Far too many dead folks recently: The god of American natural guitar, John Fahey, bought the farm less than 48 hours after undergoing a sextuple bypass operation; Eddy Shaver, guitar-picking son of Billy Joe Shaver and co-founder of Shaver, died of a heroin overdose; and James Carr of “Dark End…
Quick, what’s the most abused critical cliché of all time? Barring hoary usage like “throbbing surf bass line” and “jangly guitars” plus up-and-comers “Brian Wilson-like” and “Flaming Lips-ian,” there’s no question the term “Beatlesque” should by all rights be retired and only allowed out of the word processor after a…
Let us once again ponder the arc of Tucson’s Rainer Ptacek, the late slide guitar maestro and folk/blues singer-songwriter whose fateful duel with brain cancer may have brought heartache — but during an extended (if temporary) recovery period also brought an astonishing resurgence of his musical skills that surpassed even…
To look at him, you’d think Redd Volkaert would snap the neck of a Telecaster in half the moment he tried to get flashy with the left-hand arpeggios. He’s a big guy, Volkaert, with thick, tattooed forearms and fingers each about as wide as a single fret. But there’s nothing…
It’s understandable if the only mental image you carry of Bing Crosby is that of a grandfatherly, cardigan-clad duffer crooning Christmas carols with the likes of Rosemary Clooney and David Bowie. The most popular entertainer in the world in the 1930s and ’40s, a friend and champion of bluesmen and…
Stephen Malkmus is discussing the high-tech, corporate domination of 21st-century America, and he’s getting righteously indignant about it. That wouldn’t be such a big deal, except that the former mastermind of ’90s indie-rock über-band Pavement has long been celebrated for his detachment, his ability to make an eloquent joke of…
Here is Jody Reynolds, circa 1955. Here’s this towheaded 17-year-old rockabilly player, good-looking fellow sporting a low blond pompadour and a guitar slung across his shoulders, playing at a little club in Odessa, Texas. Jody Reynolds is walking down a nighttime street with his buddies Al Casey, Billie Ray and…
Do a little bit of arithmetic and you’ll realize that rock photographer Henry Diltz has taken close to a million pictures. Thirty-plus years, hundreds of artists, thousands of rolls of film and the numbers quickly add up. If you believe the old adage that every picture tells a story, then…
Was there ever a more beloved yet underappreciated combo than Saint Etienne? Well, sure; pop’s endless highway is littered with yesterday’s papers, musical roadkill too classy and talented for the general populace. And that includes the hipster indie sector — of whom, it must be said, can be as fickle…
Among Dave Matthews’ charms, quality has never been chief. He traffics in standard-issue folk-pop that occasionally gets confused with something greater — mainly because Matthews, like Sting, has learned that by adding the vaguest suggestion of world music or jazz, he can receive full credit for their influence. His singing…
Oh, my my. Oh, hell yes. The funky Meters, y’all. Sampled by Public Enemy, name-checked by the Beastie Boys, covered by Primus, joined by Dr. John and Paul McCartney, there has rarely been a group that so defined a single town’s sound the way the Meters did in the late…
Oh sure, I hear you moan. And I’m the love child of George Jones and Tammy Wynette. Actually, the Bastard Sons, who hail from San Diego, are more like the kissin’ cousins of Dwight Yoakam; but as Minnie Pearl used to sing on Hee Haw, you’ll never hear one of…
In Austin last March, the Black Halos breezed in to Emo’s and proceeded to tame an unruly SXSW crowd until the show-me punks were eating out of the Vancouver quintet’s mitts, begging for more, and getting it. As the Halos’ smeary racket slammed from the stage, acrobatic lead singer Billy…
Eric Bachmann doesn’t like to think of himself as a singer-songwriter. Ask him about the idea, and he’ll probably rasp himself into a fiery cul de sac about how the very idea of singing about your problems is nothing but self-indulgent whining, that if you’re singing in the first place,…
Britt Daniel is stalling for time. He won’t come right out and say it, but yeah, that’s what he’s doing at the moment. A few minutes ago, Daniel was paying his bills, signing checks, sealing envelopes, and now he’s in the middle of giving an interview. Or taking it, actually:…
In previous installments of this column, we’ve sufficiently covered the mail part of our equation — how the music written and recorded by you good people out there arrives at our doorstep. We’ve discussed in excruciating detail the advantages of certain kinds of corrugated mailers and explained how your parcels…
Well, they said it couldn’t be done, but a pretentious English band finally made an album about being depressed. Black Box Recorder, currently being bruited about as the very last word in detached cool, is a grim trio indeed. “Child Psychology,” the first single from its 1999 debut, England Made…
The news of a freshly polished version of the “Famous Alto Break” might not mean much to the general public, but it is the kind of event that triggers seismographic tremors among the legions of Charlie Parker fans out there. Although the clumsily titled “Break” lasts less than 40 seconds,…
They’re headin’ for the hills in Hollywood — hillbillies, that is — banjos, mandolins. Which is a way of saying that three soundtracks have arrived in record stores everywhere, a few short steps and a million miles from Eminem, all loaded with country music and all worth owning. Of course,…
Cool is in the eye of the beholder, and poet/writer Lewis MacAdams has come up with a blueprint charting the development of the elusive, unspoken, Zenlike state of American “cool.” Don’t be misled by the title. Birth of the Cool isn’t a history recounting the famed Miles Davis’ nonet sessions…
Aijuswanaseing, the debut album from Philadelphia’s Musiq Soulchild, marks him as worth paying attention to, even if the record often slips a little too readily into contorted vocal gymnastics on an otherwise simple melody, or the pristine layered harmony — two elements that have become all but the aural fingerprints…
The Gourds’ Kevin Russell is singing in a rich, backwoods holler. Over the light pluck of a mandolin, a voice rises, sounding as if it were picked up off of Highway 61 — somewhere between Bill Monroe’s blue Kentucky home and Levon Helm’s Arkansas shack. But as evocative as Russell’s…
