Though it was more than 20 years ago, I’ll never forget my first glimpse of Playboy Mansion West. The lush, green lawns, the exotic birds and animals wandering around, the waterfall cascading into the swimming pool, the stately House That Hef Built. All of which were nothing compared to the…
Hell-Bent: Insurgent Country Volume 2 (Bloodshot) Insurgent, indeed! How dare they, these young bands of scofflaws, going and recording songs that are actually representative of the heart and soul of authentic American country music. There’s nary a ten-gallon hat, daintily trimmed mustache or skintight pair of jeans to be seen…
At last–I’ve found it! After years of vein-popping concentration searching for unique descriptions, after developing blisters on every finger from thumbing through thesauruses looking for new adjectives, I’ve discovered the ultimate way to determine whether a song is good. But I’ll give credit where credit is due: I owe it…
Life is all about choices, and Ralph Stanley’s first big choice was between a pig and a banjo. At the tender age of 11, Ralph’s mother gave him a $5 bill–no small sum in 1938, especially in the hills of Virginia near the Tennessee border where the Stanleys lived (to…
Insincerity blurs many a postmortem tribute album. What were the performers’ true relationships to the featured legend? Were they just hired guns used for marquee value? Why should it be considered a “tribute” to rerecord a lesser version of a hit? Can a “tribute” recording dishonor the original artist? When…
Mike Watt is an easygoing sort. He’s a big, friendly guy with a gruff voice that makes him sound even bigger and friendlier on the phone. At the moment, Watt’s speaking from Los Angeles. The rambling conversation concerns, among other things, Watt’s long career as one of the better-known and…
To his parents, he is O’Shea Jackson. To certain members of the population, he is the “Nigga America Loves to Hate.” But to thousands of rap fans, he is simply known as Ice Cube. Once a greasy, Jheri-curl-wearing homeboy straight outta Compton and a member of the controversial group N.W.A…
Trisha Yearwood Thinkin’ About You (MCA) And you won’t feel like a dweeb thinkin’ about her, either. Trisha Yearwood is a rare find–she’s inoffensive to both new “young country” fans and old holdout traditionalists. Trish and her producer have picked an intelligent, well-written batch of tunes with no self-congratulatory “thank…
Feast your eyes on these humble liner notes: “THIS is an event. Not merely the release of more ‘product,’ but a major milestone in the annals of Rock.” What could it be? A recording of Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley singing together? A Sgt. Pepper outtake? Dylan’s Royal Albert Hall…
March 22, 1995 New songs, old songs and a studied sense of slack highlighted a performance by Cake at the Rockin’ Horse last week. Singer John McCrea, a brimmed fishing hat on his head and an undersize acoustic guitar between his arms, looked like a slovenly Jimmy Buffett as he…
If there’s one place in a man’s home where he’s allowed to do whatever he wants–other than the bathroom–it’s his bedroom. And Prescott’s Chad Calhoun has chosen to utilize his as a recording studio. Calhoun (under the name Big Tin Cactus) sent in a six-song load titled Gravity that he’d…
Two years ago, Phoenix’s then-newest oldies station, KPSN-FM “Sunny 97,” hit the airwaves playing Arthur Conley’s 1967 hit “Sweet Soul Music.” At noon on November 28, 1994, KPSN played it again for the last time. David Bowie’s “Changes” followed, along with a new ten-minute station ID spelling out exactly what…
South by Southwest. What does it all mean? Does anybody get anything accomplished there? Are careers made? Boosted? Ignored? Is it an invaluable chance to meet industry insiders and enhance one’s working knowledge of the music business? An opportunity to see the latest groundbreaking pop, rock and roots acts while…
Chuck Cleaver of the Ass Ponys has stories to tell. Some of the stories are about himself growing up in a small Ohio town. There’s the one in which Cleaver found a dead body on his way to high school. Cleaver says it was really no big deal. He was…
If 1994 was the Summer of Punk, what gives for 1995? The Spring of Spunk? The Fall of Funk? John Brannon would go for something like the Year of Junk. Brannon’s the lead howler for Detroit’s Laughing Hyenas, a band that incorporates the kind of junky, blues-based mayhem that inspired…
If they gave out Grammys for ingenuous songwriting, dazzling lyrical word play, supreme originality and courteous telephone manners, Robyn Hitchcock would need a moving van to haul home his trophies. The Grammys being what they are, though, Hitchcock needn’t be reserving shelf space. But that shouldn’t stop you from rushing…
Quick–who did more for rock ‘n’ roll, Martha and the Vandellas or Peter, Paul and Mary? Your first instinct is to go with the girls from Detroit. Martha and the Vandellas’ biggest hits–“Heat Wave,” “Dancing in the Street” and “Nowhere to Run”–were driven by heart-pounding rhythms and what sounded like…
The Beat Angels at Long Wong’s? Unthinkable? Impossible? Perhaps, considering the bile that the Angels’ fey, puckish singer Brian Smith has spewed on the Mill Avenue “scene” in these very pages. But apparently, Smith and the boys’ insatiable need to simply “entertain” won out; last Saturday, “bile” turned to “smile”…
The homemade silver cross hanging from the dash-mounted compass swings back and forth as America’s Polka King barely keeps his Olds Cutlass within the white-lane lines of a road in Mesa. Frank Yankovic, 80 years old this July, is weaving tales from his 65-year reign (well, he wasn’t officially crowned…
Morrissey World of Morrissey (Sire/Reprise) Back in the Sixties, patchwork albums like Magic Bus: The Who on Tour or the Rolling Stones’ December’s Children and Flowers were the norm. Part rip-off, these collections of B sides and unreleased-in-the-U.S. tracks were often padded with selections already available on other albums without…
It was Billy Joel who wrote the immortal line “Only the good die young,” but I’ll bet even B.J., as wise and talented as he is, would have a hard time fitting Bob Stinson into that equation. Bob, late of the Replacements, late of planet Earth (he died of an…
I hate musicals. And I will continue to feel contempt for the genre until the audience stops clapping after every damned song. It’s an infuriating habit. It means that most of us consider a musical a mere collection of tunes–at best, a happy diversion, a pleasant spectacle. We don’t expect…
