Fishbone has never had it easy, and that is one of the understatements of this new century. In the early days of their career, they surely did seem to have the potential to be a world-class band. Ska, funk, soul, metal, punk, pop — hell, even country — these guys…
Today’s musical climate tends to lay the career blueprint right on the table: form band, release indie record, get signed, grab for the brass ring, crash ‘n’ burn, go on VH1 with your recovery tale in time for the reunion tour. What, then, to think of a group willing to…
Most people would agree with the assertion that life is pretty mundane. Lord Byron summed it up perfectly when he said, “When one subtracts from life infancy (which is vegetation), sleep, eating and swilling, buttoning and unbuttoning — how much remains of downright existence? The summer of a dormouse.” We…
Los Angeles’ La Crescenta suburb is hardly known as a hotbed for rock ‘n’ roll, nor is it the place you’d expect to find America’s most prominent dance/rock group. But this far northern enclave in Crescenta Valley, tucked up against the Verdugo Mountains, is what Ken Jordan and Scott Kirkland,…
When Steve Wynn’s grandfather Matthew immigrated to this country from Russia at the dawn of the 20th century, he harbored one great dream: to be a songwriter. Though a promising tunesmith — legend has it that Irving Berlin offered him $50 for one of his songs — the demands of…
In the fall of ’82, I was a schmucky music collector unlucky enough to be working in a record store about to be slammed by the Xmas season juggernaut called Thriller. Then a promo of the first album by the Dream Syndicate — on punk label Slash and hotly tipped…
To begin with scurrilous rumor: The Glands’ first album, 1997’s Double Thriller, was so titled (the story goes) because the console upon which it was mixed was also used for Michael Jackson’s Thriller. How that console was supposed to have gotten into a studio across the street from the 40…
Face it, the National Endowment for the Arts isn’t leaving many jazz and blues guys all that well-endowed, which, if you make a living wailing onstage about the behemoth in your britches, can be a pretty shameful thing. So, how about corralling more government arts bucks by taxing the film…
Writing reviews of recordings by freshly dead artists is a tricky business that frequently results in overrating, a critical embarrassment that keeps on giving. Think about all those poor schmoes who, rightly thunderstruck by John Lennon’s murder, found themselves raving about Double Fantasy, a modest album that’s not even within…
Only the most jaded music fans could’ve ignored the full-page review — more like a white-knuckled hosanna — that Britain’s Uncut offered to Denton, Texas, power trio Lift to Experience a few months ago. Just to recap one of the more evocative passages: “They walk onstage, unannounced, looking truly frightening…
Breathy gasps occupy empty space on Vespertine, Björk’s newest and best album, as though she’s drowning in nectar. Elsewhere on the record, snow melts in her mouth, water surrounds her thighs, ripe black lilies swirl. She ingests little glowing lights and warm golden oil. Objects caress — her own fingers,…
Although its members insist otherwise, my guess is that Tha Alkaholiks changed their name to Tha Liks mainly to ensure that their new disc, X.O. Experience, wouldn’t be rejected out of hand by rack jobbers at Targets and Wal-Marts from sea to shining sea. After all, E-Swift, Tash and J-Ro…
The summer rock-festival season is almost over, Yahweh be praised. We made it through again. So you might be reasonably forgiven for getting that glazed look in your eyes when we tell you about another wagon rolling through town, but hold that thought. It’s hard to get too cynical about…
The Streetwalkin’ Cheetahs found the inspiration for their colorful name in the first line of “Search and Destroy,” one of Iggy Pop’s most incendiary Stooges songs (“I’m a street-walkin’ cheetah with a heart full of napalm . . .”). The Cheetahs didn’t take just their name from the Stooges; they…
A couple years back when Beachwood Sparks first stepped into the spotlight — its members looking very much like they’d just stepped off the cover of the Notorious Byrd Brothers LP — it was an easy group to tag. Four guys wrapping themselves up in Gram Parsons’ Nudie suit, sailing…
If anyone should understand the pitfalls of being labeled, it’s DJ/producer Roni Size. Back in 1997, on the release of his innovative platter New Forms, made in conjunction with a crew collectively known as Reprazent, he emerged as the most public face of the dance music style dubbed “drum ‘n’…
There seems to be an endless supply of sad-sack troubadours, singers who spill their guts for art and turn personal pain into pretty poetry. Jeff Buckley, Nick Drake, Mark Eitzel, Elliott Smith: The list is a mile long. Over the course of his group’s first two records, For Stars singer/songwriter…
Bob Dylan’s last studio album, 1997’s Time Out of Mind, was about as much fun as a eulogy. With its songs of remorse and regret, with its plaints of begged-for salvation and yearned-for deliverance, that collection sounded like a last will and testament — a big adios from the jokerman…
The résumé: After leaving pop-psych outfit Adventures in Stereo, Simon Dine spent a couple of years in Europe scavenging records and fine-tuning his sampling gear, and upon returning to the U.K. he hooked up with classically trained Daisy Martey, the daughter of Ghana’s top saxophonist. Taking the name Noonday Underground…
Soul brothers can’t win for losing. While sisters can share the throne — there seems to be plenty of room at the top for Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill, Macy Gray, Mary J. Blige, and even rising divas like Mya — in the guys’ court, as in the Highlander series, there’s…
These days, at the foot of Johnny Thunders’ pedestal sit loads and loads of pie-eyed faces, young men and women looking up adoringly, and casting the love, L-U-V. And it’s a strange thing, too, ’cause Thunders was, in reality, just your basic junkie who was blessed with good genes. Like…
Alex Chilton did it, and so did Henry Rollins. Todd Rundgren was able to do it for a little while. John Cale did it early on, then stopped. Brian Eno did it — did he ever — with style and class.What we’re talking about here is the process by which…
