It’s the day after the South African parliament repealed the Population Registration Act, one of the last chains in the lockup of apartheid. Halfway around the planet, South African reggae singer Lucky Dube is just waking up in the Hilton hotel in Halifax, Nova Scotia. When he answers the telephone,…
“When I tell people–men, women, white, black, everybody–that I sing the blues, they squint or take a step back, or I see something move across their face as they think, `Oh, yeah,'” says blues singer Janiva Magness. Blues fans still have a hard time accepting women playing the blues, Magness…
On its records, Too Much Joy sounds like your average Nineties punk/pop band: jangly guitars, power drumming and lyrics about the painful intricacies of love in the last decade of the century. The group’s history as a live act, however, reads like a police blotter. In 1990 alone, the members…
“How much are these wine coolers?” the woman asks incredulously. “Three ninety-nine.” “How much?” “Three ninety-nine,” Nathan Williams says, patiently repeating the price. The woman grumbles but change jingles on the counter. “Thank you, Ma’am. Now, where were we?” While we talk, Williams is working at the counter in his…
Forget that their debut record sold two million copies. Forget the travesty of Mariah Carey beating them out of the Grammy for Best New Act. Forget even that this band’s “It’s only rock ‘n’ roll” attitude and catchy songwriting make it a meaty musical antidote to the weak, Axl Rose…
It’s a typical, quiet Sun City street. Obsessively neat, almost-sterile brick homes. Plaster-cast-cherub and Greek-goddess fountains. White walls. Suddenly, the rumble of tortured electric guitars and the monotone wail of a Wendy O. Williams-style voice break the unnatural serenity of Del Webb’s desert-in-bloom dream come true. Can there really be…
A bluesy slide guitar snarls as a Z-car negotiates a winding coast highway. A blues band plays while co-eds in ridiculously tight, body-sock dresses bounce around and make a bubbly show of drinking low-cal brew. A bunch of bluesmen on break sits around and talks about how baaaad a new…
“I don’t know, I guess I’m just missing my girlfriend today,” says Johnny Rzeznik. Talking by telephone from a tour stop in Cleveland, the guitarist and singer for Goo Goo Dolls sounds wrung out and depressed. “All three of us are in a weird mood today. We all miss our…
It used to be that people would joke with Julie Renn about her winning ways on Star Search. “What, are you having an affair with someone on the show? Are you buying your way in?” they would say. Since 1984, when she began training dancers to perform on the now-eight-year-old…
Despite some past attitude and present whining, the Arizona music scene continues to spin. There still aren’t enough places to play, and the musicians might cooperate with each other more, but these nine Arizona releases are proof that music of every shape and sound is happening in this state. And…
A mystery is the only way to describe what’s happened to the Bulgarian State Radio and Television Female Vocal Choir. Two short years ago, these sturdy Eastern European women with babushkas on their heads and red onions on their breath exploded onto the world-music scene with their evocatively titled debut…
The Feelies really care about their public. Lead vocalist-guitarist Glenn Mercer swears it’s true. So what if they only record when they are good and ready, or that they only gig in the flesh every three years or so? The Feelies care deeply about having an audience. According to Mercer,…
Napalm Death has been called the end of music. The English band has gone to the lead in taking music to its furthest illogical extreme. The group was among the first to add voltage and thundering rhythms to speed in order to create monstrous sixty-second bursts of sound. With all…
When they first hear it, folks with a high degree of prissiness in their blood tend to cringe and blink. “Bone Mama?” The term has the ring of a sordid nocturnal adventure down on Van Buren, or the chick who took on the frat house. It refers to deejay Mary…
On the cover of a video documenting Todd Rundgren’s latest recording session is a photo of his hands, each waving a symphony conductor’s baton. It is an appropriate symbol for a man who for twenty years has been his own maestro, conducting one of rock music’s most varied careers with…
When Living Colour steps out onto the stage these days and launches into “Elvis Is Dead,” the lyrics and the attitude answer a lot of stupid questions. The band members aren’t freaks. Rock ‘n’ roll is black. Chuck Berry invented it. And Elvis Presley was never the king. “That `King…
Once upon a time, a Colorado alternative band emerged from the semimoribund Denver music scene and began to create a buzz. Loyal homies packed large and small venues. Locally produced cassettes sold out entire runs in record time. The local alternative weekly began championing their cause. Shows in jaded metropolises…
Paul Simon prefers to explain his suburban musical globetrotting this way: “We’re sailing cultural seas that haven’t been charted,” he says in a record-company press release, “instead of merely pursuing popularity.” Okay. Love it or hate it. Hail it as a godsend or damn it as heresy. Whatever you think…
Mojo Nixon gets worked up when he recalls his introduction to the Sonics. It was back, back somewhere before he became Mojo. “I must have been ten,” he remembers, “but I knew then that here was something ugly. A bunch of guys out gettin’ big boners on rock ‘n’ roll…
