Last month, Revolver’s special investigations team (me) went undercover at the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference, the music industry’s largest, most (in)famous artist showcase/convention/trade show. Cynicism grates on the soul after a while, and my trip was an attempt to find a glimmer of artist-oriented purity in an…
“I believe in the possibility of a new era,” Kula Shaker front man Crispian Mills recently told a leery New York journalist. “You can sing about things like premature teenage sex, or you can sing about everlasting, universal truth.” Looks like we may have another Bono on our hands. Mills,…
Tony Bennett On Holiday: A Tribute to Billie Holiday (Columbia) Tony Bennett has nearly always been an anachronism. His career began just as his brand of sophisticated Tin Pan Alley melody was about to get swallowed up by the passionate rhythms of rock ‘n’ roll; a half-century later, with all…
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds The Boatman’s Call (Warner Bros.) Religion has always had its place in rock ‘n’ roll, appropriately enough for the devil’s music (see: Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Elvis during his gospel days, Bob Dylan when he wasn’t feeling so Jewish); modern rockers now tend…
Although it took several weeks for news to jump the pond, Sweet front man Brian Connolly died of liver failure last month in Slough, England. Here’s why you should care: For better or worse, Connolly was the godfather of glam–the first rock star to put glitter on his face, wear…
As the evening sunset glows above a nearly deserted downtown Los Angeles, Norris Anderson slips out the back of the Criminal Courts Building, lights a cigarette and ponders his bizarre ascension to the top of the biggest, baddest, most messed-up rap record company in the world. Minutes earlier, 31-year-old Death…
Jill Sobule Happy Town (Lava/Atlantic) Singer-songwriters usually make my skin crawl–tell me one more time how great Jewel is, and you risk serious dental work–but Colorado native Jill Sobule not only soars over that hurdle with Happy Town, she tops her surprisingly fresh 1995 hit “I Kissed a Girl.” Sobule…
“Hello, hello, how can I reach you–huhhhh??” The isolated voice of Atlantic recording artist Poe resonates over the monitors in DJ-turned-producer Markus Schulz’s cramped home studio, located somewhere in the Mesa suburbs. A little bigger than most pantries, this sonic workshop is cluttered with state-of-the-art sampling equipment, antiquated analog keyboards…
As if he’s not in enough trouble already, now Suge Knight’s got American Express in his face. American Express Travel Related Services Company, Inc., claims that Knight, his lawyer, David Kenner, Kenner’s wife, Erica, and Knight’s Death Row Records owe the credit-card company upward of $1,574,000–and AmEx isn’t gonna hold…
Like the music of saxophonist Dana Colley’s jazz-stained, minimalist rock band Morphine, his sentences are stretched out, quiet, even lethargic. Colley doesn’t sound like a man who’s easily roused, but one prompt sparks his ire: The suggestion that the self-described “low rock” mavens in Morphine built together their bass/drums/baritone sax…
The Driskill hotel in downtown Austin, Texas, was built in 1884, and, according to the American Registry of Haunted Places, it’s infested with ghosts. I stayed at the Driskill for five nights last week during the 11th Annual South by Southwest Music and Media Conference, and while I didn’t see…
If boxed sets are an honor and not just a sales ploy, then no contemporary artist deserves one more than Al Green, whose earliest and finest work is compiled in a four-disc set released on Valentine’s Day. The timing was right. Not only is Green the greatest living soul singer,…
I came to and the contents of my stomach made a bid for freedom. I stumbled to the toilet just in time to fill it with last night’s Old Milwaukee. Joy. I wiped the pungent fluid from my nose and mouth and braved the mirror. Not bad. Some shattered blood…
His suit is pinstriped and loud. His tie is high, wide and noisy. His shoes are gaudy, two-toned wing tips and his fedora is the size of a full-grown, fur-bearing mammal. His name is Scotty Morris, and he’s the front man for the exceedingly hip West Coast swing band Big…
The Offspring Ixnay on the Hombre (Columbia) As music-industry success stories go, the Offspring’s quick ascent was an anomaly; selling eight and a half million records on an indie label was unheard of until Smash broke in 1994. Adolescent subject matter and a formulaic blend of Orange County punk and…
Guitar Wolf would really have to suck not to be cool. I mean, hey–a Japanese punk band called Guitar Wolf, whose members grease their hair into pompadours and wear black leather jackets? That’s cool by definition, if only because such flagrant individualism so satisfyingly blows away the American stereotype of…
Pat Cupp, Sonny Hall, Johnny Jano–where are they now? Burgeoning rockabilly stars once, they all had minor hits in the late 1950s. Today, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone outside a small circle of obsessive collectors who knows they ever existed. All that’s left are a few yellowing promotional cards…
As the queer-core genre continues to expand, one band remains a touchstone–the homo-trinity of Pansy Division. Sure, there have been gays in rock since there was rock, but when it comes to singing the joys of rimming and the tribulations of leaving the closet at an early age, Pansy Division…
Bruce Cockburn The Charity of Night (Rykodisc) L. Ron Hubbard should be as cult an artist as Bruce Cockburn. Cockburn’s only “hit” singles are diametric opposites–1979’s “Wondering Where the Lions Are” was a jaunty bit of religious poetry, while 1984’s “If I Had a Rocket Launcher” threatened to blow up…
K mart is trying to spiff up its image, but it’s still the last place you’d expect to run into a rock star–unless, of course, that rock star is Bono. When U2 recently announced its new blue-light special at the Greenwich Village K mart, Bono graciously fielded questions and stopped…
Van Morrison The Healing Game (Polydor) When you’ve put out 27 studio albums, as Belfast’s finest has, your audience checks out every new release to gauge the subtle differences with past work. Here’s how The Healing Game stacks up to Morrison’s past triumphs: 1. Anyone who counted how many times…
David Bowie Earthling (Virgin) One of several striking, almost iconic images that adorn the self-designed cover of David Bowie’s new album, Earthling, is a “Kirlian photo” of a crucifix taken by Bowie in 1974. The Kirlian Camera is the infamous “aura camera” (featured recently on–where else–an X-Files episode) which purportedly…
