October 21, 2011 – Why funny is deadly serious: Read guest editor Patton Oswalt's introduction to SPIN's first ever "Funny" Issue, plus the full Das Racist cover story and our feature on the kings of (very, very, very short) comedy. An average day in the life of rising comedienne Natasha Leggero is every bit as glamorous as you'd imagine. Which is to say: sorta Scalable, non-watermarked brightcove.createExperiences(); 1. Holy waterYeah, I got a Bible lying around. It's actually an illustrated version. I was raised Catholic in Rockford, Illinois. But I'm not a practicing Catholic anymore. Oh God, no. 2. Taking out the trashIn L.A. you tend to see a lot of people do very bizarre things. I love it. I was in New York City for five years before moving here — every two blocks someone's having the worst day of their life. Everyone's so mad. L.A. people are more relaxed.

October 20, 2011 – Why funny is deadly serious: Read guest editor Patton Oswalt's introduction to SPIN's first ever "Funny" Issue, plus the full Das Racist cover story and our feature on the kings of (very, very, very short) comedy. In advance of their effete-hipster-tweaking show's second season, Portlandia co-creators Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein toast the quintessential music geeks who provide divine inspiration Given that parodying clichés— particularly those of Left Coast bobos — is the eco-friendly fuel powering his show's comedy engine, Portlandia's Fred Armisen should be attuned to times when he's living in a template. Like, say, now.

August 14, 2011 – After her band imploded, Erika Anderson was ready to give up on music. then she made one of the year's unexpectedly great albums. TMI: Erika M. Anderson is usually okay with things that make other people squeamish, like blasting out scrap-metal guitar sounds and singing about self-mutilation, but worms -- those are a problem. Taking a break from fishing near her grandparents' Minnesota cabin, Anderson, 29, chats about EMA, the project she started last year. But the nightcrawlers she's using for bait are too big for the hook, so she has to split them in half. "It's really gross," she says, "but I make myself do it." She's that kind of person. DNA: A fan of PJ Harvey, the Misfits, and John Cage, Anderson moved to Los Angeles after high school. There, she blared proudly as part of experimental outfit Amps for Christ. In 2005 she opened for fellow fuzzniks the Mae-Shi.

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June 13, 2011 – When singer-songwriter Alela ?Diane decided to enlist veteran alt-rock producer Scott Litt to work on her new album, Alela Diane & Wild Divine (Rough Trade), she was duly impressed by his credits -- which include R.E.M. and Nirvana -- but it wasn't his professional pedigree that most interested her. "My dad produced my first two records," says the native of Nevada City, California (also the hometown of Joanna Newsom, a high school acquaintance). "He did a great job, but we needed some outside help. Half the time he and I didn't know what we were doing!" They did pretty well, considering.

June 10, 2011 – The radical transformation of the woman behind some of hip-hop's biggest hits. Holly Brook didn't have a problem fitting in. Instead, as a prim singer-songwriter who cooed chamomile lullabies in a lilting voice, she fit in so well that she never got noticed -- not even after appearing on a hit single. In 2004 she signed with Linkin Park's vanity imprint, Machine Shop, and the following year sang the chorus on "Where'd You Go," a track from Mike Shinoda's Fort Minor project that went Top 10. Sensing heat, the label rush-released her debut album, Like Blood Like Honey. But Fort Minor fans weren't Holly Brook fans, and the album stiffed. Released from her deal, the red-haired, green-eyed ingénue wandered from Los Angeles to Oakview, California.

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May 3, 2011 – As anyone who's either watched American Idol this season or paid attention to rock music over the last 40 years can attest, Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler is capable of some outrageous behavior. Naturally, his memoir, Does The Noise In My Head Bother You? (Ecco), is loaded with enough badass tales of sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll mayhem to make Keith Richards' autobiography Life look choirboy-cute by comparison. Is it a sharply written masterpiece? Far from it. Is it a fun read? You betcha. For the benefit of all you CliffsNotes fans out there, we've compiled the book's wildest and weirdest revelations. 1: Did the dude look like a lady? Tyler isn't saying, but he does admit to having a homosexual tryst in his youth. "Gay sex just doesn't do it for me," he reveals.

April 18, 2011 – PJ Harvey strode onto the Outdoor Theatre stage at Coachella Sunday night wearing a prim ankle-length white dress and holding an autoharp -- not exactly your standard about-to-rock duds. But rock she did. Backed by a nimble three piece band, Harvey, with the Strokes audible from the nearby main stage during the silences between songs, delivered the most emotionally intense performance I witnessed at this year's Coachella, singing songs of violence, war, love and lust (mostly from her harrowing new Let England Shake), before a crowd of rabid supporters. England isn't a playful album, and its politically-oriented songs shaped the show's fraught atmosphere.

April 11, 2011 – Forty years ago, with his band Pentagram, Bobby Liebling invented a style of fiendishly heavy metal that hardly anyone heard. He spent the ensuing decades in a haze of hard drugs and big trouble. Now, with the genre he spawned on the rise and a young wife and baby boy in tow, Liebling is feeling the first rumblings of success. Here's where things start to get weird. I'm staring, so Bobby Liebling slides closer to me on the couch and shows me his right arm. It's abnormally thin, the result of a third of the flesh being surgically planed off to minimize the damage caused by more than 20 years of shooting heroin. It's also covered in small divotlike scars, some incurred during crack-induced fits when he believed parasites were eating his skin. Liebling is 57, about 5'6", and slightly built, with a trim mustache and eerily blue eyes.