For most people, music is a very personal matter. Songs, albums and artists carry a significant and significantly different meaning for each of us. That’s especially true with music critics. While we do get to reveal a little bit about our passions and taste through our writing, polls like annual…
There’s a reason the black leather jacket and the pompadour continue to stand as calling cards among lovers of ’50s rock ‘n’ roll. After all, they were two of the more disturbing fashion statements to parents whose kids were forsaking Pat Boone for Elvis Presley, Little Richard and Chuck Berry…
You Go-Go Girl! (Varese Sarabande) She may not have invented pop music. But because her pop’s surname just happened to be Sinatra, this minimally talented nepomaniac certainly exploited the genre for all it’s worth. “She” is Nancy Sinatra, she of the much-celebrated “laughing face” and less-lauded lousy pipes. Both are…
The Seventh Deadly Sin (Coroner Records/Atomic Pop) You’ll learn more about the seven deadly sins watching Gilligan’s Island than listening to Ice-T’s latest sloth-ass mess. Consider this: Each episode of G’s follies features a gluttonous Skipper who gobbles everything in sight, a short-fused Thurston Howell III who blows his wrathful…
Don’t know how Y2K is panning out for you so far, but I suspect there are plenty of people already trying to separate themselves from everything pre-millennium. Who could blame them for furiously pursuing new things? After reading all those “best of the century” lists, perhaps even you might consider…
Having being driven to the brink of insanity by computer problems, and considering there will be about 10 Arizona bands playing SxSW today, we’re going to switch tactics. twitter.com/martincizmar I’ll post pics, mini reviews and the like from SxSW this week, then probably use the account as an annoying self-marketing tool…
Year-end best-of lists are usually accompanied by depressing State of Music essays, the kind that take a sweeping view of significant happenings and industry trends and culminate with dire prognostications for the future. Inevitably, most of those things start to sound like a Chicken Little speech. If you tried to…
The No. 1-selling song of 1999 was Cher’s “Believe.” On her heels was TLC’s summer smash “No Scrubs,” and Monica’s snoozer “Angel of Mine.” Following those are Whitney Houston’s “Heartbreak Hotel” and Britney Spears’ “. . . Baby One More Time.” Sixpence None the Richer, Christina Aguilera, Sugar Ray, Deborah…
If Aimee Mann had sold one album for each word written about her, she’d make Alanis Morissette look like the struggling indie artist she probably ought to be. Nobody gets more press for having done so apparently little: one hit a very long time ago (“Voices Carry,” back when Mann…
I have nothing against those softy-in-jeans journalist types who scurry to bended knee at the altar of, say, Fiona Apple and Built to Spill; I just can’t sit here and pretend to be one for whom taste is second nature. Taste, that is, as defined in complacent lists that always…
It only grows bigger the further away it moves; object in rearview mirror may be smaller than it appears. After all, it was only one album, one small collection of songs — many of which have been officially released over the years. Who’s to say how the world might have…
“I’m a redneck and I’m proud of it,” my late peach farmer-turned-politician daddy once told me, much to the horror of a teenage son who, at the time, was struggling to let his own inner hippie come out. It wasn’t easy growing up a free thinker in the South during…
In Tha Doggfather: The Times, Trials and Hardcore Truths of Snoop Dogg, rap superstar Snoop Dogg (a.k.a. Calvin Broadus) registers more than a mild case of discomfort with his designation as (in his words) “spokesperson for the gangsta lifestyle,” stating in retrospect that “the truth is, I was never fully…
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut may have been as vulgar and potty-mouthed as any movie ever made, but what was really remarkable about it was what an exuberant, toe-tapping musical it was. There were classic-style show tunes about avuncular incest and nationalist hatred and the private yearnings of Satan…
December 24th — The Cole Residence: It was a storybook Christmas Eve. Natalie, shimmering in snow white chiffon, was busily piling up presents under the garland-festooned tree. Jack Frost was looking for a new nose to nip at while chestnuts were indeed roasting on the open fire — just below…
When the Wu-Tang Clan released its first single, 1993’s “Protect Ya Neck,” hard-core rap was associated almost exclusively with the West Coast. Dre, Snoop, and Cube were hip-hop’s most notorious rappers, and Death Row Records head honcho Suge Knight (currently serving time) was still at large, overseeing the whole g-funk…
Dreams unfulfilled/Graduate unskilled/It beats picking cotton/Waiting to be forgotten — Replacements, “Bastards of Young” Crushed chords are long, sustained and heavy. The sounds of concrete skies desolate landscapes. The vocals swing low, deep, almost ironic-sounding. The singer is skinny, like a stray, waifish, too, and the band just broods. The…
Unless you’re a diehard fan, working with a former rock star isn’t all that memorable an experience. Most likely your co-worker resembles one of the great unwashed instead of a big-time idol. And depending on the hourly wage he’s pulling down, our rocker’s probably a bitter and sullen old fellow…
Quick, name five Japanese bands. Chances are, some of the more intense music nuts out there might name-check the Boredoms, Pizzicato Five, and Shonen Knife, and some might even recognize Melt-Banana or Guitar Wolf. But the reality of Japanese pop music — or J-pop, as it is referred to by…
There is a sense of finality when these kinds of hits, B-sides, rarities and remixes are released. This one seems to come at a weird time; phase one of the Beastie Boys’ career officially ended more than five years ago when Adam Yauch first got involved in trying to help…
Dr. Dre is still the best hip-hop producer this side of The RZA or Prince Paul and Dan the Automator; he’s among the handful who could almost be called a composer because of his preference for live instrumentation over tried-and-tired Parliament-Funkadelic swipes. And Chronic 2001 should only bolster that reputation,…
Two years ago, the career of rapper Eve Jihan Jeffers appeared to be on the cusp of something great. Jeffers, who started performing when she was still a teenager, had done her time competing in high school talent shows and playing local clubs in her hometown of Philadelphia. She even…
