Laurie Anderson worked for the Olympic organization in Athens, was NASA’s artist-in-residence for a time, and has been finding some satori taking long walks down archaic roads in Greece, Sri Lanka and England. Add on the fact that Anderson lives only a handful of blocks from the scar of 9/11,…
For the ethnomusicologist in your life who has everything, The Rose & the Briar and its accompanying book of the same name (published by W.W. Norton) would make a dandy present. Greil Marcus and Sean Wilentz are responsible for both, and they each attempt to define the American ballad, a…
Dolly Parton has always been one tragedy away from country sainthood. No plane crashes, widowhood, stalker or savage attack, or devastating scandal has ever really toted Dolly to the stars; Dolly’s natural shocks have all been in the realm of bad taste, which Dolly in fact has always embraced –…
Beatle people are already debating the merits and marketing of a four-CD boxed set that reissues the first four American Beatles albums as Capitol released them, when they skimmed off tracks from the longer U.K. albums to make more dough. But like a lost crush on a junior high school…
Bless craggy Leonard Cohen, the enigma, the romantic, the religious pervert in sackcloth and tailored suits, the servant of Montreal, the Juddhist. Bless him for his arrogance and his humility, and for opening the doors of the permissible and making the unthinkable possible. Cohen took the Old Testament, cold razor…
Nancy Sinatra doesn’t want to be Debbie Harry or Marianne Faithfull or even Nick Cave. Fact is, everybody wants to be Nancy Sinatra. And, it turns out, not the Nancy of Boots and Sugartown and all those Lee Hazlewood numbers, but the Nancy who lives today, apparently undiminished in attitude…
Disc one: London Calling, the original, remastered and all that. Brilliant, beautiful, nostalgic, powerful and perfect. Disc two: “The Vanilla Tapes,” lost and found rehearsal and demo tracks. A sketchbook jam pad pile of tasty odds and ends. A Clash fan’s dream. Disc three: a DVD containing a 45-minute documentary…
Galway County lads a long way from their Irish hearths, these boys have been hammering and crooning and rocking for nigh 15 years or more, and have suffered through some fairly devastating lineup changes of late. That said, they are — and always have been — a cracker live act…
The name “Americana” is a little like a supermarket — waffles and plastic forks don’t have a lot in common, but you can find them both under the same roof. Musically, Americana can mean everything from Joni Mitchell to The Cramps, and in its stricter sense, the granddaddy stylistic progenitor…
Randall Wallace is a curious guy. Raised in Tennessee and schooled at Duke, he put himself through a year of divinity school by teaching karate, wrote songs for a while in Nashville, and managed shows at Opryland. Then he kicked into high gear by writing the script for Mel Gibson’s…
Stan Ridgway was there when the doors opened, and he never left the building. In the late 1970s, when L.A. punk was kicking off and Black Flag, X, and Darby Crash were climbing out of the primordial muck, still covered in La Brea tar, Ridgway was establishing his mutant view…
By day, local lad Jon Rauhouse is a mild-mannered pedal steel player who works with a wide number of interesting alt-country fringe stars, in the studio and on the road. But when he’s turned loose in the cosmic lounge, Rauhouse turns into a kind of everyman of pop and country,…
Thu 3/11 Nearly a decade before San Francisco’s mayor incited a bold uprising of gay marriage supporters, Sandi DuBowski, a soft-spoken director from Brooklyn, was flirting with the idea of making a film. Jewish and gay, DuBowski is no stranger to discrimination. Indeed, his life would make for a riveting…
Black 47 has been invisible for several years now. These stout-rock stalwarts of the New York Irish rock scene — veterans of places like Connolly’s and Paddy Riley’s — have kept busy with gigs and side projects. But now they’ve released their first new CD in several years, New York…
SAT 2/7 The clothes-minded don a historical perspective this Saturday, February 7, when the Phoenix Art Museum hosts a daylong symposium addressing “Nineteenth-Century American Life: Clothing, Technology and Innovation.” Offered in conjunction with two current exhibitions — “American Beauty: Painting and Sculpture From the Detroit Institute of Arts, 1770-1920” and…
Phoenix doesn’t get to see a lot of top-drawer boxing, but on Saturday, January 31, we’re going to see what could be one of the most exciting cards of the year, especially since it features two belt matches between four lively fighters. That’s right, we’ll be privy to two –…
Henry Rollins’ press notes call him a renaissance man — and why not? He’s a bandleader and champion screamer who fronted one of the greatest Los Angeles punk bands of all time, Black Flag, and later the Rollins Band. He’s an actor, most recently seen in Bad Boys II, and…
Sat 11/29 Willie Nelson. Call him the original musical road warrior or the silver-throated pirate of the highways, his tour bus cutting through the night as he moves from city to city, gig to gig. And while Nelson roams the highways and byways, various labels have been busy reissuing a…
There was a time when being a “greaser” was a sort of calling and not a pejorative reference to Mexicans. For greasers, like the Travolta caricature in Grease, the Fonz and Sly Stallone in The Lords of Flatbush, and the British “rockers,” every day was Halloween — the leather jackets,…
10/30-11/2 They call it “the 14th Annual Arizona Classic Jazz Festival,” and by “classic,” they primarily mean Dixieland, ragtime and swing: the three faces of pre-World War II jazz that rocked your grandparents’ world.As Dick Knutson — a featured musician and husband of fest director Jeanne Knutson — puts it,…
Tue 8/5 It’s an odd match-up at best, a pairing of two of the greatest control freaks in guitar history: B.B. King, who measures his solos with the precision of a diamond cutter, and Jeff Beck, who is as much a sound sculptor as he is a musician. King is…
Tue 7/29 “It’s a grudge match,” asserts boxer Leslie Sonnenklar. “She’s going down in 48 seconds flat.” Sonnenklar is being facetious in predicting the outcome of her first non-kickboxing bout, but when she goes up against Chrystal Proctor on Tuesday, July 29, she won’t be in the ring to read…
