In 1982, when up-and-coming video stars were trying to look like supermen of suave, Detroit-born singer Marshall Crenshaw came on like a mild-mannered Clark Kent, albeit one with a secret weapon–an encyclopedic knowledge of pop music past and present, which he readily applied to his own work. Shortly after his…
Karen Carpenter Karen Carpenter (A&M) Both A&M honchos (Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss) thought the solo album Karen Carpenter spent much of 1979 making was a bomb, and wanted it diffused without a public hearing. So did brother Richard Carpenter, but for more personal reasons. The chief architect of the…
Angry young men? Billboard’s overrun with ’em. Angry old men? Congress has cornered the market. But angry middle-aged men? Not a big draw. At 45, Graham Parker finds himself between a rocker and a hard sell, despite his protests that he’s “as mellow as a train wreck.” On his current…
Wesley Willis Fabian Road Warrior (American) That thud you’re hearing is the sound of thousands of hardworking songwriters smashing their heads against a wall. Why? Because Wesley Willis–a tone-deaf, schizophrenic singer whose songwriting consists of a solitary, built-in Casio keyboard played ad infinitum–is being courted by a cavalcade of major…
If your patented audio Halloween greeting is that old, dusty Chilling Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House album, here’s a suggestion: This year, dump it and pipe out something that will inflict some genuine psychological damage. That’s right, surround your house with that most horrifying emanation from the rock-star ego–the…
Promoters are billing the Beach Boys, currently on their 35th-anniversary tour, as “America’s Fun, Fun, Fun Ambassadors.” But considering the dirty laundry the Wilson brothers and their bad-tempered cousin Mike Love have worn over the years, a more fitting alias might be “America’s Bad Boys of Rock!” What’s that you…
To date, there have been one official Who Farewell Tour in 1982, a Live Aid reunion in 1985 and a 25th-anniversary reunion in 1989 that basically was a rerun of the first farewell tour. Just as it takes the elderly longer to get out of bed in the morning, it…
John Cale Walking on Locusts (Rykodisc) When John Cale is in his deep and heavy mode, no one in rock ‘n’ roll is deeper and heavier. His old partner Lou Reed has to dress like a college professor, read his lyrics from a music stand and write dry, boring pieces…
By design, bootlegs are supposed to be against the rules–people pay top dollar for the illicit thrill of hearing music not meant for world consumption. Tacking an “official” seal onto the forbidden fruit leaves a bad aftertaste, like parents telling their teenage son it’s okay to smoke dope and have…
Admit it. You want the Macarena to be over as much as the media do. Even Regis and Kathie Lee recently informed their viewers that the Macarena was nearly a dead item. Then when nighttime rolled around, David Letterman did his part by shoving a Macareniac into a waiting cab…
And now a word about continuing higher education from Shamsi Ruhe, lead singer of the Tempe rock group One. “Me and Shahzad are going back to school. No more of this slacker/dropout business.” She grins before turning dead serious. “It’d be great if the music thing worked out, but if…
Love Nut Bastards of Melody (Interscope) As a genre, power pop didn’t always guarantee great songwriting, a la XTC, Elvis Costello or Blondie. The term also covers second-tier acts like 20/20, the Dwight Twilley Band and the Producers, who consistently adhered to one simple formula: Leave the verses bland and…
George Jones I Lived to Tell It All (MCA) Issued to tie in with George Jones’ tell-all autobiography of the same name, this album picks up Jones’ story at one of its most infamous low points. Married to his first wife, Shirley, the King of Country Music is reduced to…
Ever go to a KISS convention and see people clamoring for a Bruce Kulick doll, or a lunchbox with Eric Singer’s mug plastered on the side? Of course not! It took Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley 13 pageant-free years to figure out what the rest of us knew all along–KISS…
Creedence Clearwater Revival’s 1970 hit “Lodi” immortalized the New Jersey town as a hard-luck haven for touring musicians, as far removed from fame and fortune as Earth is from Uranus. But imagine John Fogerty turning punk, wearing a Toys “R” Us skeleton costume and employing sidemen bedecked with “devil locks”…
Had relations been warmer between him and Warner Bros., we might still be on a first-name basis with the Artist Formerly Known As Prince. He’s made no secret of his disdain for the terms of his recording contract, to the point of shaving his facial hair so it spelled out…
Elvis Costello and the Attractions All This Useless Beauty (Warner Bros.) In his sleeve notes for this year’s Goodbye Cruel World reissue, Elvis Costello congratulated us for purchasing his worst album ever. He was good to his word–until recently, that messy aberration was the substandard bearer for Costello’s extensive body…
Neil Young & Crazy Horse Broken Arrow (Reprise) Among the phrases you least want to hear from a musician, “Hey, let’s jam” ranks down there with “So, she’s your sister, huh?” and “Don’t worry, it’s not loaded.” But at least ol’ Neil isn’t shooting blanks in the gee-tar department for…
The Grifters Ain’t My Lookout (Sub Pop) Too often I’ll forget a CD in my portable player until I go to put in another disc miles from home. Without the proper jewel on hand, I stash the stray disc in another case for safekeeping. Because of this unsavory practice, it…
The Kelley Deal 6000 Go to the Sugar Altar (Nice Records) There are roughly two kinds of identical twins in the world: Those content to live life as a unit (and perhaps star in Doublemint commercials), and those who separate to carve out their own spaces in the world–an often-painful…
In 1968, Johnny Cash’s Live At San Quentin cut “A Boy Named Sue” became the first song in Top 40 history to have a cuss word (bitch) bleeped out on the air. Fair enough–while bad words go over big with shackled audiences, no one expected the Man in Black to…
The Entertainment Monitor covers the entire country, but so far only two Valley bands have made the grade. The Meat Puppets were awarded a measly “D” for references to amphetamines, but dig the special editor’s note about No Joke: “Many of the songs do not tell concrete stories and many…
