When in 1980 I first jammed my eight-track cartridge of Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! into the maw of my father’s massive console stereo, and he heard the boinky-squeaky sounds emerging from his speakers, he looked at me like I’d lost my natural 9-year-old mind. I…
You don’t see the “Simultaneous Two New Album Release” every day, and with good reason. 1991: Nobody can convince Axl Rose to pare down a pair of new Guns N’ Roses albums, each CD with over 75 minutes of music — the length of two White Album sets minus all…
And then Lou Reed says, “I love you.” It’s his way of answering a question that could, in truth, be interpreted as a vague compliment — something about how his albums have never conformed to fad or fashion, something about how Lou Reed albums always sound like Lou Reed albums…
Traditional Irish folk music has been combined with plenty of different musical styles, so you’d think mixing it with punk and hard-core would be some kind of joke, right? Wrong. The Dropkick Murphys, Boston’s premier Irish punk working-class band, uses bagpipes, grinding guitars and bone-shaking rhythms. Three-chord punk blasts surround…
Local rap-metal combo Bionic Jive was all set to play a high-profile showcase at New York’s CBGB on May 29. It was supposed to have been the group’s big break, as the proposed gig would’ve boasted an audience filled with record-label suits and A&R types from nearly a dozen companies…
The Tavern, as it’s called, is the only rock ‘n’ roll bar in town. It’s located down the highway, past the car dealership and the strip mall, and sits next to the one shop in town that rents out porn videos. Seasoned Oldsmobiles and Fords clutter the parking lot, and…
Tragedy has been a constant companion of the Promise Ring through the past couple of years. In early 1998, while on tour, the band’s van flipped over on an icy road and left all its members hospitalized; guitarist Jason Gnewikow spent three weeks in a hospital room with a broken…
Back in the early ’90s, music constructed out of the breakbeat branched into two distinct factions: hip-hop and drum and bass. Separated by the Atlantic from their stateside counterparts and responding to their own socioeconomic conditions, British drum and bass producers bred a different kind of animal altogether — twice…
By the fall of 1959, Marty Robbins had amassed a recorded catalogue of five albums and 32 singles. Embedded in this waxwork were songs with whistling, songs with yodeling, songs with rockabilly guitar licks and songs with Little Richard-type squeals. One song even had sped-up chipmunk vocals. There was a…
Invariably, conversations at the New Times offices drift to topics such as, does Britney Spears need a spanking, and if so, would she accept one? (Answers: Yes, and probably.) Or, those guys from ‘N SYNC and the Backstreet Boys must be gettin’ it on more than a lounge singer in…
Look at the latest industry sales meters — Billboard, SoundScan — and at the top you’ll see the usual suspects: Britney, Eminem, matchbox 20. But among those familiar names you’ll also find a relatively unknown commodity, a new aggro-metal band called A Perfect Circle. While the music-biz hype machine usually…
Wig-sporting, cosmetic-caked Chick Cashman saunters onto the Club Congress stage with the Countrypolitans looking like a cross between some Warhol Superstar and Ziggy-era Mick Ronson and a teenage transvestite hooker swathed in mom’s scarves, cologne and the aura of the back room of Max’s Kansas City. Cashman’s porcelain skin, snake…
As Bash & Pop reported last week, members of the Phoenix rap combo Underground Empire and a related side project, The Ten Commandments, were scheduled to perform at a postconcert party in Philadelphia on May 20 hosted by Jay-Z and Da Brat. Sadly, the gig was canceled after one of…
Folks who don’t get the aesthetic parallels between, say, costumed (if admittedly rocking) clowns like Paul Revere and the Raiders and Slipknot, or the cultural similarities between of-their-era mainstream metalheads like Grand Funk Railroad and Korn, probably haven’t seen any of those excruciating where-are-they-now? features that VH1 banks with regular…
Lately, Modest Mouse front man Isaac Brock has been fond of telling rock critics about his run-ins with Satan — an explanation for the grim content of the trio’s latest record and major-label debut. Such fire-and-brimstone rationalizations might sound strange coming from a young man who, in the past, has…
About time a bio was written on Sonny Rollins, the last living jazz patriarch, who also met repeatedly with the author as the book was taking shape. Not that the saxman was pleased with the project, to which he admits he “reluctantly agreed, feeling that it would probably be written…
In 1971, John Lennon issued a No. 1 album and Top 5 single both titled “Imagine.” The following year, Lennon and Yoko Ono self-directed a 55-minute film also titled Imagine, which included clips for all 10 of the album’s songs plus two from Ono’s Fly record, making it the precursor…
When über-label conglomerates PolyGram and Universal Music merged just over a year ago, it shook the record industry to its very foundation, swallowing or killing long-established labels like A&M and Geffen, and leaving a trail of displaced bands in its wake.This meant disaster for literally hundreds of groups that saw…
In May 1997, singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley put on his best thrift-store suit and got a friend to drive him to the Memphis Zoo. Buckley, an ascendant alternative-rock icon and reluctant heartthrob, had decided to apply for a job as a zookeeper.The 30-year-old Buckley had temporarily relocated from New York to…
Mention to Jay Busch that he seems to be scuffling for gigs, and he’ll laugh. “It goes with the job description. It’s like the ingredient list on a food package. “Scuffle’ is near the top of the list of ingredients for a working musician.” He pauses, and then adds, “”Remuneration’…
Are you ready to rock? Are you ready to rip it up? Do you know what I’m talking about?When sung by Henry Rollins, the opening lines of his version of Thin Lizzy’s arena inciter “Are You Ready” makes it wallopingly clear that Rollins knows what he’s talking about when it…
Sometimes towering insignificance is the very thing that draws the most attention. Take Sony Legacy reissuing not one, but four Burton Cummings CDs with previously unheard bonus cuts.Burton Cummings? In rock ‘n’ roll hero terms, he’s Atom Man, the Justice Leaguer who only saved the day by doing something really…
