In 1963, in Cardiff, Wales, there was a music store named Barrett’s of Manchester, located just down the road from the Capitol Theatre. One day in late May, the biggest band in Britain stopped there to play, and the afternoon before the show, the manager of Barrett’s–no fool he–sent one…

His nose has been broken seven times during frank confrontations with Everlast boxing gloves, and he’s rolled around in the waves on a deserted beach in the arms of a beautiful model and been well-paid for it. All for your viewing pleasure, of course, in a video for a song…

Pablo Picasso once said, “The chief enemy of creativity is good taste.” Of course, Pablo never heard Cannibal Corpse. He never heard songs like “Fucked With a Knife,” “Stripped, Raped and Strangled” or “Force Fed Broken Glass,” and he’s no longer around to tell us whether good taste should perhaps…

Try as they might, the evil powers that control the recording industry haven’t yet been able to completely stamp out vinyl; there are still seven-inches aplenty filling the bins at your hipper Valley record stores (Stinkweeds, Eastside, Zia are a few). The short-playing discs are inexpensive to put out and…

The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black Mason Jar June 19, 1994 Maybe it was when the topless woman with the purple body paint, blacked-out teeth and twisted fright wig stood on her head with her back to the audience and her legs spread, and a smaller, chubby girl painted orange…

In 1962, he mastered the fine, primitive art of banging out rhythms on coffee cans with a pair of Lincoln Logs. Soon after, he graduated to a toy Indian tom-tom, and by January 1968, he had himself a real–albeit secondhand–drum kit. Twenty-six years later, Dennis Diken is all grown up…

It all started with a series of phone calls that never seemed to arrive when I was actually in the office. I’d return from a brief constitutional on the New Times Executive Tanning Deck, step into the chilled comfort of my chambers–kept at a regulation 56 degrees Fahrenheit, in tandem…

I could tell you about the time my friend John and I took the bus to Groucho Marx’s house in Beverly Hills, rang the doorbell and heard him tell someone, “Get rid of those kids.” We then went across the street to Morey Amsterdam’s place, where he answered the door…

Had you walked into a local Tower Records store recently, made your way to the “Rock” section of the CD-listening stations, clamped on a pair of headphones and pressed the proper buttons, you could have heard the Latin Playboys’ self-titled debut. But what would you have heard? A weaving, lo-fi…

Blow Pops American Beauties (Get Hip) There was an old Saturday Night Live joke between Chevy and Gilda that went like this: “Knock knock.” “Who’s there?” “Babs’ uvula.” “Babs’ uvula who?” “I don’t know, Babs . . .” That’s sort of the way I feel about this album. Not because…

Are you afraid for rock n’ roll? Do you wince at summer tour offerings that seem to consist of the same, tired dinosaur acts that punk rock was supposed to have killed off a decade ago? Are you flabbergasted that people actually wait in line to see simpering trash like…

It is dawn, and I am sitting atop Squaw Peak, as is my wont, clad only in black jockstrap and simple yachting cap. The sun hits me and glances upon the crystals at my feet, arranged in a classic tantric form derived from the sacred teachings of Baba Gin Rummy,…

Shonen Knife The Roxy May 19, 1994 They were cute! They were funny! They were endearing! They rocked! They were Naoko Yamano, Michie Nakatani and Atsuko Yamano–Shonen Knife–in Phoenix for the very first time, all the way from Osaka, Japan. Before we continue, this is what you need to know…

This is a description of legendary bluesman Howlin’ Wolf, from the masterful work Nothing But the Blues: He “stood six feet three inches and tipped the scales at more than 270 pounds. . . . Big, fearsome, solitary and mysterious, the Wolf was already an imposing figure in the Delta…

When Zig Zag Black guitarist Michael Venell died unexpectedly at the age of 23 on April 7, I made a brief mention of it in this column. I didn’t know Venell, but many of you did. Going by the phone calls and letters that I’ve received over the last few…

Surely, one of the great tragedies of the last four decades is the demise of dramatic radio. Before television arrived to poison and dull the soul of this great nation, radio presented a thinking person’s medium, a theatre of the imagination. It was the beauty of simple words and sound…

Look through the press kit on Vic Chesnutt and you’ll see a lot of impressive things: articles saying he’s part of “the future of country music,” reviews likening his work to that of Charles Bukowski and Leonard Cohen, R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe heralding him as “the best songwriter of our generation.”…

You’ve waited four long weeks for this, I know you have. Yes, it’s time again for more local reviews, kids. Get em while they’re hot. By the way, I don’t know if we’re running out of bands that actually have tapes or folks just aren’t sending anything in because they’ve…

What do you want to know about the Beatles? What do you want to know that countless films, documentaries, books, TV shows, plays, albums and articles haven’t already told you? The more accurate question, perhaps, is what is there left to know about the Beatles? When you’ve got a band…

The recently opened Gibson’s in Tempe has a decent sound system, plenty of space and a very bizarre policy at the bar, apparently. Fade to last week: There I was, sitting with a friend at aforementioned establishment, quietly drinking beer and tipping accordingly. We were there to see Dead Hot…

Another month of mail has found its way into the Screed box, and after sorting through all the gift cheeses, complimentary cases of wine and suspicious packages that tick like an insomniac’s heart, I’ve come up with a gaggle of local submissions. As usual, the energetic and talented Serene Dominic…