Several years ago, jazz pianist Billy Taylor received an unusual request. The prestigious Juilliard String Quartet asked him to compose a piece that combined jazz with classical music. Although George Gershwin and Aaron Copland had explored the jazz-classical overlap, the area was largely uncharted territory. The work Taylor came up…
Same smoochy lips. Same stylized eye. Did the Arizona Lottery lift the ad campaign for its new “Lady Luck” game off the cover of the 18-year-old rock album Ladies Invited? In some ways it’s a perfect fit: the graphics of a long-out-of-print disc by a Boston boogie band, whose best…
“I killed a man in the ten items or less lane . . . /Get your hands off my astronaut Tang, you old bastard!” Murders in supermarket express lanes. Sex with Chihuahuas. Bank robberies committed in the nude. This is all fodder for Alice Donut songs. The New York quasi-hard-core…
Midway through his set, John Prine began to hear the noises, too. Opening for musical soul mate Bonnie Raitt, Prine was playing solo. Dressed in a blue silk shirt and jeans, he sported what has become his post-Seventies look: well-worn cowboy boots; mid-length dark and graying hair; and a soul…
Save for Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn and Hank Williams the Elder, there is no other individual in country music who can lay a more legitimate claim to icon status than Merle Haggard. Factoring in all reasonable elements–writing, singing, musicianship, stage work, political and social commentary–the Hag has earned his stripes…
Evelyn Grgurich remembers the first time the lineup for this year’s Sedona Jazz on the Rocks festival was discussed. “I brought up Pat Metheny’s name a few times,” she recalls, referring to the experimental jazz guitarist. A seven-year member of the Jazz on the Rocks board, Grgurich also served a…
The way Mark Lucas figures it, if you cast your line often enough, you’re bound to catch something. Big-show success for his namesake country honky-tonk band is, therefore, merely a matter of catching the right Music City ear. Frequent forays into deepest, darkest Nashville are a major part of the…
In one verse of his tune “Wild Rain,” Tempe solo musician Joe Myers sings the line, “Tripped and fell, I do that well.” Myers thinks that one small lyric sums up his whole life, or at least the part of it he calls “doing the art thing.” On a smaller…
Mario Moreno of Forbidden Pigs remembers one “discussion” he had with his wife about settling down and getting a real job. It sticks in his mind because it was the last time he saw his bajo sexto, his Mexican bass guitar, in one piece. Arriving home late and a little…
Nick Cope of the Candy Skins knows his band sounds like the Sixties. He understands when critics say the Candy Skins’ debut LP Space I’m In borrows heavily from the Byrds and the Beatles. Cope doesn’t even let comparisons to the Monkees bother him. The Candy Skins love those old…
“Madonna is a Big Mac with extra cheese, wrapped up in the fashionable new brown-paper-bag packaging. Extreme, the heavy-metal band with the light-pop hits, is a McD.L.T.–steaming hot on one side, chilled and crispy on the other. And Gerardo, the rico suave hunk of the moment, is a Breakfast Burrito,…
THE HEAT IS ON This was the summer of the lethal outdoor concert, the summer when the old adage, “Once you live here, you don’t notice the heat,” was put to the test. The adage lost. Standing in the broiling sun listening to music has its own kind of charm…
It seems like the Yellowjackets have gathered their fair share of the nectar. The jazz-fusion band has held together for 13 years in spite of numerous personnel changes. Its albums have been nominated for Grammys five times and won twice. This year, to mark its tenth year of recording, the…
When they made their first concert appearance in the Valley last November, the Pirates of the Mississippi had barely set sail. But thanks to a rollicking cover of Luke the Drifter’s jumpin’ “Honky Tonk Blues,” the quintet managed to catch country radio’s half-deaf ear. Hopes were high for a cool…
Until recently, Wild Bill Baldwin could be found in the cramped, countrified confines of downtown Scottsdale’s Rusty Spur Saloon, doing his one-man-band thing. Baldwin was a fearsome vision, what with his dark, woolly beard and long hair, both flecked with gray; his menacing shades and extra-wide-brimmed hat speared with a…
Billy Corgan is trying to stay humble, but it’s getting tough. The mercurial lead singer/songwriter/personality of the Smashing Pumpkins is becoming a rock star. The band’s debut record Gish is doing well, and the group is about to embark on its first national tour. Even critics love the Pumpkins. Actually,…
Pretenders’ front woman Chrissie Hynde was wandering the streets of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, one afternoon about a decade ago when she stumbled upon three young men banging away on acoustic instruments. Hynde was mesmerized by these Midwest geeks and their sloppy, but heartfelt, acoustic punk. She proclaimed them to be the…
Not all is running perfectly at the world’s largest jazz festival. It’s 2:30 a.m. in the Dutch concert hall in which the North Sea Jazz Festival is being held. Trumpeter Lester Bowie sits backstage, waiting to go on with his band Brass Fantasy. The situation threatens disaster for the jazzman…
The shot on the cover of Divinyls has almost eclipsed the single “I Touch Myself” as the biggest reason to buy the record. It has launched a thousand concert tickets, not to mention the band’s career. The shot shows a profile of lead singer Chrissie Amphlett, swathed only in wide-wale…
Could it be that Ray Benson has been at the Wheel long enough? It’s hard to believe that this legendary road warrior would ever actually choo-choo ch-boogie into the sunset, but a major reduction in tour time is a lock, and other changes might be on the horizon as well…
No one would have believed that the summer’s biggest tour would feature seven cult bands that don’t get a stitch of airplay. But a recession that’s turning tours into a rarity and the coming of age of punk have combined to make the twenty-city Lollapalooza spectacular the summer’s main event…
It used to be that albums were named after their hit single. But then rock ‘n’ roll got meaningful, and choosing the title track became an art. Some groups stick with the hit. Others go for the most enigmatic or lyrically potent. Still others choose whatever hits them at 4…
