Gay jokes are nothing new to comedian Scott Thompson. After all, he’s gay and he tells jokes. But Thompson, a charter member of TV’s Kids in the Hall and a part-time player on HBO’s The Larry Sanders Show, sometimes tells gay jokes that aren’t very funny, at least not to…
Ron Carlson steps to the lectern at Changing Hands Bookstore. The podium sits beside the store’s “writing” section, next to the books designed to instruct and inspire budding authors. Copies of Carlson’s own new volume, The Hotel Eden Stories (Norton), are stacked nearby. The new book is a collection of…
Suicide Kings Suicide Kings (Rattle Records) Grievous Angels New City of Sin (Bloodshot Records) When Bruce Connole of the Suicide Kings opens his band’s debut CD with lines like “See the race I’ve run and now it’s over,” “I’m the setting sun that’s getting colder” and “Sold my soul for…
Chris Collingwood remembers thinking it was the dumbest thing he’d ever heard. He and new pal Adam Schlesinger were looking for a band name to hang on the serious, introspective songs they’d penned together as serious, introspective college students. As they discussed various monikers, Schlesinger’s mom overheard and had a…
Various artists Kerouac: Kicks Joy Darkness (Rykodisc) Talk about timing. Kicks Joy Darkness, an inventive take on selected Jack Kerouac poems and prose, hit the bins less than a day before Kerouac’s onetime cohort, Allen Ginsberg, trocheed his last couplet and joined his old Beat-buddy in the sky. Ginsberg’s passing…
Ben Folds is trying to explain why his band, Ben Folds Five, only has three people. Folds has been asked this before. “I’m not sick of the question yet,” he says. “I’m just sick of not having a good answer.” So, what is the deal with the name? “Well,” Folds…
His suit is pinstriped and loud. His tie is high, wide and noisy. His shoes are gaudy, two-toned wing tips and his fedora is the size of a full-grown, fur-bearing mammal. His name is Scotty Morris, and he’s the front man for the exceedingly hip West Coast swing band Big…
Crispin Glover is not a kook. Never mind the time he almost beheaded David Letterman with a platform-heeled karate kick. And forget the rumors that he hangs upside down from high-rise apartment balconies to relax. We won’t discuss Glover’s collection of doll eyes neatly arranged according to size, or his…
Van Morrison The Healing Game (Polydor) When you’ve put out 27 studio albums, as Belfast’s finest has, your audience checks out every new release to gauge the subtle differences with past work. Here’s how The Healing Game stacks up to Morrison’s past triumphs: 1. Anyone who counted how many times…
Caroline Whisnant is an attractive woman. Tall, well-proportioned, nice smile. Easy on the eyes, as it were. Sexist statements? Not when you consider that Whisnant performs opera and makes a career of playing beautiful, alluring women in various stages of duress. The soprano appeared as Freia, the Goddess of Youth…
1. Warrant, Belly to Belly (CMC/BMG) Duh. 2. Great White, Let It Rock (Imago) Long since abandoned by fans and glory, these bloated, balding bozos are still searching for that lost Mott/Bad Company riff and any stripper who still cares. 3. KISS, Unplugged (Mercury) Weren’t the lunchboxes, TV shows, comic…
In his critically hailed HBO special that aired in June, Chris Rock joked about how people say what they think other people want to hear. For example, he noted, nobody really wants to be an organ donor–people just say they do. Organ donation is for people with no faith, he…
Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, Mark O’Connor Appalachia Waltz (Sony Classical) Arvo Part Litany (ECM New Series) Uh-oh. It’s force-feeding time at the music trough again. Every so often, a clever mind from the classical kingdom decides to shove pop ideas up the genre’s decidedly non-pop form. The results are often…
R.E.M. New Adventures in Hi-Fi (Warner Bros.) Midway through R.E.M.’s new album, a perplexed Michael Stipe figuratively rubs his big, bald head and ponders, “This fate thing. I don’t get it.” Welcome to the occupation, Michael. Stipe’s professed befuddlement is understandable. After all, he and two of his bandmates, bassist…
Various artists Masters of Jazz: Volumes 1-4 (Rhino) Anyone compiling a CD look-see at the history of jazz is setting himself up for a fall. Especially if the project is stamped with a lofty title like Masters of Jazz. Such an anthology, to be truly representative, would have to include…
The Wipers are playing a show in town this week. That’s big news, even though head Wiper Greg Sage, a longtime icon of American indie rock, has lived in the Valley for almost seven years now. Sage takes the Wipers on frequent tours of Europe and the rest of the…
Hamell on Trial Big As Life (Mercury) David Lowery, chief smart ass for Cracker, once intoned in song that, “What the world needs now is another folk singer/Like I need a hole in my head.” David Lowery needs to meet Ed Hamell. Or, at least, check out Hamell’s striking debut…
Ween 12 Golden Country Greats (Elektra) There’s something very wrong with Ween’s new CD. For starters, 12 Golden Country Greats has only ten songs. And though they may indeed be “golden,” it’s doubtful that even the most encyclopedic of country connoisseurs would recognize such titles as “Piss Up a Rope”…
Zach Lind thinks back on the good old days and sighs. Lind, the drummer for Mesa upstarts Jimmy Eat World, recalls when he and his fellow Jimmys would pile into a van and head for Colorado or California, playing all-ages shows set up a day in advance by friends in…
(symbol) Chaos and Disorder (Warner Bros.) The appropriately titled Chaos and Disorder, the latest in a flush of new releases by the Artist Formerly Known As Prince, sounds a lot like what’s currently known as slop. It’s a sketchy piece of work, overblown in spots, half-baked in others, a generally…
Beck Odelay (DGC) What happens when a white guy from downtown L.A. starts hanging with kitschy Caucasians in Silver Lake? Does he lose his sense of hippity-hop? Does his swagger turn to slack? Does he even know who he is at the end of the day? When the white guy…
Patti Smith Gone Again (Arista) When Patti Smith sang “Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine” to open the first song on her first album, 1975’s Horses, she was an emerging icon, a rail-thin protopunk thumbing her nose at the heavens, daring the nearest deity to leave her alone…
