It all started with a series of phone calls that never seemed to arrive when I was actually in the office. I’d return from a brief constitutional on the New Times Executive Tanning Deck, step into the chilled comfort of my chambers–kept at a regulation 56 degrees Fahrenheit, in tandem…
Have you ever wondered if there was a real Peggy Sue? A real Lovely Rita, Meter Maid? An actual Girl From Ipanema? Well, there isn’t. And now, joining this illustrious bevy of nonexistent beauties is Kim the Waitress, the heroine and namesake of Material Issue’s current hit. But that would…
In 1962, he mastered the fine, primitive art of banging out rhythms on coffee cans with a pair of Lincoln Logs. Soon after, he graduated to a toy Indian tom-tom, and by January 1968, he had himself a real–albeit secondhand–drum kit. Twenty-six years later, Dennis Diken is all grown up…
Had you walked into a local Tower Records store recently, made your way to the “Rock” section of the CD-listening stations, clamped on a pair of headphones and pressed the proper buttons, you could have heard the Latin Playboys’ self-titled debut. But what would you have heard? A weaving, lo-fi…
I could tell you about the time my friend John and I took the bus to Groucho Marx’s house in Beverly Hills, rang the doorbell and heard him tell someone, “Get rid of those kids.” We then went across the street to Morey Amsterdam’s place, where he answered the door…
Perhaps the event that most influenced Iris DeMent’s professional trajectory occurred before she was born. See, her father had been a fiddler–and a good one, too. Iris, the youngest of 14 children born to Patric and Flora Mae DeMent of the cotton-farming community of Paragould, Arkansas, pestered her siblings to…
Blow Pops American Beauties (Get Hip) There was an old Saturday Night Live joke between Chevy and Gilda that went like this: “Knock knock.” “Who’s there?” “Babs’ uvula.” “Babs’ uvula who?” “I don’t know, Babs . . .” That’s sort of the way I feel about this album. Not because…
If I owned an enormous, influential, major label, a lot of things would be different. For me, anyway; a bigger bank balance, more yes men, the finest aspirin money can buy, and–for the Beat Angels–there’d be a big, fat recording contract. This is one of the few tapes I’ve come…
Shonen Knife The Roxy May 19, 1994 They were cute! They were funny! They were endearing! They rocked! They were Naoko Yamano, Michie Nakatani and Atsuko Yamano–Shonen Knife–in Phoenix for the very first time, all the way from Osaka, Japan. Before we continue, this is what you need to know…
It is dawn, and I am sitting atop Squaw Peak, as is my wont, clad only in black jockstrap and simple yachting cap. The sun hits me and glances upon the crystals at my feet, arranged in a classic tantric form derived from the sacred teachings of Baba Gin Rummy,…
Are you afraid for rock n’ roll? Do you wince at summer tour offerings that seem to consist of the same, tired dinosaur acts that punk rock was supposed to have killed off a decade ago? Are you flabbergasted that people actually wait in line to see simpering trash like…
When Zig Zag Black guitarist Michael Venell died unexpectedly at the age of 23 on April 7, I made a brief mention of it in this column. I didn’t know Venell, but many of you did. Going by the phone calls and letters that I’ve received over the last few…
The record company is “shocked.” Classical-music minds call it “freakish.” Skeptics are crying “fad,” and cynics are thinking “Faust.” The hubbub concerns an inexplicably best-selling CD of Gregorian chant performed by a heretofore little-known group of Benedictine monks in Spain. The CD is titled Chant, and quite simply, it consists…
This is a description of legendary bluesman Howlin’ Wolf, from the masterful work Nothing But the Blues: He “stood six feet three inches and tipped the scales at more than 270 pounds. . . . Big, fearsome, solitary and mysterious, the Wolf was already an imposing figure in the Delta…
Look through the press kit on Vic Chesnutt and you’ll see a lot of impressive things: articles saying he’s part of “the future of country music,” reviews likening his work to that of Charles Bukowski and Leonard Cohen, R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe heralding him as “the best songwriter of our generation.”…
The pantheon of major Texas blues guitarists would have to include the late, flamboyant Stevie Ray Vaughan, the brilliant albino Johnny Winter–and a quiet, 71-year-old jazzman named Herb Ellis. The aging Texan is a major link between the parallel developments of jazz and blues, as well as one of the…
Surely, one of the great tragedies of the last four decades is the demise of dramatic radio. Before television arrived to poison and dull the soul of this great nation, radio presented a thinking person’s medium, a theatre of the imagination. It was the beauty of simple words and sound…
Cannibal Corpse The Bleeding (Metal Blade) In the press release accompanying this unrelenting piece of shit, the group’s “vocalist” Chris Barnes says the titles of his “songs” tell you exactly what each one is about. He’s not kidding; just get a load of these choice cuts: “Force Fed Broken Glass,”…
You’ve waited four long weeks for this, I know you have. Yes, it’s time again for more local reviews, kids. Get em while they’re hot. By the way, I don’t know if we’re running out of bands that actually have tapes or folks just aren’t sending anything in because they’ve…
“The Knack are back and they’re beautiful.” So trumpeted the trade ads for the power-pop group’s second release, . . . But the Little Girls Understand, way back in 1980. Although that album went on to sell two million copies, it was widely viewed as a failure because it yielded…
The most innovative guitarist alive was discovered in 1983 as he played for change on the street corners of Manhattan. Music giants like Frank Zappa and jazzmen Art Blakey and Cecil Taylor were blown away by a 23-year-old Stanley Jordan who radically redefined the potentials of guitar music. Eleven years…
When Johnny Rotten first walked into Malcolm McLaren’s life, Rotten was wearing a torn Pink Floyd tee shirt with the words “I Hate” in magic marker scrawled all over it. Maybe you’re of a similar persuasion these days, even if you own several Floyd albums. Or maybe, like the sleazy…
