The last five years have been tough on the Butthole Surfers. Their 1996 album Electric Larryland spawned the unlikely hit “Pepper,” an odd blend of rap and grunge that was the first taste of mainstream success for a group better known for scatological imagery and hair-raising orgies of psychedelic noise…
Being of original Southern heritage sometimes leads one into misguided reactionary territory, especially when you’re talking Southern Rock. There’s not a punk fan alive from south of the Mason-Dixon line, for example, who didn’t at one point disavow ever liking Lynyrd Skynyrd. Although I had a good excuse when, on…
Does one take seriously a guy in his 60s who claims, “Gonna do it to you baby ’til ya yell for more”? You do when he’s standing on his head and wrenching masterful machine-gun solos from his Strat.Maybe the only person ever to have appeared on The Gong Show who…
After New Times ran a feature last year focusing on four of the biggest-drawing tribute bands in the Valley, their audiences grew. Even naysayers who pooh-poohed the idea of tributes (read: other musicians) found themselves wanting to form a cover band for any number of bad reasons. But there was…
Selling out hasn’t been as simple as Tricky imagined. The former Adrian Thaws made reviewers swoon with 1995’s Maxinquaye, a moody, atmospheric tour de force that helped establish the trip-hop genre worldwide. But although he clearly felt worthy of the praise he received (his ego is as juicy and robust…
The first thing you don’t need to know about The Strokes is that they are handsome. All five of them — singer Julian Casablancas, guitarists Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr., drummer Fabrizio Moretti and bassist Nikolai Fraiture. We’re talking Gap-ad good-looking, with the right haircuts and the right wardrobe…
Just as in World War II, France has spent much of the rock era standing on the sidelines. While England and America carved up most of the Western pop empire between themselves, France was a musical irrelevancy: a land of accordions, Maurice Chevalier, rich cuisine and Jerry Lewis fanatics. But…
Canadians with a badass rep for onstage professional and personal pyrotechnics, Tricky Woo recently slimmed down from a quartet to a trio. But don’t let that lull you into thinking they’ve simmered down; TW still plows forth as manfully as any big-name stoner-rock outfit. It’s just that on their fourth…
Through a sparse guitar line and viola-and-drum interlude breaks a world-weary voice that intones, “I can’t go back to my favorite bar, ’cause now I’m sure that there’s some lessons that I’m never gonna learn.” In “Back to School,” the second song on Thalia Zedek’s debut solo album, Been Here…
I don’t know if the Butchies have seen the rock-crit glorification flick Almost Famous, but it’s pretty obvious that they don’t share director Cameron Crowe’s misty-eyed nostalgia for the rock-star excesses of the early ’70s. With the song, “Anything Anthology,” the opening track of their new record, 3, the lesbian-punk…
Sculpting one’s masterpiece has got to be an awfully self-conscious process, but Tucson-based Valley fave Rich Hopkins strikes the perfect balance on My Lucky Stars, kneading and rubbing contrasts together like a master. It’s musically expansive while devastatingly downcast, lyric-wise; the arrangements are tightly wound like a suspension coil, yet…
Run-D.M.C. created the perfect dramatization of what can happen when rap and heavy metal collide in their landmark 1986 video for “Walk This Way.” The now-classic image of Aerosmith’s Steve Tyler and Joe Perry crashing through the wall of D.M.C.’s rehearsal studio to discover a parallel universe of tough attitude…
The Amor Belhom Duo is the kind of group that people need to see about three times before they’re fully converted.The first time, audiences simply try to find an applicable category for music that wanders from ambient, somnambulant instrumentals to seductive French-pop balladry to noisy avant-punk to hints of Dick…
No one was very surprised when Tenacious D — the duo composed of vocalist/guitarist Jack Black and guitarist/backing vocalist Kyle Gass — finally made it big. It was clear early on that the D had something special, even if the meager audiences that showed up for weekly open-mike appearances at…
Angry Dirty Sanchez used to be the toast of Central High School. The teen punk trio, which consists entirely of 16-year-old Central High sophomores, was so popular with administrators that its weekend all-ages gigs at the Mason Jar and Nile Theater were regularly plugged over the intercom as part of…
According to Nietzsche, “A man’s maturity consists in having found again the seriousness one had as a child at play.” Of course, the Übermensch himself couldn’t have predicted youth culture, or that juvenilia would be pored over for things like artistic merit. But if he was right, Bis mastered adulthood…
During a 1993 MTV special on Nirvana, Dave Grohl took a shot at Tori Amos’ melodramatic, piano-ballad version of the band’s breakthrough hit, “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Amos had surely intended the cover as a tribute, a way of letting those with refined tastes know that this unwashed Pacific Coast…
Hailed six years ago in Rolling Stone as rock’s Great White Hope, DGeneration and its singer Jesse Malin summoned with aplomb the ghosts of Max’s Kansas City. The unruly quintet bottlenecked the Dictators, Dolls and Ramones and gloriously burped them forth into the faces of an uncaring and Korn-happy public…
By now L.A.’s kings of protopunk, wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am rock should need no introduction, although those who think they had the Cowgirls pegged as “just” a Stones/MC5/Dolls descendant might get a surprise or two while listening to this live album. Convening last May to tape a couple of gigs at Van Nuys’…
Between Texola (in the west) and Roland (in the east) run 330 miles of the worst road anywhere in the United States, and they run straight through the heart of Oklahoma. Driving Interstate 40 through the Sooner State is like navigating a bicycle down a flight of concrete steps. Blacktop…
Joe Strummer is having a good day. It’s mid-September, and despite recent world events, the former Clash front man is focused exclusively on the second album by his band the Mescaleros, Global a Go-Go. In late July and early August, they hit London, Manchester, New York, Toronto, Chicago, San Francisco…
Okay, so maybe Afroman isn’t the first guy who comes to mind when you think about September 11, but Ted Koppel could do worse than to have the straight-outta-Palmdale rapper on Nightline to talk about airport security. That’s because Joseph Foreman, Afroman’s laid-back, spliff-smokin’ Clark Kent, used to be airport…
