Before death metal hacked into the fray with its thesaurus-straining scenes of “multifarious carnage,” heavy-metal librettists generally confined themselves to four primary topic areas: vixen sex, war visions, trick-or-treat occultism and blue-faced teenage rebellion. The stuff of dreams for 15-year-old Reagan-baby boys, slipping into their headphones and away from the…
Soundgarden Down on the Upside (A&M) Extract Soundgarden’s DNA and you’ll see Zeppelin molecules on one helix and Sabbath matter on the other. Keep looking and you’ll uncover chunks of MC5 and the Stooges, and bits of the Beatles and Pink Floyd. You’ll find, in short, the echoes of pregrunge…
“What do you mean I don’t know metal? Hell, back in the day, I butt-rocked with the best of them.” Well, that’s what I would’ve said to the irate Crushed fan if she’d bothered to leave a name and number earlier this month when she called to dress me down…
Metallica Load (Elektra) Nice haircuts, guys. You and Soundgarden better not get your wardrobe trailers mixed up, or things are gonna get a bit confusing on the Lollapalooza main stage this summer. Whose idea was it, anyway? To gussy yourselves up like a Josta marketer’s vision of a grunge band…
TV characters who became American institutions in the ’70s had a nasty habit of growing stale as they “grew up.” Hot Lips Houlihan morphed into the Susan B. Anthony of the Korean DMZ, while everyone’s favorite bigot Archie Bunker devolved into a politically correct bartender so bland the show’s writers…
Killing Joke Democracy (Zoo) Killing Joke’s antisocial diatribe might seem adolescent if the band weren’t so smart and provocative. Far from the empty bitching of slackers who’ve run out of bud to smoke, this work by the London trio of Jaz Coleman, Youth and Geordie identifies and picks apart what…
From Tempe Police Department Narrative Report, incident number 96-078889. Compiled by officer #10060 (Blair R. Wrigley): Suspect #1: Hispanic male, approx. 19 yrs. old, 5’6″, 140 lbs., short black hair. Wearing a blue ball cap, a white tee shirt under a green tee shirt, and blue jeans. Suspect #2: Hispanic…
Dave Schuttenberg is Arizona’s bad boy of ska. He drinks, he smokes, he curses, he rides a scooter. He also leads Tucson’s pretty-white-boy ska outfit Dave’s Big Deluxe, the only known two-tone sextet ever to be named after a hamburger. Schuttenberg is standing outside Nile Theater in Mesa flanked by…
The lounge at the Ritz-Carlton on a Friday night in May looks like a Phoenix version of a Jazz Age speakeasy. There’s the maitre d’ who looks you over with a scowl like he’s waiting for a password, an opulent interior with overstuffed divans, overpriced drinks, even hostesses wearing narrow…
Superdrag singer/guitarist John Davis is too young for this shit. Ten minutes ago, Davis was right where he wanted to be–passed out in his Nashville hotel room. But then his band’s road manager started pounding on the door, yelling something about a phone interview and get your ass up now…
To: New Times Music Department From: The Revolver Re: A Vinyl Manifesto Print this or I’ll blow you up. –R Why vinyl? Because vinyl is the original frontier and the final outpost of integrity and idealism in a multinational industry so putrid with greed that Fife Slimington should consider it…
Bzzzzzzzz. Hear that noise? It might have something to do with all the Pollen in the air. Rumor has it these five cats from Pittsburgh are Steelers fans who hocked their van for Super Bowl tix and decided to stick around after the game and play for a while. Lucky…
Tish Hinojosa’s new album, Dreaming From the Labyrinth/Sonar del Laberinto is the most provocative and accomplished recording of the Austin singer/songwriter’s career. But you won’t hear it on mainstream radio for two reasons: It’s musically complex and it’s bilingual. Forget that those same factors contribute mightily to the CD’s luminescence…
Ask John Herndon of Tortoise to list the three albums that best represent his band’s apparent progressive-rock mindset and you might be surprised at what he answers. Or, rather, what he doesn’t. Herndon won’t mention Can’s Tago Mago, even though Tortoise often plays the same kind of jazzy, repetitive riffs…
This is a historic moment. We have before us the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations a new world order, a world where the rule of law, not the law of the jungle, governs the conduct of nations. –President George Bush in his televised speech “The Liberation…
Bad Religion The Gray Race (Atlantic) In light of two decades of pithy punk sloganeering, in which the naked expression of rage is usually regarded as a substitute for logic, the eloquence of Greg Graffin has often been lauded as a much-needed voice of intelligence. As co-founder of SoCal punk…
Doin’ It to Death During a break from a 1989 recording-studio session in upstate New York, the alumni of arguably the finest band in American pop music gathered over soda and takeout Chinese to invoke the man who had dragged them all to greatness. No one in the room–not Bobby…
If Woody Guthrie and Jane Fonda had somehow spawned a daughter, she would probably look and act a lot like Ani DiFranco. Live, the dreadlocked, body-pierced singer/songwriter defies the folk-musician stereotype of a quiet presence on a stool. She plays like a woman possessed, kicking the air and clawing her…
Hootie and the Blowfish Fairweather Johnson (Atlantic) A central tenet of my belief system can be summed up in three words: “Hootie is evil.” Yet Hootie’s frat-pop folky jangle can be as alluring as a siren’s song along a rocky coast, beckoning rock critics to their doom. To my horror,…
Underworld has already showed European club kids that electric guitars and live vocals can peacefully co-exist with techno. Now the British trio is using the same music to teach us Yanks a different lesson–that techno can too rock. With the recent U.S. release of Second Toughest in the Infants, Underworld–Karl…
When Shonen Knife parlayed a bubblehead image and clumsy fascination with American pop culture into cult-favorite status with downtown Manhattan hipsters in the late ’80s, the trio of Osaka housewives set a regrettable standard for Japanese girl bands. They were all giggle and no grit, play-acting the silly little Asian…
Paul Westerberg Eventually (Reprise) Bob Mould Bob Mould (Rykodisc) They’re twin pillars, bookend icons, the longtime alpha wolves of the alternative pack. Their style of music, considered left of the dial when Generation X was only halfway through the alphabet, is now in heavy rotation, and they’d be as wealthy…
