Born in Communist Georgia, where she played “I Want to Break Free” on air guitar, raised in Belfast, where she fell in love with the singer-songwriter aesthetic, and a certified pop star in the U.K. before the age of 20, Katie Melua quite literally burst onto the music scene by…
“Some songwriters are extremely sensitive about any liberties being taken with their songs,” says Dave Alvin. “God forbid you should touch some guitar part that had nothing to do with the melody or the lyrics.” Alvin himself is not so protective of his own tunes: “This is my address; the…
There are a lot of odd and brow-furrowing ways to make it as an artist in the music business, from American Idol and its imitators to battles of the bands like the Bodog Battle of the Bands that the gambling Web site www.bodog.com’s founder Calvin Ayre is sponsoring. (It’s online…
She’s been branded everything from tortured and bruised to moody and difficult, but right now, Fiona Apple just has a case of the sniffles. Talking on the phone from her Venice, California, home, the much-praised, much-embattled singer/songwriter/pianist is lying low, preparing to embark on the biggest concert tour of her…
The two years since The Walkmen released their critically hailed second album, Bows + Arrows? Pure joy. The New York City band enjoyed every bit of a lengthy world tour, and along the way, the five members — singer-guitarist Hamilton Leithauser, guitarist Paul Maroon, bassist Walter Martin, drummer Matt Barrick,…
Steve Albini, arguably the most influential and prolific recording engineer in the history of “alternative” music, has left his sonic signature on more than a thousand albums, including the Pixies’ Surfer Rosa; PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me; Nine Inch Nails’ The Fragile; Flogging Molly’s Swagger; and Nirvana’s In Utero. He’s…
Nobody wants to be the fifth wheel, but as the fifth Beatle, Billy Preston was the musical lube that kept the high-strung Let It Be sessions from slipping off the rails. When the prodigiously Afroed keyboardist died of kidney failure on Tuesday, June 6, it came as no surprise to…
Recently I was at a show at the Real Bar early in the evening, when the young’uns are out to rock. A two-person band had just finished its set when a crowd of tween and early teen kids with screamo hair (long bangs in their faces, cut short in the…
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…
