Back in the early ’90s, dance-hall toaster Buju Banton found himself deep in controversy over the lyrics to a song called “Boom Bye Bye,” which advocated violence against homosexuals. That meant a virtual crib death. “Through my travels I’ve seen certain things that I don’t believe in and don’t agree…
A more inspired side project than you might have expected from this motley bunch, Transplants features Tim Armstrong of Rancid, Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker, and Rob Aston, an Armstrong pal and aspiring rapper. When Armstrong’s gutter-punk-accented, mushmouthed voice appears on Transplants’ self-titled 2002 debut, the band manages to sound more…
It’s been a month to forget for the Dixie Chicks and for everyone else involved in country music radio. Owners of a No. 1 country single heading into March, the Chicks now find themselves in a shit storm thanks to that well-covered offhand comment about President Bush at a concert…
Countdown 8:00 p.m. EST, Monday, March 17 In the lobby of Miami Beach’s Radisson Deauville, on the eve of the Winter Music Conference, the music stops. President Buzzkill addresses the world. The face of George W. Bush replaces a Dirty Vegas video. The bright chatter among DJs, promoters, record label…
Singer Chester Bennington remembers his 10 years of musical obscurity and near-poverty in Phoenix, which explains why he’s so hungry now to enjoy Linkin Park’s rocky ride. “There were a lot of great bands in Phoenix I watched disappear,” says Bennington, 27, a former Maricopa County map-making employee who moved…
Kindred the Family Soul is a 10-piece band out of Philly that makes the kind of soul music you never hear on the radio. It’s not kiddy R&B or hip-hop. It’s not even the standard template of neo-soul, although that is how the band has been marketed as a neo-soul…
Sigur Rós makes beautiful but utterly confounding music. The Reykjavik, Iceland, band’s songs often snake through eight to 12 minutes of near-orchestral prog-rock. Lead singer Jon Thor Birgisson has a startlingly high, feminine voice; he also prefers to make an instrument out of his voice, forgoing lyrics in either English…
For all of his lovelorn songs, it’s not Lou Barlow’s wife that’s left him. It was his bandmates in Folk Implosion, a gifted side project if there ever was one. Longtime Sebadoh foil Jason Loewenstein opted for life in Kentucky (and as a solo act) over preserving the group’s waning…
No musical form, obviously, has been more pillaged by white musicians than the blues. Yet while acts like the Rolling Stones have added sophisticated rock to the music’s bare-bones origins, and others have turned it into rancid SUV rock à la today’s Eric Clapton, very few have gotten it truly…
Known as a live animal setting up its bank of Marshall stacks not on the stage but in the middle of the floor — Lightning Bolt is often hit by writers with hard-ass hyperbole that makes them sound like experi-metal terrorists. But the Providence bass/drums duo is merely the scariest…
Mike Ladd is hip-hop’s Baz Luhrmann and its Alvin Toffler. A maniacally brainy, thirtysomething lyricist-producer, Ladd fashions Luhrmannesque opera from a crude mash of classic material and current mediums, then embeds ’em like Toffler with modern Alvin philosophical meaning. If MTV wanted for the Beyoncé/Mos Def Carmen to turn out…
Richie Cole doesn’t like to indulge in trade secrets, which is too bad, because he swears he can re-create a wild 18-piece big band solely through a four-horn arrangement. That’s some kind of dexterity. “I’ve always had this sound in my head,” says the legendary bebop alto saxophone player from…
They’re the Hot Club of Cowtown, and they stand front and center in a new generation of young pickers and grinners who carry on their shoulders musical traditions that stretch back as far as the 1920s and as late as the ’40s and render those arbitrary bookends meaningless with wit,…
The 1990s brought two great technology hypes: the Internet and electronic music. Both were supposed to refashion the culture; both fell far short of their predicted impact. Both balloons fell back to earth a host of Internet stocks can be had for pennies, and “electronica” poster boys like the Chemical…
Tempe sucks a little less now. Two new clubs opened in the non-smoking-mandated, increasingly regulated, fashionably cynical college town this month, filling gaps in the local music scene for concertgoers and bands. The Clubhouse, formerly Eugene’s Rock Cafe, opened for business on March 7, tucked next to the Horse &…
AFI, an unusual hard-rock band, recruited veteran producers Butch Vig and Jerry Finn an unusual duo to produce its major-label debut, Sing the Sorrow. Vig made his name producing Nirvana’s Nevermind, and built on his heavy but dreamy style with Smashing Pumpkins and Garbage (for whom Vig drums). Conversely, Finn…
My dad sells coffee for a living. Joe Sumner’s dad just played halftime at the Super Bowl. My dad goes to church every Sunday. Joe Sumner’s dad owns a yoga studio. My dad’s name is Mark. Joe Sumner’s dad goes by Sting. Joe Sumner’s band, Fiction Plane, just released an…
Mellowing inevitably occurs with age, and Scotland’s onetime indie-rock answer Idlewild seems like it’s going prematurely gray. The quintet showed promise on its two previous albums, as lead singer Roddy Womble’s literature-informed lyrics collided with the band’s post-punk assault. Time, or mainstream ambition, however, has dulled Idlewild’s punk-rock blade. The…
On his sophomore turn, Fabolous sounds as if he’s sleepwalking through his Street Dreams. With a languid, stoned flow reminiscent of a less God-fearing Mase, Fabolous’ rhymes are hypnotic and enveloping at their best. But the 23-year-old Brooklyn MC and would-be Tupac incarnate seldom lives up to his potential here,…
Casual listeners, most of whom don’t normally delve deeply into the Delta blues, are almost always convinced, like so many blues “scholars,” that Robert Johnson was the be-all and end-all when it came to that mysterious Mississippi sound that crept up during the first half of the 20th century. But…
The uninitiated need only follow this recipe for a Molotov cocktail: Make a blend of Cypress Hill grooves, Rage consciousness, Chili Pepper outrageousness and Clash sensibility and pour into a petrol-filled Mexican Coke bottle, then use your cool uncle’s sweat-stained CBGB tee shirt for a fuse and voilà! The Mexico…
In the wake of Rolling Stone’s dramatic cover story about a former Nirvana cover band, Kurt Cobain becomes a modern-day media footnote in the evolution of a batch of fab Australian rockers. Admittedly, the Vines have procured a branch on the one-hit-wonder family tree with “Get Free,” but their elevation…
