Recognized for producing of some of the greatest records of the punk era (Elvis Costello, The Damned, the Pretenders), it’s his own records where Nick Lowe left the most indelible mark. Witness Yep-Roc’s recent 30-year anniversary edition of Pure Pop for Now People. In 1978, dressing up like the Riddler…
Recognized for producing of some of the greatest records of the punk era (Elvis Costello, The Damned, the Pretenders), Nick Lowe left the most indelible mark on his own records. Witness Yep-Roc’s recent 30-year anniversary edition of Pure Pop for Now People. In 1978, dressing up like the Riddler was…
You have only weeks to make Antique Scream your favorite local band. That’s right, a band you sometimes could’ve seen three nights a week on Valley stages, a band used to peering out from those stages to see a “bartender’s only” show then playing their asses off anyway, a band…
The biggest problem with biopics is that the longer and more impressive the career that’s documented, the greater the number of milestone events that need to be crammed into a two-hour storyline. Shwayze does not have that problem. Their exploits unfold on the small screen, where there’s plenty of tape…
In a parallel universe that gets everything wrong, Buzz Osborne and Dale Crover would be capping the Melvins’ first quarter-century mulling over whether to wear tuxes or L.A. Dodgers jerseys to their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Melvins albums would’ve become progressively slicker and more pedestrian over…
Power pop has always been about the comfort factor, the idea that no matter how dicey a boy-girl song situation is, the love emanating from a stack of carefully chosen records is somehow going to make everything all right. Tempe’s Sugar High has not been immune to this sort of…
Rich and famous bands into their 10th year and sixth album demonstrate a worldview tempered by easy women and shysters. Hard-working bands with a growing cult following, like the Bay Area trio Totimoshi, demonstrate a worldview tempered by . . . actual observation! Singer and guitarist Antonio Aguilar describes the…
Ringo’s All-Starr shows used to be just that: All stars. You had actual frontmen of bands (Mark Farner, Peter Frampton, Burton Cummings, Randy Bachman, Felix Cavaliere, Levon Helm, Joe Walsh, John Entwhistle, Gary Brooker, Dave Edmunds, Ian Hunter, and Jack Bruce to name too many), all happy to be able…
The only thing music correspondents are concerning themselves with right now is what’s the song of the summer gonna be — that special confection that encapsulates in 3 1/2 minutes something that’s going to make life on a planet that’s cooking itself with Jiffy-Pop finality worth sticking around for. Well,…
Detractors tell you American Idol is ruining pop music. Alarmists go even further, reminding us that American Idol is pop music evil incarnate, having secretly replaced the rich taste of The Beatles, Elton John, Michael Jackson, and U2 that we used to enjoy with the sound of Davids Cook and…
Down the list of least needy causes, it’s just below a man standing next to his Hummer bumming for gas. But any true lover of melodic pop music oughtta sign a petition to get Graham Nash inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. What’s that, you say? Nash…
The third album is the one fans generally have to worry about. It’s usually the one in which a band has exhausted its supply of genuinely inspired musical ideas and now has to come up with brilliance on the fly. It has to point to some fearless new direction, one…
Down the list of least needy causes, it’s just below a man standing next to his Hummer bumming for gas. But any true lover of melodic pop music oughta sign a petition to get Graham Nash inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. What’s that, you say? Nash…
2008 is proving to be a quizzical summit for Jimmy Eat World. The global masticators from Mesa are touring in support of the still-new Chase This Light (released last October), an album designed to recapture the directness and lightness of “The Middle” after the collective “huh” with which many critics…
There is a portion of Police and Elvis Costello devotees who have single-mindedly followed both artists’ careers through three decades, tenaciously collecting each cherished release and carefully housing them in clear vinyl slipcases. There’s also a large contingent of mutual casual fans — the ones who will probably attend the…
It’s no small source of stupid pride for me that there are a million cool anagrams for my name, everything from Mr. Iodine Scene to I Sneer Demonic to No Dicier Semen. Any one of these would make a natty album title. But apparently, it’s equally no small source of…
Ask anyone alive during our country’s 200th birthday in 1976, and they’ll tell you it was still the Me Decade, but filtered through Eisenhower eyes, since America had less past to reprocess. On TV, there was plenty of unapologetic jiggle alongside the Happy Days marathon. In music, the ’70s excesses…
Source of pride for living in Mesa, AZ: Google “woman offers sex for gas,” and your hometown comes up on the first nine hits. Source of shame for living in Mesa, AZ: Read those nine stories and see the unappetizing mug shot that sadly illustrates how it was the woman…
Before tax specialists H&R Block admitted to overstating its earnings for 2003 and 2004 by $91.1 million, founder Henry W. Block used to appear in its TV commercials, itemizing “the 17 reasons why you should let us prepare your income tax.” Taking a subliminal cue from the Block head himself,…
With all the disparate influences Sonorous has in its lexis, the percentages of what you’re going to get (and when) are always in flux, and this clashing of expectations constitutes the best moments on the group’s second CD, recorded “live” to tape during two successive nights at the Lost Leaf…
Scan the celebrity support of our presidential hopefuls, and it becomes glaringly obvious that none seems to be attracting the funk endorsement. Sure, John McCain has Sly Stallone’s backing, but coaxing Sly Stone out of seclusion would be way more of a coup. Mitt Romney has Donny & Marie Mormonic…
For those of you going through “year-in-review” withdrawal, here’s a day-by-day account of what the year’s given us so far. January 1: Dick Clark’s “New Years Rockin’ Eve” hardly rocks, with Fergie, The Jonas Brothers, Carrie Underwood, and Miley Cyrus doing the honors. But for the third straight year after…
