Sleepy LaBeef is a rockabilly from Smackover, Arkansas. Think about it: Sleepy. LaBeef. Smackover. You probably won’t see a stranger, more evocative combination of words in a music story anytime soon, but in this case, it’s fitting. Among tightly slotted contemporary artists, LaBeef–who possesses one of the deepest voices in…
Aphex Twin Richard B. James (Sire/Elektra) Moby–who just yesterday was the poster boy for the ensuing techno revolution–is going mortal while everyone else goes dancing. Turning his back on techno, Moby now embraces Mission of Burma and speed metal and Public Image Ltd. as though he knew them all along…
1. Mae West–Way Out West! (Tower) 1966 Mae still had an hourglass figure, but the sands of time were quickly running out, if her manglings of beat favorites like “Day Tripper,” “Twist and Shout” and “You Turn Me On” are any indicator. This curio is like kissing Grandma and getting…
Pat Boone Pat Boone in a Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy (Hip-O/MCA) Pat Boone is back in black, and God help us all. When a recording that’s so wrong in so many ways returns Pat Boone–Pat Boone–to the pop charts after 34 years in celebrity-golf-tournament exile, it’s time…
Critters Buggin Guest Host (LooseGroove) Shake the hand of fate for pushing Pearl Jam into the Pantheon. Because if Pearl Jam had never gotten huge, guitarist Stone Gossard wouldn’t have gotten rich. And if Stone Gossard had never gotten rich, he wouldn’t have started his own record label. And if…
Waco Brothers Cowboy in Flames (Bloodshot) The problem with most new country music is that it’s too damned polite. It’s hard to imagine Garth Brooks or George Strait on a bender, and if LeAnn Rimes raises hell, I don’t want to know about it. Of course, Nashville has always had…
On a one to 10, with half points, here’s how the gala debut of Utopia–the first real attempt to translate underground dance culture into a legal, nightclub setting in the Valley–scored in the following critical areas: Music: 9.0 Resident DJ R.C. Lair started spinning around 10 and, intelligently, cast a…
Despite her success, Tina Turner has done her best to obscure the fact that she’s a great singer. It doesn’t help that she just launched her latest solo album, Wildest Dreams, at the same time one of her most incendiary early-’70s performances is available for the first time on CD…
Magnus Sveningsson says the Cardigans aren’t as happy, happy, joy, joy as they sound. “I hope we fool listeners to think we only play happy songs,” says the bass player and chief lyricist for the fluffy pop band from Sweden. “I hope people like the chorus, but the third or…
Vanessa Daou Slow to Burn (MCA) Virgin Island jazz-pop/dance diva Vanessa Daou and her producer/instrumentalist husband Peter Daou earned the favorable notice of dance-club feminists in 1994 with Zipless, an album that set the poetry and occasionally the voice of Erica Jong to music (the Fear of Flying author is…
For a company president, Superchunk front man Mac McCaughan starts work late. It’s 11 a.m. in North Carolina by the time he slides into the Chapel Hill offices of his label, Merge, for an interview. McCaughan sounds relaxed and amiable on the phone, and with good reason. Besides recently releasing…
“Welcome to the Nappy Jungle.” Black Moon Graffiti vocalist Napoleon “Leo” Powell divides the air with his hand, magician style, and whisks open the door to his Tucson home. From the emerald abundance of plant life inside, it’s clear where the “jungle” comes from, but what’s up with “nappy”? Powell…
“Once you pose naked on a stage, you can do anything in front of a crowd,” says blues mama and ex-porn queen Candye Kane. “Every night I hit the bandstand, I do my show from the perspective of a disenfranchised, fat, X-rated star in a skinny world where sex is…
Up from the ceaselessly rumbling, garbage-truck-choked avenues of Brooklyn, New York; spawned in the midnight blackness of iron-latticed parkscapes in the ultimate gothic city; falling sonically somewhere between Sisters of Mercy, Black Sabbath and the Cocteau Twins, comes Type O Negative. Garbage trucks? Hold that thought. Over its four-album career,…
Marilyn Manson’s children of the scorn bustled about their suburban bedrooms early in the evening of Friday, January 24, applying makeup and fish net in prep for the pop-industrial-shock artist’s first Valley concert since his new recording, Antichrist Superstar, was released last October and went insta-platinum. Then they flocked by…
Despite the bombardment of mediocre Elvis impersonators, the world still largely acknowledges that the Elvis Presley who toppled off his porcelain throne 20 years ago is the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll. But now that longtime Elvis handler Colonel Tom Parker has kicked the bucket–Parker died of a stroke January…
Supersuckers Nita’s Hideaway January 21, 1997 “Welcome to the rock show,” Supersuckers singer/spokesman Eddie Spaghetti exhorted a packed house from behind his “rock-star shades.” Looking a lot like Andy Kaufman in a cowboy hat, Spaghetti kept the absurdity level high throughout his band’s roller-coaster set of hillbilly hard-core. “Here’s a…
Bjork Telegraph (Elektra) Bjork’s the fairy queen of post-rock pop, and on Telegraph, several of the finest producers and DJs in the European club, underground dance and hip-hop scenes attend to her at court. The former Sugarcube’s third solo release is mostly remixes of material from her second, Post. Nonetheless,…
Q: What did the snail say on the turtle’s back? A: “Wheeeeeee!” If you were at Hollywood Alley last Saturday night (January 18), you probably heard Les Payne Project guitarist James Karnes tell that one. I was, and I did. And I’m glad for it, because I also heard Karnes…
The Louvin Brothers were country music’s best-ever brother team, and when they titled their greatest album Tragic Songs of Life, they weren’t kidding around. Over the course of the recording, a woman wanders “this wide world all over,” leaving her abandoned lover to contemplate suicide; a man, rich beyond his…
Shaquille O’Neal You Can’t Stop the Reign (T.W.IsM.) It took $120 million to persuade Shaquille O’Neal to apply himself on a basketball court (free-throw percentage as of this writing: 46 percent). How much of himself can he be expected to commit to a rap album that returns but a fraction…
Caroline Whisnant is an attractive woman. Tall, well-proportioned, nice smile. Easy on the eyes, as it were. Sexist statements? Not when you consider that Whisnant performs opera and makes a career of playing beautiful, alluring women in various stages of duress. The soprano appeared as Freia, the Goddess of Youth…
