social media pages for quite a few years now. Haney's collages are typically hand-cut, extremely vibrant, often primarily feature musicians, and are, sometimes, shared with various alternate renditions. While boasting a multitude of musicians and bands from across ...

Daniel Ledinsky & Dave Sitek (TV On The Radio) are THE NEVERLY BOYS . While it appears as though they've released a few now-scrubbed songs and have, seemingly, had a couple false starts over the years, Ledinsky & Sitek have finally unleashed their proper debut album together as THE NEVERLY BOYS , Dark Side of Everything . Back when these Nation/world-wide shut downs first started happening a few months ago, as events, concerts, and whatnot started getting cancelled indefinitely, many artists began hosting livestreamed concerts, album listening parties, etc. It was Tuesday, March 17, 2020 and we saw a post on both THE NEVERLY BOYS & Dave Sitek 's personal Instagram page that Sitek would soon be hosting a late night stream of THE NEVERLY BOYS' then-untitled album on his page (@davesitek.) We, of course, tuned in, as did many other fans who had been hearing rumblings about the project for quite a while now; R&B/Psychedelic Soul-Funk singer and producer Migu...

Now, many of you may or may not recognize the name "TV On The Radio," but for me, personally, they were my first favorite Indie Rock band. Their 2004 major label debut, Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes was essentially, my gateway into Indie Rock and to an effect, helped shape what I do now here at The Witzard . Since TV On The Radio 's initial ascension to Indie Rock super-stardom, long-time guitarist, multi-instrumentalist, and producer Dave Sitek has produced albums for everyone from Kelis to Cerebral Ballzy , released a 2010 solo album as Maximum Balloon , and in 2012, even started his own label imprint called Federal Prism and launched a sister label, Sounds Like Fun Records , with The Cool Kids' rapper-producer Chuck Inglish . LEDINSKY AKA Daniel Ledinsky is a Swedish -based singer, producer, and song-writer, who had a massive streaming hit last year with "DonalTrumpMakesMeWannaSmokeCr**k" and has worked with Cee-Lo , Rihanna, Shakira ,...

Since initially bursting onto the music scene in 2008-09, Philly Psych-Pop band PO PO has somehow mysteriously morphed from "family affair" (3 brothers) to the solo endeavor of remaining member, Zeb Malik . Regardless of "current events," PO PO have signed to home-bred label, Mad Decent and are gearing up to release their long-awaited debut album, DOPE BOY MAGICK . Labelhead Diplo and Nick Launay lent their production talents, but with such a tensured past, it's almost hard to tell how many bandmembers are ACTUALLY present on each specific recording. Zeb teamed up with [art] director, Clayton Vomero on Staten Island to produce the music video for "Teen Dreamz / "Let's Get Away" along with DOPE BOY MAGICK's featured artwork (Noah Conopask) . Stereogum debuted the new PO PO video yesterday afternoon, which for all intensive purposes... is a short film oddly rooted somewhere between the genres of gut-wrenching Horror and Roman...