You can hear the excitement in the voice of N17 front man, Trevor Askew, when he talks about the August 31 release of the group’s long-awaited second record, Defy Everything. For the industrial rockers, the date is certain to be the peak of a five-month whirlwind of activity and planning…
A Taco Bell just outside St. Louis might seem like an odd place for a life-altering epiphany, but for the Bottle Rockets’ Brian Henneman that’s just where it happened. “It was just a bizarre scene, man. I was sitting there eating my frito burrito or whatever the hell it was…
Lest you think that female-fronted bands merging glistening Southern California pop and intensely personal lyrics with an aching vocal snarl started with Hole, think again. The Muffs’ Kim Shattuck has been combining her tortured prose with sunny sounding punk-pop long before Courtney Love showed off her celebrity skin. When Love…
It’s a Thursday, early in the evening, and the barroom at Tempe’s Balboa Cafe is abuzz with more than the usual happy-hour rumblings. In a corner by the stage, amid the din of chatter, video-game noise and the clink of glasses, a group of local musicians is huddled together discussing…
Someone once said of Gram Parsons that “his sadness was like his image.” That he “should have played the blues.” Had he been born a poor black sharecropper’s son, he probably would have. Instead, Parsons, born Cecil Ingram Connor, was a trust-fund baby, part of a wealthy Southern family replete…
You’ll have to forgive Backsliders front man Chip Robinson if he sounds a bit tired and confused. It’s not just because Robinson is phoning from a truck stop outside Provo, Utah, in the middle of a grueling, two-day drive from Texas to Oregon. The gravel-voiced singer has spent much of…
Although he’s probably best known for the light jazz of the song “Europa,” saxophonist Gato Barbieri’s odyssey as a musician has taken him to nearly every corner of the world and brought him in contact with a host of musical giants. In the process, Barbieri has managed to carve a…
These might be the darkest days in the history of country music. The industry has always been a two-faced creature. While Nashville has long paid lip service to the history and traditions of country music, it’s rarely ever practiced what it preached. After all, these are the same people who…
“I’ve just been in the hospital for the last couple of days,” confesses Lo-Fidelity Allstars DJ Phil Ward, a.k.a. The Albino Priest. Ward (who like the other members of the group uses a ridiculously elaborate alias) has been recovering from a serious bout of road fatigue. Speaking in a thick…
Some play for the sake of art, others to become famous, while many play just to pay the rent. Increasingly, groups that perform for the simple joy of making music are in the minority. The harsh reality of daily life as a working musician in Phoenix doesn’t usually offer the…
A quick run-down of the artists contributing to the soundtrack for the upcoming teen comedy American Pie and one wonders if a more appropriate title for this collection of songs wouldn’t have been Why Alternative Radio Sucks. It seems that virtually all the guilty parties responsible for the dumbing down…
“I used to ditch school and go hang out at his house,” says Sonic Thrills front man Jim Monarch, pointing to his bandmate and guitarist Michael “Johnny” Walker. Sitting on the front porch of his Tempe home, Monarch is recalling, amid the noise of passing jets, how the two Mesa…
Among the greatest tragedies that the advent of music videos brought with it was that the amazing visual power of the medium, especially in its early years, was so strong that often the images it left behind were so indelible they tended to obscure the more important truths about the…
Don’t let the chain wallets, workman’s plaid and hitched jeans fool you. Flathead is more unique than its retro-hillbilly appearance might lead you to believe. After all, how many bands can say they’ve shared a studio with Waylon Jennings, had their record played as a warm-up for an arena full…
Old 97’s Fight Songs (Elektra) On “Victoria,” the opening cut off the Old 97’s 1994 release Wreck Your Life, front man Rhett Miller sings, “This is a song about Victoria’s heart/You might think it’s stupid but I still think it’s art.” In truth the same sentiment could be applied to…
In a day and age where most bands are eager to take the quickest shortcut to commercial success, the Mob 40’s are a refreshing change of pace. While discussing their brief but eventful history in the back room of Long Wong’s, the group members never broach subjects like major-label conglomeration,…
For most people, a mention of the music of the 1980s conjures up thoughts of big hair and Boy George–and a terrible drought in the history of rock ‘n’ roll. But for a small, alienated segment of the population, there existed a kind of parallel musical universe that delivered a…
Olivia Tremor Control Black Foliage–Volume One (Flydaddy Records) If John Cage and Paul McCartney had ever collaborated on a musical project, the result might have been something like Olivia Tremor Control. The Athens, Georgia, band–part of the much-hyped Elephant 6 collective that includes such groups as Apples in Stereo and…
Looper Up a Tree (Sub Pop) In recent years, sonic experimentalism has taken a foothold in pop music. This infiltration of the mainstream has come most notably through the work of Beck, who’s spawned a legion of imitators eager to copy his formula for combining hip-hop beats, folk stylings and…
Paul Westerberg is almost 40. He’s married, a father and has a bad back. Those aren’t uncommon characteristics for someone his age, but in the case of Westerberg, who released his third solo album, Suicaine Gratifaction this week, growing old has been difficult. For those of us who came of…
In the liner notes to his new bluegrass album, Steve Earle concedes that his primary motive for engaging in the project in the first place was to achieve immortality. An “ambitious and selfish” desire to be sure, but as Earle puts it, “I wanted to write just one song that…
There is a moment during “See You Around,” the final track of Vic Chesnutt’s 1996 album About to Choke, where he sings “I must admit I’m flattered by your consecration/It’s a mind-numbing spine-chilling/But nevertheless heartwarming gesture/As you make your advances so clumsily/I’ll save us both the hassle and leave.” It…
