Dave Jensen desperately wanted to work with the band Five Speed.Jensen, singer and guitarist for Before Braille, was so enamored of the driving but melodic emo-punk attack of Five Speed that when he helped put together last year’s impressive local CD compilation Not One Light Red (with former Modified manager…

Although best known — at least outside of England, where he’s recognized as the host of the BBC-TV show Later — for his stint as keyboardist in the arty pop group Squeeze, Jools Holland’s own musical tastes have always been considerably earthier than that band’s. Holland’s passion is American boogie-woogie,…

Jesse Maxwell made sure to take a box of earplugs to his Friday gig.It’s not all that unusual for rock musicians to protect their ears at live shows, but Maxwell — guitarist and singer for the art-punk quartet Employee of the Moth — didn’t intend the earplugs for himself or…

If 2001 was a maddening, schizophrenic year for America, that goes double for the music that bubbled to the surface in the last 12 months. For most of the year, bland frivolity and mindless chest-thumping ruled the airwaves. Then, as the World Trade Center went down in a monumental pile…

Pete Townshend once had a theory about solo albums. Although solo projects are generally regarded as a threat to the sanctity of a band — and bands as an impediment to a fully realized solo career — Townshend didn’t see it that way. He believed that a band could operate…

“I’m in the mud and the mud’s in me.” So sings North Mississippi Allstars front man Luther Dickinson near the end of the Allstars’ sophomore album, 51 Phantom. On the one hand, it’s a declaration of loyalty to the band’s Mississippi Hill Country roots, but it’s also an explanation of…

When we last encountered Less Pain Forever (previously known as Lush Budget Presents the Les Payne Product), the mercurial duo was going mobile, hitching its fate to a 1983 Chevy Southwind RV, and heading for the East Coast.More than six months ago, the irreverent, jumpsuited musical pranksters (guitarist-singer James Karnes…

Jim Andreas and Chris Kennedy have played in bands together for nearly a decade.Through all their musical incarnations — namely Trunk Federation (which released two CDs on Alias Records) and the current Down With Buildings — there is one common thread. Andreas (guitar, vocals) and Kennedy (drums) have spent all…

It’s been five years since the aggro-industrial quintet Nihil released its debut album, Drown. In the intervening time, rock music has swung firmly in the band’s stylistic direction, with everyone from Slipknot to System of a Down to Linkin Park mining Nihil-istic territory: bile-spewing, throat-shredding vocals and heavy guitar riffs,…

It’s one of the sad ironies of George Harrison’s passing last week to cancer that he was memorialized by the international media as little more than a member of the world’s most exclusive club: the ex-Beatles. Of all the former Fabs, Harrison was always the least comfortable with both his…

Sarah Dougher has all the credentials to be a feminist icon. An openly lesbian singer-songwriter on the North Carolina-based label Mr. Lady, she’s also a committed social activist, a college professor, and a member of the bands Cadallaca (with Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker) and the Crabs. Little wonder, then, that gay.com…

In 1969, Mick Jagger called Jann Wenner, editor-in-chief of Rolling Stone magazine, with a business proposition: Jagger would put up the money for a British version of the magazine, if Wenner would oversee its operations. Wenner took him up on the offer, but after a few months, it proved to…

About halfway into their set at a packed America West Arena on Saturday, November 24, self-proclaimed rock deities Tenacious D launched into a song purporting to tell their story.The ballad, appropriately titled “The History of Tenacious D,” attempts to build an awe-inspiring myth around the musical union of two pudgy…

On his recently released debut solo album, former Squeeze front man Glenn Tilbrook sings, “The Monkees weren’t a real band, but I still love them.”It’s a sentiment that probably speaks for millions of music fans, who long ago fell for the prime-time primates, and refuse to let issues like authenticity…

If a rule book existed for aspiring rock critics, one of the tenets would be: “Must relentlessly slam Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles career, lest you risk embarrassing unhipness.” In some ways, the intensity of McCartney’s approximately 30 years of critical disfavor is hard to fathom. Because he was a peer of…

Atlas likes to talk about his relentless work ethic.The 22-year-old local rapper works every day as a middle-school teacher’s assistant, then works afternoons and nights for the Glendale Parks and Recreation Department, racing home to spend whatever quality time he can squeeze in with his 4-month-old son. On weekends, the…

Last year’s acclaimed I Am Shelby Lynne was a personal and artistic breakthrough for a singer who’d nearly been crushed by a decade in the Nashville songmaking machinery. Right down to its pointed title, the record brimmed with Lynne’s hunger to establish an identity of her own, one not controlled…

Pokafase can’t decide what to call his latest song.The local rapper, known until a few months ago by local clubgoers as Cappuccino, MC in the two-man group Know Qwestion, is sitting in the north central Phoenix garage studio of his producer and chief collaborator, Fade. He’s listening to Fade’s vintage…

Early last month, a host of show-biz notables gathered at Radio City Music Hall for a TV tribute to John Lennon. Besides proving that Kevin Spacey can carry a tune (his faithful “Mind Games” was spirited, if a bit jarring), the show was a reminder that the work of a…

On the morning of Tuesday, October 30, Robin Nash went to work thinking she’d be unemployed in a couple of days.Nash, long the midday linchpin of alt-rock station KEDJ-FM 106.3 and KDDJ-FM 100.3 (The EDGE), had known since mid-September that her days were numbered on the Valley’s airwaves. That was…

Two decades ago, Iggy Pop made a rare TV talk-show appearance and was asked to explain his performance approach. Why did he go to such extremes onstage? What was the deal behind all the self-flagellation and drop-your-drawers exhibitionism?To Iggy, it all came down to Dionysus vs. Apollo. Iggy saw himself…

It’s a sad fact that when most casual music listeners think of the blues these days, they’re likely to picture a mullet-headed, white journeyman cranking out the umpteenth tired version of “Born Under a Bad Sign,” for tight-assed corporate execs who think soul music is the stuff Vonda Shepard plays…