Do you know who the late Vivian Stanshall was? I didn’t, either, until I got a job working a 50-year-old switchboard in the Gralyn Hotel in Washington, D.C., and moved into a tiny room in the rear corner of the building. This was about 12 years ago. My space–which once…
There’s a line toward the beginning of Melissa Etheridge’s song “Come to My Window” that goes, “I would dial the numbers just to listen to your breath.” It may not be the most memorable phrase in music history, but it tells you everything you need to know about the writer’s…
It’s not only beer that has made Milwaukee famous; the city that the Chamber of Commerce has dubbed “A Great Place on a Great Lake” can also claim Laverne & Shirley, Jeffrey Dahmer and the Spanic Boys. Of course, each of those big three exports bears certain elements of unreality:…
Jimmy Page and Robert Plant America West Arena May 10, 1995 “This can’t be a Led Zeppelin show. I feel so safe.” So remarked an ASU teacher’s assistant sitting next to me, and he was right–it wasn’t a Led Zeppelin show. It was a night of the oldies! And for…
Steve Gorman, drummer for the Black Crowes, remembers the first time he realized his band was no longer the new kid on the block. “Two years ago,” he recalls, “I was sitting at my brother’s house in Baltimore and he puts on MTV. The veejay goes, ‘After the break, we’ll…
A few years back, Chris Mars played drums in a band that prided itself on having one of the nastiest reputations in rock. Drunk, sloppy, crude, unprofessional, even impolite–the Replacements pretty much cornered the market on undesirable adjectives. So what would you expect Chris Mars to be like? Obnoxious? Uncultured?…
Instead of the usual rambling nonsense on how I wasted my weekend (though this one did involve garlic, a mood ring, nausea, high-speed travel, and a fat, squirrelesque employee at a convenience store in Cottonwood with a pulsating red scar on his forehead), let’s head straight into what really matters:…
You’re Dead Hot Workshop. You’re a hometown hit in Tempe. The locals consider you the Valley’s next prime music export. You’ve recently signed a major-label deal and you’re starting out on an extended tour designed to introduce yourself to the great American masses. That’s you, a day and a half…
The loins of Ellis Marsalis are certainly no slouch in the siring-of-jazz-prodigies department. The respected New Orleans pianist is father to a fantastically talented brood of jazzmen–trumpet virtuoso Wynton, drummer Jason, producer/trombonist Delfeayo and first-born Branford. That last event occurred almost 35 years ago, and in that amount of time,…
If the word “mambo” conjures up anything at all in an age when the most popular forms of dance are “line” and “slam,” it is probably some kind of slightly silly, Ricky Ricardoesque vision. There might be a couple of ladies wearing hats made of fresh fruit bumping and grinding…
Tom Petty occupies a strange place in our collective psyche. Because of his notable collaborations with respected rock elders like Bob Dylan, George Harrison and the late Del Shannon, we tend to view him as a rookie instead of the 20-year veteran that he is. When he and the Heartbreakers…
There’s a famous film clip of the Beatles, newly arrived in America, riding in a limousine and listening incredulously to a transistor radio. From that tiny speaker, a strange deejay the lads had never heard of named Murray the K was anointing himself “the fifth Beatle.” Since then, everyone who…
The desert does not care if you live or die. It is a brutal, unforgiving place where Mother Nature plays hardened Bitch Goddess to the hilt and the only law is survival. And when the sun is busy redefining “broil”–which is all the time–that’s a law enforced in terms so…
Glenn Frey Solo Collection (MCA) How much water can one ex-Eagle tread? Prior to all of last year’s Eagles reunion by-products, Frey released a Greatest Hits–Live album. Now here comes its studio equivalent, minus all the Eagles stuff on which Frey’s dead ass and reputation still coast. For an entire…
Democracy’s a funny thing. It can define civilizations. It can liberate minds and unleash souls. It can prompt unending, impenetrable gibberish from bespectacled poli-sci students. And it can kill a rock band. Music groups adhering to egalitarian ideals are breakups waiting to happen. Dictators–benevolent, malevolent and all points in between–seem…
Geraldo Rivera: GG, why do you feel the need to defecate onstage? GG Allin: My body is the rock ‘n’ roll temple and my flesh, blood and bodily fluids are a communion to the people whether they like it or not. I’m not out to please anybody; my rock ‘n’…
Everybody loves chili with beans–sure thing! And everybody loves legendary country supergroup Alabama–I know you’re all with me on that! But what if you wanna combine your love of both in some kind of symbiotic power coupling? Sure, you could heat up a can of Hormel and throw on your…
If you believe the myths, “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” was either a drunk mispronouncing “in the garden of Eden” or else it was very bad Latin for “play as long as you like, I’ve got to take a monstrous dump.” This lumbering, 17-minute-and-five-second Iron Butterfly opus took up the whole of an album…
Though it was more than 20 years ago, I’ll never forget my first glimpse of Playboy Mansion West. The lush, green lawns, the exotic birds and animals wandering around, the waterfall cascading into the swimming pool, the stately House That Hef Built. All of which were nothing compared to the…
Hell-Bent: Insurgent Country Volume 2 (Bloodshot) Insurgent, indeed! How dare they, these young bands of scofflaws, going and recording songs that are actually representative of the heart and soul of authentic American country music. There’s nary a ten-gallon hat, daintily trimmed mustache or skintight pair of jeans to be seen…
At last–I’ve found it! After years of vein-popping concentration searching for unique descriptions, after developing blisters on every finger from thumbing through thesauruses looking for new adjectives, I’ve discovered the ultimate way to determine whether a song is good. But I’ll give credit where credit is due: I owe it…
Life is all about choices, and Ralph Stanley’s first big choice was between a pig and a banjo. At the tender age of 11, Ralph’s mother gave him a $5 bill–no small sum in 1938, especially in the hills of Virginia near the Tennessee border where the Stanleys lived (to…
