There is something wrong with Thermos Malling. Maybe growing up in strip-mall Phoenix did him in. Forming the melted-delta meta-blues duo Doo Rag — in which he played drums on things as various as film reels, horse troughs and suitcases — may have warped him. Perhaps creating a vocal-amplification device…
Outrageous Cherry Out There in the Dark (Del-Fi 2000) At first squint, it may seem a tad oxymoronic to be told that a terrific new album will take you on a journey. After all, critics have been employing that standard ever since Bob Dylan painted his first masterpiece. Even today’s…
Bill Blake, Serene Dominic, Bob Mehr. Three sharply seasoned music critics. Together this trio of rock snobs has lauded thousands of deserving albums up to high heaven and drop-kicked 10 times that number down to the gallows. But now they’ve grown tired and jaded, unwilling even to lay their eyes…
When Outside Looking In: The Best of the Gin Blossoms hits stores on October 19, the first question on the lips of most people will be, “Why?” Why would a band that broke up less than three years ago and with only two albums (and one EP) to its credit…
Yellow Submarine, the 1968 full-length Beatles animated movie, has been rereleased to much fanfare, but what about The Beatles, the ABC-TV animated cartoon series that aired Saturday mornings from 1965 to 1968? There were 39 half-hour shows in all, each with two episodes and a pre-karaoke sing-along in the middle…
It’s never too late for a comeback in rock ‘n’ roll, when every has-been is one fluke hit away from being a still-is. Yet even with that in mind, They Might Be Giants is perhaps an unlikely candidate for a resurgence, although it might be too soon to term the…
The year is 1978. Son of Sam gets life, the Pistols lose theirs and John Lennon still has his. Sandinista guerrillas attempt to extricate Nicaraguan life by overthrowing its government. John Belushi spoofs frats in National Lampoon’s Animal House. We are standing in the Phoenix Veterans’ Memorial Coliseum 10 rows…
The Go Whatcha Doin’ (Sub-Pop) For rock ‘n’ roll fans, these are troubled times. Contrary to popular belief, it has nothing to do with the emergence of the Backstreet Boys, Ricky Martin, Limp Bizkit or any of the other cretins currently occupying the upper echelon of Billboard’s Top 200. Manufactured…
It’s a muggy Friday night outside the Metro in Chicago, a club just down the street from Wrigley Field. As drunk and raucous Cubs fans head into the stadium for that night’s game, inside the club, equally drunk and raucous fans wait for an event of a different kind: a…
This week Petula Clark takes the Gammage Auditorium stage in the touring version of the Broadway musical Sunset Boulevard, stepping into the mole, I mean the role, of Ms. Norma Desmond. And when she utters those immortal lines “I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille,” you can bet her beauty…
Life isn’t easy for Anton Newcombe, the 31-year-old cultish maestro behind the Brian Jonestown Massacre, possibly the most controversial band you’ve never heard of. Newcombe — also known as Anton A. Newcombe and, inexplicably, Dr. Anton A. Newcombe — is the only constant of the decade-old group. The Brian Jonestown…
You’ll have to excuse Bob Corritore if his head has been in the clouds lately. It’s understandable given the fact that the release of his All Star Blues Sessions album (HMG/Hightone Records) is the culmination of a lifelong dream for the 42-year-old promoter, radio personality and performer. At lunch with…
L7 Slap Happy (Wax Tadpole/Bong Load) The women of L7 look and write songs these days as if the ’90s took them for a hard ride and put them up wet, as the band’s three remaining members clock out for the decade with Slap Happy, an album as heavy and…
There are few equivalents in the business world to the independent record company. Most are labors of love rather than profit. To music lovers first, business people second, indie-label owners perform a valuable service in releasing music by artists that the big, corporate imprints can’t, won’t or don’t know about…
Hans Olson has been typecast as a bluesman in his 30 years on the Valley scene, and he wants everyone to know that’s not his role. “A bluesman is a guy who lives the blues. I don’t live the blues. It’s just my favorite kind of music.” Despite the disclaimer,…
Early in 1965, Cannibal and the Headhunters, a Chicano vocal quartet out of East Los Angeles, took “Land of 1,000 Dances” to No. 30 on the pop charts, shutting down a version by their archrivals Thee Midniters (which reached No. 67) in the process. It was the third national hit…
As monsoon winds swirl around the south Scottsdale practice space of Shoeless Joe, three members of the Tempe quartet — bassist Theron Wall, singer/rhythm guitarist Dave Wolfmeyer and lead guitarist Chad Hines — wait for drummer Michael Wood to arrive. “You’re late,” someone shouts as Wood finally emerges from an…
The Church A Box of Birds (Thirsty Ear) In 1989, almost in spite of itself, The Church sat conspicuously in the U.S. Top 20 with its lone chart hit “Under the Milky Way,” a tune — even by the group’s standards — that fell short of its water line. At…
The desert surrounding Jeff Dahl’s Cave Creek home is lush, made fragrant and green from recent monsoon thrashings. His neighbors on the next acre, the ones who run a Christian day-care center, have a sprawling ranch with many horses. A guy from Dokken lives just up the road. And there…
By the time the punk-rock revolution finally arrived in the Valley around 1978, the music quickly began to become filtered through the overheated minds of its desert practitioners. Groups like the Consumers, the Nervous and the Chemists offered up a uniquely Arizonan take on the anarchic sounds coming from New…
Once, during the early 1980s, Ray Benson and Asleep at the Wheel tried to escape from the enormous shadow that had blanketed the Western swing band since its 1973 debut album, which featured the immortal Bob Wills cut “Take Me Back to Tulsa.” The Austin-based band had run into a…
In theory, but all too rarely in practice, music can — as former rock scribe Jon Landau once wrote — “answer every impulse, consume all emotion, cleanse and purify — all the things that we have no right to expect from even the greatest works of art but which we…
