Paging through a recent issue of Rolling Stone (something we do frequently in the office when in need of a good laugh), we came upon the magazine’s annual music awards. The Rolling Stone Readers Poll, never a barometer of good taste or intelligence, was especially appalling this year as it…
Is it too late to revise all those best-of-’99 lists? Surely anyone with two ears, a brain and a heart will slide this to the top if made aware of its compelling, and tantalizingly mysterious, tableaux of primary colors and thatched shadings. Papa M’s quasi-“debut” appeared in the bins without…
Even if someone had collected all the necessary statistical data to compile An Encyclopedia of Athlete Spousal Abuse Cases, it would hardly seem fair to confine these violations to one vocation. By the same token, is it fair to “Death” that it be restricted to such a trivial profession as…
If any of these milk-hued heroes like Kid Rock, Eminem, Limp Bizkit or Korn had real balls, they’d tell the Grammy Awards to fuck off. They’d gurgle 5.8 percent beer guzzled from cans and slur fizzy dialogue like “fuck Ricky Martin and Whitney Houston and the Backstreet shits” while appalled…
Bourbonitis Blues, Alejandro Escovedo’s sixth and latest solo album, is the culmination of a life spent growing up in public. It wasn’t an easy growth — his path has been pockmarked with deaths, births and changes in musical styles to match — but between the album’s swelling strings, ebullient country…
Alternative rock and golf are somewhat of an unlikely pairing. Sure, Alice Cooper plays golf, but he’s old enough to be considered Marilyn Manson’s grandfather. And yeah, mainstream people like Hootie and the Blowfish, Huey Lewis and Celine Dion play, but do they really count as musicians? Musicians aren’t generally…
As January ushers in the dead of winter — or at least our very mild Arizona version of it — the news and happenings in the local insurgent country ranks have been heating up. Here are a few morsels that found their way to our desk. Name Game: Local alt-country…
An album that defies easy dissection on most levels, Illyah Kuryahkin’s sophomore effort is also one of the more adventurous and sonically mesmerizing of the year. Dean Wilson (a.k.a. one-man band I.K.) first surfaced in ’96 with Count No Count, a kind of No Wave take on Guided by Voices’…
Not enough people heard the Pernice Brothers’ here’s-where-the-strings-come-in debut, 1998’s Overcome by Happiness, a record full of big melodies and tiny sentiments. And you can bet that in a year, the same will apply to Chappaquiddick Skyline, because both records never fly high enough to land on anyone’s radar. On…
One of the worst things about listening to Led Zeppelin was the munchies. Sure, “When the Levee Breaks” sounded just as good stoned as sober, but being sober was for sports or science class. And listening to Zep was what you did when you wanted to forget about form tackling…
For most people, music is a very personal matter. Songs, albums and artists carry a significant and significantly different meaning for each of us. That’s especially true with music critics. While we do get to reveal a little bit about our passions and taste through our writing, polls like annual…
There’s a reason the black leather jacket and the pompadour continue to stand as calling cards among lovers of ’50s rock ‘n’ roll. After all, they were two of the more disturbing fashion statements to parents whose kids were forsaking Pat Boone for Elvis Presley, Little Richard and Chuck Berry…
You Go-Go Girl! (Varese Sarabande) She may not have invented pop music. But because her pop’s surname just happened to be Sinatra, this minimally talented nepomaniac certainly exploited the genre for all it’s worth. “She” is Nancy Sinatra, she of the much-celebrated “laughing face” and less-lauded lousy pipes. Both are…
The Seventh Deadly Sin (Coroner Records/Atomic Pop) You’ll learn more about the seven deadly sins watching Gilligan’s Island than listening to Ice-T’s latest sloth-ass mess. Consider this: Each episode of G’s follies features a gluttonous Skipper who gobbles everything in sight, a short-fused Thurston Howell III who blows his wrathful…
Don’t know how Y2K is panning out for you so far, but I suspect there are plenty of people already trying to separate themselves from everything pre-millennium. Who could blame them for furiously pursuing new things? After reading all those “best of the century” lists, perhaps even you might consider…
In some ways Arizona’s first “official unofficial” showcase at SxSW wasn’t a big deal. Other cities, states and countries have been doing it for years. Hell, Seattle’s party is even promoed with a flier in the high-value real estate of the official party envelope you pick up with your…
Having being driven to the brink of insanity by computer problems, and considering there will be about 10 Arizona bands playing SxSW today, we’re going to switch tactics. twitter.com/martincizmar I’ll post pics, mini reviews and the like from SxSW this week, then probably use the account as an annoying self-marketing tool…
Year-end best-of lists are usually accompanied by depressing State of Music essays, the kind that take a sweeping view of significant happenings and industry trends and culminate with dire prognostications for the future. Inevitably, most of those things start to sound like a Chicken Little speech. If you tried to…
The No. 1-selling song of 1999 was Cher’s “Believe.” On her heels was TLC’s summer smash “No Scrubs,” and Monica’s snoozer “Angel of Mine.” Following those are Whitney Houston’s “Heartbreak Hotel” and Britney Spears’ “. . . Baby One More Time.” Sixpence None the Richer, Christina Aguilera, Sugar Ray, Deborah…
If Aimee Mann had sold one album for each word written about her, she’d make Alanis Morissette look like the struggling indie artist she probably ought to be. Nobody gets more press for having done so apparently little: one hit a very long time ago (“Voices Carry,” back when Mann…
Someone once noted that if there was a local Punk Preservation Society charter, Keith Jackson would be its Chairman of the Bored. Few things, it seems, can excite the musician like the subject of his favorite rock revolutionaries. Perhaps the only thing that can generate that type of boyish exuberance…
I have nothing against those softy-in-jeans journalist types who scurry to bended knee at the altar of, say, Fiona Apple and Built to Spill; I just can’t sit here and pretend to be one for whom taste is second nature. Taste, that is, as defined in complacent lists that always…
