How did you spend your day of reckoning? Expectant mothers, fearful of a 06/06/06 due date, were asking doctors to induce labor a day or two early to spare their babies from the mark of the beast, which would not only adversely affect those terrible twos, but could keep the…
They ain’t weary and they ain’t boys, but they are the Weary Boys, a handful of Humboldt County, California, escapees who got up one day, stretched, and decided to pack up the ’87 Buick Century and drive to Austin, Texas, sight unseen. “It seemed like a nice place to want…
By all rights, Stiff Little Fingers should suck. What was once perhaps the best band of punk’s second wave is down to a sole original member (although a second, bassist Ali McMordie, returned to the fold earlier this year) and, since the early 1990s, has seemingly been cashing in on…
“Hype” is probably the nastiest of all four-letter words these days, and no band on Earth right now has more of it than the Arctic Monkeys. Over the past seven months, the Sheffield quartet — none of whom is of American drinking age — has been lauded as 2005’s “Best…
Merging heavy metal’s satanic symbol with love’s shorthand icon, the heartagram ranks among modern music’s most popular designs. “The symbol is better known than the actual music of our band,” says H.I.M. singer Ville Valo, who invented the emblem. Hundreds of H.I.M. fans, including MTV stunt dude Bam Margera and…
The Hush Sound’s guitarist and co-lead vocalist Bob Morris has his hands full. His band is set to open tonight for Fall Out Boy and the All-American Rejects, his mother won’t stop ringing him (she’s in line outside, confused by how to collect her ticket), and, oh yeah, there’s this…
Interviewing Sammy “The Red Rocker” Hagar woulda been great and all, but I had a few other things I had to get done last week. Like the dishes, and, uhh, taking some naps. So let’s just let Sammy’s lyrics do the talking: Me: Hey, man, how’re you doing these days?…
On Tuesday, which happens to be the one time this century that the calendar’s readout is 6/6/6, the local rawk prophets in Steppchild — Adam Jacobsen, Adam Roach, and Adam Carter — will debut the band’s long-in-the-making rock opera, appropriately titled King, Adam. (And yes, the comma is supposed to…
Daniel Smith usually gets by with a little help from his friends, but lately he’s been getting a lot. In the case of the heavenly new album Ships, released by this musical mastermind under the new, all-purpose moniker Danielson, that means contributions from at least 30 of his family and…
It takes balls to do a solo acoustic set in the middle of a bill consisting of loud bands, mostly because it’s so easy to fall flat on your face and turn the crowd off completely. A few weeks ago, though, I saw a kid pull it off. On a…
British phenom Jamie Cullum’s 2003 breakthrough Twentysomething offered up a fresh take on jazz — sort of a Michael Bublé/Robbie Williams cocktail — but with his latest, Catching Tales, he’s added hip-hop to the mix, thanks to a few tricks he learned from Pharrell Williams (catch their duet “You Can…
Three years ago, producer/engineer Otto D’Agnolo was of two minds about the decline of originality and forward thinking in the record industry, so he did something about it. He split himself in two — literally. Sick of being told by A&R people with the musical impulses of a hand buzzer…
Juicy chunks of fresh lobster, lightly bound together with mayonnaise and served on buttered, toasted bread. Spicy, bubbling étouffe laid out over a bed of steaming white rice. Succulent Chinese dumplings stuffed with garlicky pork, floating in a rich vegetable broth. Fucking Delicious. That’s according to Derek Fudesco, anyway –…
Early last week, I was incensed to learn that Bonneville International Corporation, a company wholly owned by the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City, announced it is acquiring what I believe to be the most valuable radio station we’ve got here in the ‘Nix, Power 92. Bonneville will be completely…
There’s a focused single-mindedness to every Excepter song that hints at humorlessness behind the decks. So it’s a pleasant surprise, during a recent telephone exchange, to discover that front man John Fell Ryan is as amusing in conversation as he can be free-associative and indecipherable with his lyrics, as personable…
New Times loves the frenetic New Wave/punk sounds of The Epoxies, the Portland, Oregon, quintet made up of Viz Spectrum, FM Static, Shock Diode, Ray Cathode and, of course, foxy front woman Roxy Epoxy. We love the band’s live show even more: Replete with fog and bubble machines, heavy-duty strobes,…
A-Trak lives a charmed life. DMC World Champion by the age of 15? Check. Owner of a record label at 18? Check. Touring the globe with an internationally acclaimed hip-hop artist at 22? Check. “Yeah, you can say that,” says A-Trak when it’s noted that he’s had a meteoric career…
A few weeks back, I was drinking coffee, perusing the gossip pages online, and stumbled on a hilarious piece in the scandal-plagued Page Six section of the New York Post. Apparently in Las Vegas there’s not one, but two KISS cover bands composed of little people, and they’ve got a…
Sitting in a hotel bar overlooking downtown Denver, Vinnie Paul Abbott is stunned that not a single TV is tuned to the hockey game. His boys, the Dallas Stars, are taking an ass-whuppin’ at the hands of the Colorado Avalanche — or so Big Vin tells me — and he’d…
T Bone Burnett is back, and in a big way. Burnett is a songwriter, singer, righteous and religious hepcat, architect of Americana, child of rockabilly, Tex-Mex and Louisiana music, as well as an influence on Bob Dylan, who clearly influenced him. He’s cut brilliant albums dating back to 1972, but…
Thirty-three years old is too damn young to die. That’s what keeps running through my head when I think about the passing of Sidney Copeland, the proprietor of stalwart punk rock bar Jugheads on McDowell Road in Phoenix. I never got to know the guy, but the shock of losing…
As an acclaimed hip-hop producer, RJD2 balances auteur ambitions — meticulously crafting instrumental hip-hop opuses such as his own Deadringer and Since We Last Spoke — with a gift for cranking out hot boom-bap beats for the likes of Aesop Rock, Massive Attack, Souls of Mischief, El-P, and others. This…
