At the time, no one could have known how important Nirvana’s appearance on Saturday Night Live would be, how many bands would form in its wake, how different the world would sound soon after it happened. Nirvana was just another band on the way up that Saturday Night Live was…
“Burn down the disco. Hang the blessed DJ because the music that they constantly play says nothing to me about my life.” — The Smiths (1986) According to DJ Emile, there should be panic in the streets of Phoenix because nightlife here may never be the same again. One of…
The Peeps are discordantly glamorous. Guitarist Paula Monarch is all tattoos and red hair. Bassist Chela Mischke is tall and dark — with dark makeup and a helmet of even darker hair. Liz Adams is shy and soft-spoken until she gets behind her drum kit and becomes a reckless blur…
The Promise Ring Very Emergency! (Jade Tree) Sad to say, the American emo scene is quietly turning into what will most likely be the next decade’s nostalgia-tinged Monster Ballads compilations pitched on late-night TV. You may argue the point, of course. Emo fans are nothing if not fiercely protective of…
It’s easy to be taken aback by the depth of Calexico’s The Black Light. In under 60 minutes, the group’s auteurs (and erstwhile Giant Sand rhythm section) John Convertino and Joey Burns explore more than a dozen musical idioms and bring those elements to life with the cinematic grandeur of…
Major record labels are still pissed off about digital distribution. The concern that free, nearly perfect copies of songs and albums would be scattered all over the world led to a concerted effort a couple months ago by the Big Five record companies, audio companies and electronics firms to make…
Sam Lay is a traveling blues museum. He helped blues go electric in the late 1950s and early 1960s, playing drums for Little Walter, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, James Cotton, Lightnin’ Hopkins and Hound Dog Taylor — the creators of what’s now called Chicago blues. “I’ve been out there so…
“Yeah, Kraftwerk and the Backstreet Boys,” chuckles Markus Schulz. The Phoenix DJ is laughing at the juxtaposition of the two, shall we say, diverse artists. For Schulz both have played important, though vastly different, roles in his development as an internationally respected DJ and music-industry player. The former — the…
Gomez Liquid Skin (Virgin) When Gomez released its debut album, Bring It On, last year, the group immediately drew favorable comparisons to everything from the Beatles, to the Band, and Beck in its native England. The band won the U.K.’s coveted Mercury Prize, a slew of other music biz awards…
Taking their nom de rock from the opening line of Iggy & the Stooges’ punk classic, “Search and Destroy,” the Streetwalkin’ Cheetahs — an L.A.-based quartet — tried to change the world by sounding like a cross between the aforementioned musical metaphorical morons and their Detroit brothers-in-protopunk arms, the MC5;…
Following the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy in 1968, children’s watchdog groups sprang up and pointed a collective finger at — what else — cartoon violence! Kiddie animation seemed an unlikely scapegoat. After all, James Earl Ray didn’t drop a 16-ton Acme anvil to kill the…
There is something wrong with Thermos Malling. Maybe growing up in strip-mall Phoenix did him in. Forming the melted-delta meta-blues duo Doo Rag — in which he played drums on things as various as film reels, horse troughs and suitcases — may have warped him. Perhaps creating a vocal-amplification device…
Outrageous Cherry Out There in the Dark (Del-Fi 2000) At first squint, it may seem a tad oxymoronic to be told that a terrific new album will take you on a journey. After all, critics have been employing that standard ever since Bob Dylan painted his first masterpiece. Even today’s…
Bill Blake, Serene Dominic, Bob Mehr. Three sharply seasoned music critics. Together this trio of rock snobs has lauded thousands of deserving albums up to high heaven and drop-kicked 10 times that number down to the gallows. But now they’ve grown tired and jaded, unwilling even to lay their eyes…
When Outside Looking In: The Best of the Gin Blossoms hits stores on October 19, the first question on the lips of most people will be, “Why?” Why would a band that broke up less than three years ago and with only two albums (and one EP) to its credit…
Yellow Submarine, the 1968 full-length Beatles animated movie, has been rereleased to much fanfare, but what about The Beatles, the ABC-TV animated cartoon series that aired Saturday mornings from 1965 to 1968? There were 39 half-hour shows in all, each with two episodes and a pre-karaoke sing-along in the middle…
It’s never too late for a comeback in rock ‘n’ roll, when every has-been is one fluke hit away from being a still-is. Yet even with that in mind, They Might Be Giants is perhaps an unlikely candidate for a resurgence, although it might be too soon to term the…
The year is 1978. Son of Sam gets life, the Pistols lose theirs and John Lennon still has his. Sandinista guerrillas attempt to extricate Nicaraguan life by overthrowing its government. John Belushi spoofs frats in National Lampoon’s Animal House. We are standing in the Phoenix Veterans’ Memorial Coliseum 10 rows…
The Go Whatcha Doin’ (Sub-Pop) For rock ‘n’ roll fans, these are troubled times. Contrary to popular belief, it has nothing to do with the emergence of the Backstreet Boys, Ricky Martin, Limp Bizkit or any of the other cretins currently occupying the upper echelon of Billboard’s Top 200. Manufactured…
It’s a muggy Friday night outside the Metro in Chicago, a club just down the street from Wrigley Field. As drunk and raucous Cubs fans head into the stadium for that night’s game, inside the club, equally drunk and raucous fans wait for an event of a different kind: a…
This week Petula Clark takes the Gammage Auditorium stage in the touring version of the Broadway musical Sunset Boulevard, stepping into the mole, I mean the role, of Ms. Norma Desmond. And when she utters those immortal lines “I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille,” you can bet her beauty…
Life isn’t easy for Anton Newcombe, the 31-year-old cultish maestro behind the Brian Jonestown Massacre, possibly the most controversial band you’ve never heard of. Newcombe — also known as Anton A. Newcombe and, inexplicably, Dr. Anton A. Newcombe — is the only constant of the decade-old group. The Brian Jonestown…
