Trevor Askew is a night person. The singer for industrial monolith N17 attributes these tendencies to the withering Arizona heat that drains his energy during the day. Some suspicious types, mindful of the band’s relentlessly brooding vision, louder-than-bombs musical assault, and Askew’s apartment complex on Seventh Avenue and Camelback, which…

The Pastry Heros Horn Rim Fury E.P. (Submersible Recordings) Pure, unabashed pop bands are a rare commodity locally; the few bands that place themselves in the pop category are generally either pretentious or too talentless to appreciate the measured aesthetics of truly beautiful pop music. When Alison’s Halo broke up,…

River Jones fancies himself as something of a young music-industry renaissance man. His big heroes are the Beastie Boys, who’ve managed to be ever-evolving artists while running the Grand Royal label, and Perry Farrell, who’s organized multimedia festival tours while maintaining his own musical career. But even the most ambitious…

There’s a scene in the 1981 Bill Murray Army comedy Stripes that’s always stood out for me. It comes after a depressed Murray admits to his girlfriend that he’s once again lost his job and had his car repossessed. In response, she blows up at him for his chronic slacker…

The Prissteens Scandal, Controversy & Romance (Almo Sounds) If you ever wondered what the great girl groups of the early ’60s would do in this bolder, more sexually frank era, an answer comes in the form of the debut album by New York quartet The Prissteens. This three-quarters-female band (drummer…

The Valley may not be hyped as one of the great jazz meccas on the planet, but it has long had something that more ballyhooed areas don’t have: a genuine scene, a community where jazz players intermingle, exchange ideas, and sit in with each other’s bands. For years, the command…

For most of the night, America West Arena was merely the picture of reverent adoration. But there were moments during Eric Clapton’s May 25 Memorial Day show when reverence turned to fanaticism, when Slowhand’s piercing Strat seemed to lift whole sections of people out of their seats. It happened during…

Jeff Buckley Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk (Columbia Records) When singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley drowned in the Mississippi River last May, the media treated it like a pop-culture footnote, of little interest to anyone but his rabid cult. Years from now, when the dust finally clears, informed music fans may…

Talk about your double-edged compliments. For six years now, the Piersons have patiently nodded while fans tell them how much their tough-but-tender songs and whiskey-soaked roadhouse punk call to mind the Replacements. There are worse things in the world than being compared to one of the greatest bands ever to…

Tori Amos From the Choirgirl Hotel (Atlantic Records) It’s easy enough to understand the cult of Tori Amos. In an era dominated by literal-minded rockers in baseball caps and baggy shorts, she dares to plunge into the mystic, to use songwriting as a vehicle for escape from mundane reality into…

Everyone knows that progressive rock died in the late ’70s, right? The only question is when the patient actually expired. Was it the moment that Johnny Rotten first leaned into a microphone and howled, “I am an antichrist”? Or was it the day that Yes buckled to the winds of…

Garbage Version 2.0 (Almo Sounds) If a mad scientist tried to build the ultimate alt-rock band for the late ’90s, it would probably sound a lot like Garbage. This unlikely musical marriage of three placid American studio graybeards and a fiery Scottish femme fatale vocalist couldn’t cover its bases better…

Corky Siegel tends to choose his words carefully. For instance, when asked for his opinion of other artists, like himself, who’ve made the leap from popular to classical music, the Chicago native judiciously avoids any critiques because he thinks that such talk is detrimental to his own creative flow. And…

Sonic Youth A Thousand Leaves (DGC Records) Like Karl Stockhausen or John Cage, Sonic Youth has always exerted more power as an influence, name-dropped by other musicians, than as an act actively listened to and enjoyed by real people. Perhaps for this reason, the veteran avant-rock foursome has long had…

Twenty years ago, Elvis Costello gleefully sang that he wanted to “bite the hand that feeds me.” Costello’s attack on timid radio programmers was hardly the first or last example of a rocker spewing venom at the industry that provided him with a living. In fact, the music-biz diatribe song…

Eddie Kelly likes to say that he reacts with extreme emotion to everything. Half an hour into an interview at Chez Nous–where his snaky hair braids, chin piercing, elaborate right bicep tattoo and dark lipstick make him stick out like Trent Reznor at an Up With People show–I’ve seen little…

Fugazi End Hits (Dischord Records) Being punk rock’s king of rhetoric and idealism, it’s often forgotten that Fugazi is also an incredibly talented band. Not many people notice anymore. The band’s name either conjures memories of shows stopped so that front man Ian MacKaye could bitch out overzealous moshers or…

I’ve got a campaign slogan for next year’s New Times Music Showcase. Ready? Here it goes: A Volkswagen in every garage, and a chicken in every Dumpster. Okay, it kinda sucks, but you try coming up with a pithy description of a seven-hour, 13-venue, 52-band showcase without straining your gray…

Of all the contributions that the ’60s British Invasion made to rock, maybe the most important was that it shifted the emphasis to bands. Up until that time, almost all the major figures in rock ‘n’ roll–Elvis, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry–had been solo artists. Even the Crickets were…

Mike Watt says he never had a first name until he played in a punk band. As a child, this son of a Navy enlisted man moved with such frequency from town to town, and base to base, that no one ever got to know him long enough to refer…