Remember in 1997, when you’d had just about enough of bands that would step on the distortion pedal and yell at the top of their lungs for the choruses, then everything but the bass and drums would drop out for the verses and get all spooky like the Pixies? Sure…
Now is as good a time as ever to redefine “desert rock.” For most people, it means expansive country rock with a couple of cacti in the background. But now, thanks to urban sprawl, it often means expansive country rock music surrounded by lots of sports bars and move-in-today apartments…
Who coined the term “world music?” Was it foreigners, resigned to Yankee cultural imperialism, who created it for Americans to signify “music you aren’t expected to like”? Or was it Westerners themselves, who like to tap their toes to a snappy melody but are traumatized by any instrumental music more…
Judging by the malevolently eager look on his face, whatever Dale Fox of Phoenix band World Class Thugs has been keeping in his trunk for the past six months promises to be good. It is. It’s three oversized masks of World Class Thugs singer Jocelyn Ruiz-Fox, blown up from a…
Even armed with an illustrated libretto, it’s hard to divine most rock opera story lines. Before Ken Russell’s film adaptation of Tommy revealed the importance of champagne, Marilyn Monroe, and baked beans to the plot, betcha just assumed it was about a deaf, dumb and blind kid pinball-messiah who gets…
Last month’s YouTube phenomenon — Alanis Morrisette’s parody of “My Humps” — revealed what we all suspected, that Fergie’s ode to her lady lumps just doesn’t stand up to lyrical scrutiny. The marvelous thing about last year’s YouTube phenomenon, Obadiah Parker’s acoustic revisiting of Outkast’s “Hey Ya” superimposed over the…
Although Dahl’s the closest thing the Valley has to a punk elder statesman, the bulk of Jeff Dahl’s extensive “three chords and a bad attitude” discography has always had more of a kinship with the glam precursors of punk (Mott the Hoople, the New York Dolls, the Stooges) than any…
If you believe in reincarnation as torture, then imagine all the A&R people who, in past lives, signed nothing but copycat bands and reality show winners, returning to this world only to be demoted to the publicity department, being handed a headscratcher of an album like Priestbird’s debut In Your…
After touring incessantly from 1996 to 2001, local trio Fred Green had an enviable fan base and horror stories from the road to prove it. Tons of ’em. The time their roadies unwittingly trashed Bruce Willis’ guesthouse. The time vocalist/guitarist Todd Minnix got hopelessly lost after a gig until drummer…
Before Shane MacGowan and his rotting teeth had the ruffian idea of merging punk and traditional Irish music, all Celtic headbangers had were The Irish Rovers (who were Canadian, for Chrissakes), the Clancy Brothers (who weren’t all brothers) and the Chieftains (whose sound relied heavily on a piccolo, the single…
A video on YouTube titled Great Moments in History begins, somberly enough, with the strains of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. All the usual throat-swelling suspects are paid a reverent visit — Kennedy’s inaugural address, Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, Elvis on The Ed Sullivan Show, the Beatles at…
Most critics gave up on these horndogs back in ’68, when they had the temerity to boot out founder Al Kooper to get someone who could really shhhaaaang! The counterculture gave up on ’em completely when they went on a 1970 State Department-sponsored tour of Eastern Europe and had to…
Until some impresario rounds up a troupe of working prostitutes to personally give each audience member a hand job, you’re not going to get a better wet-dream marketing triumph than The Pussycat Dolls. Originally a neoburlesque dance troupe in L.A. that quickly franchised in Sin City, the whole PCD enterprise…
Think about how many reality-TV-show marriages have ended in divorce — and then think about how many groups created in the artificial light of television (The Monkees, The New Monkees, The Partridge Family, The Archies, Kaptain Kool and the Kongs, Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem, The Bugaloos, Cyanide, Josie…
Long before morphing into a three-headed disco machine, the Brothers Gibb recorded some of the weirdest head albums ever made. Robert Pollard of Guided By Voices ranked Bee Gees 1st among his all-time favorite albums. Imagine how many acid trips went awry with morbid advice like “Don’t go talking too…
When Sgt. Pepper first came out, one reviewer called it “George Martin’s finest hour.” He’s had several cracks at cheapening that high-water mark, from producing the disastrous Sgt. Pepper movie soundtrack to the George Martin: In My Life album on which he gave everyone from Sean Connery to Goldie Hawn…
If all that happens to us skin dolls after we die is an underground picnic for insects, well, my guess is that Blessedbethyname’s Eddie Kelly would have a lot of empty space on his hard drive. In the time that it took him to put his personal demons behind him,…
The year is drawing to a close, and once again critics are at loggerheads wondering what the album of the year will be. In a year where no one release unzips its fly and pisses all over the competition from a lofty height, everyone is in complete agreement over which…
“People get caught up and lose everything they have trying to be famous. I like making safe, smart, calculated moves.” So says Will Glass, a.k.a. Intrinzik, during our sprawling discussion — and along the way, he’ll also advocate keeping a day job, having something to fall back on, and being…
In Backbeat Books’ newly published Skydog: The Duane Allman Story, author Randy Poe gives a thorough account of Duane’s recorded legacy up through his output with the Allman Brothers Band, which amounts to two studio albums and a legendary Fillmore live set. These remain the benchmark by which every subsequent…
The kiss of death when describing a blind date is that he/she/it has a “great personality.” The kiss of death when describing a band is that it has “great musicianship.” Working twixt both extremes are these Finnish black metal pushers — great personalities fermenting beneath a mulch field of great…
Somewhere, “power-pop” sticklers are brooding that these Oklahomans can’t possibly apply that mantle to what it is that they do. According to most universally accepted theorems, most power-pop bands are in their late 30s and early 40s, unless they had some estimable RIAA success in the ’70s — then they’re…
