Looking at vibist Gary Burton, you’d swear he’s a professorial kind of guy. Sometimes bespectacled and sporting a bushy, well-groomed mustache, Burton seems the scientific type, someone who’d be given to inventing, experimenting and creating. In fact, Burton is a professor–a dean of curriculum at Berklee College of Music in…
If you’re not exactly sure what South by Southwest is, you’re not in the record biz, pal. This year’s SXSW music and media conference, the third, was similar to the SXSW confabs of the other two years. In short, it’s this “thing” held in Austin, Texas, for four days in…
Kevin Ryder had already played the new Madonna single, “Like a Prayer,” three times in a row when he started taking calls from the listeners frantically lighting up the phone lines in the broadcast booth. “KZZP, hi,” said the nighttime deejay and assistant program director for Phoenix’s top-rated contemporary-hits station…
You take a quick glance at the Adolescents’ latest release, Balboa Fun Zone, and at least one cynical question comes to mind. That is, shouldn’t this original SoCal punk band have hung it up already? After all, each of the group’s members is pushing the big three-0. But give a…
Nashville, the center of the country music business, guards its power jealously. It gives nothing away for free, and it doesn’t sell low. If you want to get some, boy, you’d better play by the rules, and then, if they like you, you just might get a bone or two…
Let’s face it. If James Dean were alive today, he’d be about as svelte as Marlon Brando and nearly as sexy as Gavin MacLeod. If Jimi Hendrix were still around, ten to one he’d be about as revolutionary as Eric Clapton. In other words, “Spuds” Hendrix. Hey, no one wants…
Take 6 yawns and stretches. It is Friday, February 24, and the a cappella gospel-jazz-blues-soul-pop-doo-wop group is paying the price after winning two Grammys only 48 hours earlier. After collecting the prestigious hardware (one for jazz vocals and one for soul gospel) at the Shrine Auditorium in downtown L.A. on…
In Britain it’s shaken up music, fashion and virtually the whole of U.K. youth culture. In Italy, its synthesis of classic funk samples and trippy techno-beats has been mesmerizing discophiles for almost a year. In cities like New York and L.A. it’s considered to be the hippest thing to happen…
Who says blacks can’t play rock ‘n’ roll? After a couple of listens to Living Colour, nobody in his right mind would say that. Living Colour, an all-black rock foursome from New York City, is proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that loud, in yo’ face, ball-busting rock ‘n’…
You watch Fast Times at Ridgemont High these days and it’s sharply evident the movie wasn’t particularly ahead of its time. For one thing, Sean Penn’s totally mellow Jeff Spicoli is clearly an anachronism. Spicoli gives no indication that Penn would someday open a renowned Hollywood eatery specializing in knuckle…
Halfway through a recent interview from his hotel suite in San Francisco, rapper Tone Loc puts the phone down and calls out to a flunky in his posse, “Tell this girl to put her clothes on and stop walking around naked.” Right. Uh-huh. Like there’s really a naked person of…
“Conquer America?” Peter O’Toole ponders the phrase for a few moments, savoring its alluring bouquet, allowing the full breadth of its implications to settle, as any good Irishman waits patiently for the creamy head to fall on a just-pulled pint of Guinness. There’s a quiet echo on the London-to-Phoenix telephone…
When Waldenbooks workers were ordered to yank The Satanic Verses off the shelves last week, they also were told to keep their mouths shut about it. Some employees, apparently not cowed by the specter of mobs of militant Moslems, spoiled the corporate strategy. After bounty hunters were sicced on the…
MARY McCANN, who booked from puff-metal station KUPD-FM after her employer couldn’t come up with a suitable contract, is set to roll now with Mrs. Jumbo Inc., her locally based music agency. Ironically, one of McCann’s first projects was to book LIME GREEN as the opening act for the PURSUIT…
In the hands of amateurs–or even average professionals–Herb Gardner’s I’m Not Rappaport easily could be turned into an ordeal for its audience: The lengthy Tony-winning comedy employs complex verbal imagery and detailed monologues to advance its story. The two main characters, on-stage almost nonstop, must run a gamut of emotions…
Darkness falls on the edge of town where East Washington finally breaks loose from the Phoenix city limits and funnels the bumper-to-bumper procession of commuters out of the business hub and toward their after-five suburban oases in Tempe, Mesa, Ahwatukee and beyond. To the west, a gorgeous Arizona sunset illuminates…
any rock groups have made stabs at foisting political agendas on the public, although none have managed to succeed as Laibach has on a post-doctorate level. And there’s no other band using the Rolling Stones and the Beatles to push a thesis. Laibach, which is Yugoslavia’s most visible new music…
Conventional wisdom has it that the blues is undergoing yet another “revival”– witness the success of such artists as Robert Cray, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and the Fabulous Thunderbirds. Cray has made it big by injecting pop, soul and gospel into his urban blues style. Vaughan seems to rely more on…
Shortly before their last Valley gig a year and a half ago, the Dead Milkmen did an interview on onetime progressive radio station KEYX that quickly deteriorated into an impromptu bitchfest. “There are three things that I hate more than anything in this world,” groused lead singer Rodney Amadeus Anonymous…
Until about six months ago, when Rodney Crowell’s latest album, Diamonds and Dirt, started cranking out the first of three number-one singles (“It’s Such a Small World,” “I Couldn’t Leave You If I Tried,” and “She’s Crazy for Leaving”), only a small group of liner-note readers and musicians knew who…
Since the death of zydeco king Clifton Chenier a little more than a year ago, the scramble has been on to assume his throne. And when you consider that such famed accordion pumpers as Buckwheat Zydeco, Terrance Simien and the Mallet Playboys, Rockin’ Dopsie and the Twisters, and Good Rockin’…
No, they aren’t all blind, and there are seven of them, not five. Clarence Fountain, the man who founded the Five Blind Boys at Alabama’s Talladega Institute for the Deaf and Blind back in 1939, patiently explains the current status of one of gospel music’s most revered singing groups. “There…
