If you’re like me, Vanessie conjures images of overpriced steaks and a stuffy, pseudo cabaret. Indeed, for 29 years, it has played host to a smattering of pianists who perform what we in the biz refer to as “background music.” The downtown restaurant’s new entertainment and marketing director, RJ Laino, hopes to alter those very perceptions while opening the space’s schedule to attract a wider audience.

Metal outfit The Sword has been hastily judged and genrified as “hipster” or “throwback” metal. Certainly, the band’s most recent effort, Warp Riders (2010) is a departure from the earlier releases, Age of Winters (2006) and Gods of the Earth (2008), but the change is by no means a bad thing.

Local artist and musician C Merlyn (real name: Kit Evans) has a few choice words about rap and hip-hop in Santa Fe. “The rap scene—if you can even call it that—is plain pitiful,” Merlyn says.

When I was about 8 years old, my parents and I took a walk through Old Town in Pasadena, Calif.

In my mind, blues music really begins to suffer when the electric guitar is introduced.

James Reich is the epitome of the 21st-century Renaissance man. Best known for being half of top-notch local post-punk band Venus Bogardus, Reich recently became a published novelist (I, Judas comes out in October) and is an adjunct literature professor at Santa Fe University of Art and Design.

  Metal is a genre of many intricate flavors.

When it comes to Sound Kapital, the newest release from Montreal synth-punk duo Handsome Furs, the husband and wife team can’t seem to escape the term “’80s.”

This is the story of Tom Gattis, a 47-year-old structural engineer at Los Alamos National Laboratory--or, more accurately, this is the story of Gattis’ thrash-metal band, Tension.

As the number of worthwhile music venues in Santa Fe continues to dwindle and the city’s concert-going public braces itself for yet another stale night of Americana and/or blues, one local gallery has stepped up to provide some much-needed change.