Christine Zahn is excited. Because of circumstances no one could foresee, this 47-year-old owner of Tempe Bowl and admitted musical neophyte has become a player in the local rock scene. There’s only one point that she’s kind of sensitive about. After enduring my numerous references to her “bowling alley,” she…
The atmosphere in Mind’s Eye Digital Recording is jammed with sound waves, the kind of badass, bottom-loaded frequencies that blow woofers and mess with eardrums. Bionic Jive, a Tempe sextet, is rehearsing songs from its forthcoming Six Million Dollar Band CD, a psycho-delic joy ride that makes groups like Prodigy…
All Mick Fleetwood wanted was a guitarist. Fleetwood Mac’s drummer was checking out the studio of engineer Keith Olsen when he heard a track from an obscure California duo named Buckingham Nicks. Looking for someone to replace departed guitarist Bob Welch, he sought out the nimble-fingered Lindsey Buckingham. Perhaps it…
Bjork Homogenic (Elektra Records) The very idea of Bjork is so appealing that you can feel like Ebenezer Scrooge for even hinting that her music is somehow deficient. In an industry never short of calculating frauds, Bjork is a force of nature and an absolute original: someone who can intuitively…
Fairness and legality. They are two separate concepts. Though they stop to chat from time to time, they don’t always hang out together. Consider an example: If a cop picks you out of a bunch of speeding cars and nails you for driving 37 in a 35 mph zone, his…
Although they’ve never really gone away, the Rolling Stones have had more “comebacks” than Richard Nixon. Every time they emerge from their cocoon of luxury for a new album, Rolling Stone magazine assures us that they’re back, that previous Stones recordings may have been subpar, but this new one is…
It’s three in the afternoon, and Mark Zubia has a sore head. The Pistoleros guitarist staggers into the band’s roomy Tempe rehearsal room a few minutes late for an interview, flops down on a corner chair and swears off any questions for a while, explaining that he’s been downing rum…
The Wilsons The Wilsons (Mercury Records) With the wretched Wilson Phillips, Carnie and Wendy Wilson–along with childhood chum Chynna Phillips–cashed in on a fleeting pop moment. At the dawn of this decade, progeny rock managed to unite proud baby boomers (who vicariously felt that they had raised these pampered superstar…
Given our now fixed image of the press as ruthless invaders of privacy who hounded Princess Di into a premature grave, it hardly seems possible that once upon a time journalists and photographers actually worked in tandem to keep a celebrity’s Satyricon private life out of their pages. And no…
The history of pop is actually the story of great rivalries, real or imagined: Elvis vs. Jerry Lee, the Beatles vs. the Stones, mods vs. rockers, Bowie vs. Ferry, Nirvana vs. Pearl Jam. And, by the way, whose side were you on during the fabled Tiffany-Debbie Gibson wars of 1987?…
Hip-hop has many enemies. It must constantly defend itself against misguided censors disguised as social crusaders, timid record companies and toothless radio programmers. After nearly two decades, it continues to fight old-guard music purists who refuse to consider hip-hop valid music and wish that it would just go away. In…
Chapel Hill, North Carolina’s Superchunk is a band inextricably linked to “indie rock,” the ill-defined genre sitting somewhere close to “punk” but gainfully lacking punk’s aversion to maturation. The association is probably because Superchunk has been playing and putting out consistently brilliant albums since 1988, and vocalist/guitarist Mac MacCaughan and…
When is an icehouse really a sauna? When it’s mid-June in downtown Phoenix and a newly installed air-conditioning system breaks down on a Friday afternoon. That’s exactly what happened at the Icehouse Recording Studio last year right smack in the middle of a Trunk Federation session. Though the Trunksters were…
Cornershop When I Was Born for the 7th Time (Luaka Bop/Warner Bros. Records) During the latter stages of Michael Dukakis’ disastrous 1988 run for the Oval Office, an old friend snidely remarked, “I knew him before he was Greek.” The rude–if bull’s-eye–implication was that for the Duke, ethnicity was an…
Ray Charles tells people that there are three things he never wanted to own: a dog, a cane and a guitar. To the blind music legend, they symbolize helplessness, the down-in-the-mouth stereotypes that surround a backwoods blues singer. Charles may be a self-professed country boy, but he’s anything but helpless…
The trip from my trailer park to the strip bar usually lasts as long as a quart of beer. I had finished a 40 of King Cobra by the time I pulled the ’76 Ford LTD into the midst of late-model German and Japanese cars. I found a parking space,…
Pollen would seem to have it all. Contracted to Wind-Up Records, a highly visible indie label with major label (BMG) distribution, Pollen is poised to tour extensively in support of its latest album Peach Tree this fall. In addition, Wind-Up is committed to financing a video, and several tracks off…
“Steve Malkmus is a fucking snob.” So proclaimed the title of a summer release by an obscure Virginia duo called September 67. The song’s writer, Shannon Worrell, explained in a press release that her attack on Pavement’s sardonic leader was a form of “tough love,” adding that “I love their…
Kierkegaard was on to something when he decided that patriotism is the refuge of scoundrels. But something tells me that if the great Dane were a music critic in 1997, he’d quickly find a correlation: Controversy is the last refuge of the terminally bland. Any wet-behind-the-ears music-biz publicist can tell…
Fred Green Groover (Rorschach Records) It’s a common syndrome. Great live party bands, when put in the clinical confines of the recording studio, often just don’t cut it. It’s easy to see why. Live performance and recording require very different skills. Manic energy and fierce commitment can carry a live…
What’s more frightening? Playing drums in a three-piece band in front of 60,000 people? Or singing onstage for the first time at a small club filled with friends, strangers and the occasional 300-pound go-go dancer? It’s an easy question for Tim Alexander. “Singing,” he says with little hesitation. Alexander is…
A few weeks ago, the City of Tempe hosted a battle-of-the-bands competition at Tempe Diablo Stadium. It was a long, thinly attended event with the expressed purpose of “keeping the kids off the street.” One of the few people who did attend–at least for a few minutes–was a local TV…
