Pick up a copy of Scatterbrain’s debut album, Here Comes Trouble, and you’ll probably find a label slapped on the disc instructing record stores to file it in the “rock” section. Of course, with all the slap bass on the album, it would make just as much sense to file…
Ever wonder what happened to some of the Valley’s former punk V.I.P.’s? While a few still are fixtures on the scene, others packed up their whips, chains and dog collars and fled Phoenix years ago. For example, it’s been nearly a decade since most locals lost track of Frank “Rat…
When Mad Gardens closed its doors in early 1984, the Valley’s punk community was up in arms. Many slam-dancing teens had spent some of their happiest hours in the wrestling arena-cum-punk club in the previous three years. Promoter Tony Victor, who ran the grimy Van Buren venue on Saturday nights,…
Concrete Blonde’s first single, “Still in Hollywood,” used to serve as something of a theme song for the band. The 1987 alternative-radio hit was a celebration of L.A.’s seamy underbelly, a place lead singer-bassist Johnette Napolitano proudly called home. When she sang “I’m just a spot on the sidewalk in…
Back in the glue-sniffing, brat-beating early days of his band, Marky Ramone would’ve never believed it was possible. But here it is, the sixteenth anniversary of those lovable cartoon punks from Forest Hills, New York, and the Ramones drummer is fairly bursting with pride. Of course, his group now has…
For a while there, you could scarcely pick up a magazine without seeing Lloyd Cole hawking high-priced liqueur in his series of “Amaretto di Cole” ads. One of the recent slick endorsements was set against a neon-lighted New York backdrop and had the singer-guitarist brooding into a cigarette while slumped…
It’s almost one in the morning at Asylum’s Greenpeace benefit concert, and there’s not an eco-freak in sight. There’s no sign of the speakers, petition circulators or environmentally minded standup comics who packed the Tempe nightspot earlier in the evening to raise funds for the fight against the toxic-waste dump…
Who would’ve guessed that beneath the milquetoast exterior of David Byrne burned the heart of a hot-blooded, hip-swiveling, Jose Cuervo-swigging Latino? Certainly not the followers of Byrne’s tenure as a self-consciously unemotional and asexual Talking Head. As the New York band’s brainy, neurotic front man, Byrne has been the leading…
When Hillel Slovak died in 1988 after spending his last couple of years in a heroin haze, everyone knew the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ guitarist wouldn’t be easy to replace. But when the Peppers chose as his successor a seventeen-year-old punk from Chatsworth, California, named John Frusciante, the reaction was…
Where the Heck Is Mr. Fun? (Or Up and Down the Donut With Frank) (Local tape) Galen Herod has always come off like a lovable spaz on stage, regaling audiences with herky-jerky post-new-wave songs and bad jokes. Where the Heck Is Mr. Fun? is a take-home version of Herod, packing…
A couple of weeks back, a strange new noise infiltrated unsuspecting suburban homes all over the country. Every household with a television tuned to America’s favorite post-prime-time talk show heard it: A dorky duo banging out frighteningly original accordion-embellished pop songs. That’s right, They Might Be Giants had invaded The…
It was supposed to be a fun postconcert gathering of friends and groupies. Caterwaul had just finished playing two shows to enthusiastic crowds at the Mason Jar last Sunday, and now the Phoenix-turned-L.A. band was surrounded by nothing but faithful fans. Or so it thought. “This guy came to our…
It’s not your average pop band that writes heartfelt paeans to Karen Carpenter, chronicles the traumas of “Teen-age Dogs in Trouble,” or sings the joys of “Beer Money.” But on the Young Fresh Fellows’ first few albums, the Seattle trash-meisters proved themselves to be anything but average. Maybe early YFF…
When the Sugarcubes first splashed onto the music scene back in the summer of 1988, you’d have thought we were witnessing Christ’s Second Coming instead of the debut of a talented-enough pop band. Both record buyers and alternative radio gobbled up the ‘cubes, but the critics were the true proselytes…
When the Reid bros., William and Jim, started the Jesus and Mary Chain back in 1984, they had a modest little goal in mindnamely to piss off more people than other any band in rock ‘n’ roll history. Within a year they’d gone a long way toward achieving that aim,…
Most performers set out on solo tours to indulge mammoth egos or to achieve that elusive goal called “artistic fulfillment.” Black Francis did it for gas money. See, the Pixies singer-guitarist recently became the proud owner of a lemon-meringue-colored 1986 Cadillac, complete with cassette deck and CB radio. He figured…
Aside from your multiplatinum Tracy Chapman records, acoustic folk albums aren’t exactly Top 40 fodder in this post-Peter, Paul, and Mary age. The Grapes of Wrath want to change that. The Vancouver quartet follows Chapman’s lead with its new album, Now and Again, which contains several songs that wouldn’t have…
Double truck, no jumps You say you don’t know Love and Rockets from Loggins and Messina? Can’t tell the Sugarcubes from Supertramp? Well, maybe in the early Eighties you could get away with feeling inadequate where alternative music was concerned. After all, back then, bands like R.E.M. and the Cure…
Surely the meeting of the king of Seventies rock, Robert Plant, and the clown prince of Eighties rock, Cult singer Ian Astbury, has to qualify as one of the more ironic pop music encounters. It was 1986, and the Cult was laying tracks for its Electric LP while, in the…
Songs to learn and sing. The Eighties’ Top 10 singles: 1. PUBLIC ENEMY “Fight the Power” (Motown, 1989). PE drove home the decade’s most vital and direct statement with a hip-hop hammer. No wonder Radio Raheem fought to death for it in Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing.” 2. MADONNA…
It’s never pretty when a band makes that monumental plunge from cult favorite to big-money, arena-playing, leather-clad rock group. Critics inevitably scream, “SELLOUT!” Long- time fans feel betrayed. And the college radio stations promptly hawk the band’s back catalogue to used record stores. Most bands only have to face the…
It wasn’t the voice of, well, rapture that you’d expect. From Deborah Harry’s tired, borderline cranky tone during the first few minutes of a phone call from her San Francisco hotel room, it’s hard to tell whether she’s lost about a week’s sleep or if she just hates interviews. It’s…
