Stiv Bators once joked that John Lennon’s last hit was the sidewalk. Bators’ last hit, you’ll recall, was the bumper of a Parisian cab, a smash that occurred exactly 10 years ago this month. But beyond the grave of the Dead Boys, and flanked by a fruitless solo power-pop trip…

Beer arches gracefully through the night like Silly String. Hair mats together in clammy clumps. Shirts already smell like Sunday morning’s Saturday night. The front of the stage is crowded with bully-faced frat guys in shorts and visors who dance about even more ridiculously than could be imagined in any…

Twenty-year-old aspiring guitar maker Allen Pegues recalls his high school days. “I was all about buyin’ me some beer,” he says. “That’s what I did.” Pegues lives near downtown in a neighborhood peopled by crack dealers, whores and kids wielding oversize bikes with bare-rimmed wheels who noisily run over empty…

Wig-sporting, cosmetic-caked Chick Cashman saunters onto the Club Congress stage with the Countrypolitans looking like a cross between some Warhol Superstar and Ziggy-era Mick Ronson and a teenage transvestite hooker swathed in mom’s scarves, cologne and the aura of the back room of Max’s Kansas City. Cashman’s porcelain skin, snake…

Resolver’s best cut, “Yeah Man,” finds Louise Post informing her submissive male that “I’d know you in the dark/By the way your hands pull me apart/I’d know you in the day/By the way you’re miles away/I know you’re in the mood not to be attached or be misused.” Great, now…

Because a girl tossed a drink in his face, punched him and left him stranded in Hollywood into the wee hours, Jeff Whalen’s first moments on the phone included three rasping, indecipherable attempts at a greeting. But it was noon, and he didn’t mention anything about intending to lie in…

Tracing the contours of the cerebellum like some evil throb, the ringing can make your hair hurt. Later, you keep hearing a far-off siren, like some ambulance, distant and shrill. That weird, high hum lingers for days, weeks, always. But that’s all part of the fun, right? At least the…

In the long line of limey trailblazers that couldn’t move unit one stateside, the Stone Roses at least proved themselves predecessors to navel-gazing U.K. teen-a-ramas like the Charlatans, Ocean Colour Scene and the vaguely remarkable Primal Scream, Manics and Oasis. On Brit shores, the Roses’ ’89 self-titled debut was considered…

Not since his admission in the late ’70s that “dancing about and wearing loads of makeup” was but a dopey career move has Lou Reed uttered anything so classically obvious and stiltedly spot-on as his recent pronouncement: “Artists, like anyone else, should be paid for their work.” Several of you…

“We got a whole lot more ass coming up,” chirps the frat-perky host who’s standing on some sunny South Florida beach. All around him is a seemingly endless cache of fab booty, the natural-bodied kind romanticized in travel brochures with pictures of Mozambique beaches or any one of John Stagliano’s…

She was a junkie when I married her. I knew this. But I was sure I could fix her. We were kids, really, why else would a beerswill and a junkie marry? We shared an apartment in Hollywood on the top floor that offered a little view of the town…

“I’m not here trying to sell millions of copies of records,” says Knot Known Records president and sole full-time employee Chris Richardson. He says this between bites of a roast chicken sandwich at a Mill Avenue eatery staffed with nervous waiters and waitresses who look like next year’s crop of…

“What came first, the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable or was I miserable because I listened to music? Do all these records turn you into a melancholy person?” So asks John Cusack, as Rob, in the opening dialogue of the film High…

A call to his new label, Artimus records in New York, informed me that Warren Zevon “is on the road but he’s on the list to call you. It just depends on what kind of mood he’s in.” I knew the call wouldn’t come. I can respect a songwriter who…

Franco Gagliano, if you don’t know the name, is one of the most storied club owners in the Valley. And his bar, the Mason Jar, one of its most storied clubs. The man built the place — and its history — from years of solid work and what some might…

Let’s say you’ve got an ace band going. You’ve got some songs and a self-released CD. You’ve done bits of regional touring over the past few years. You’ve accumulated a fan base and a good amount of laudatory press. People are talking about your band, and the sense is something…

Listening to contemporary rock ‘n’ roll records these days is like drinking in the afternoon to avoid boredom; the idea may sound appealing at first, but after indulging you find yourself either nodding off like grandpa or saddled with a dull headache, or both. I mean, c’mon. When was the…

“Punk Rock Karaoke,” reads the flier, “50 classic punk tunes, 1977-1985. We play. You sing.” When I think karaoke, I hear the Eagles’ classic-rock perennial “Take It Easy” getting an unintentional but just pummeling. I see a mike-handling softy with Bud Light-fertile blood wearing a cowboy hat and sporting a…

As far as I know, I am not queer. And if I thought I were, nothing would change much, really. I would have a boyfriend instead of a girlfriend. Or maybe I wouldn’t. My parents might look at me with furrowed brows for a while, but they always did that…