It’s a given: Most Americans know ca-ca about ska. To date, we’ve only sent one record with a skanking beat into the Top 5–Little Millie Small’s squeaky-sweet ode to her pubescent licking stick, “My Boy Lollipop”–and that was way back in 1964! Despite its impressive chart showing, “Lollipop” was largely…
You wanna talk influential bands? It’s gonna be a short conversation. What band has done more than KISS to influence everyone who’s anyone today–from Nirvana to Garth Brooks to the Gin Blossoms? That’s right, all none of ’em! KISS is legendary, this we know. And Gene Simmons knows it, too;…
It’s a breezy night at Club Rio in Tempe. The courtyard in the back is framed with lazy, swaying palms. A stage is set up at the east side of the patio. In front of the stage, there’s a large, ornate fountain gurgling water on itself. Behind the stage are…
Remember that old rallying cry of the record industry in the Eighties: “Home taping is killing music”? Well, Mesa’s No Name Maddox has administered the last fatal blow to music as we knew and loved her with this frightening, homemade porridge of samples, synthesizers and psychotics. “D.I.Y.–fuck the great God…
Techno composer Moby is a hypocrite, but he’s the first to admit it. “Everything I do is contradiction, and it’s laden with hypocrisy,” says the vegan and environmentalist. Moby, a.k.a. Richard Melville Hall, speaks out against a number of issues, including toxic waste and cattle ranching. Pretty much everything about…
Because we refer to television as “the vast wasteland,” we don’t put much stock in music made by its inhabitants. Plenty of TV personalities have fashioned disastrous singing careers for themselves, but few have ever tried to branch out into instrumental music. In the Fifties, Jackie Gleason parlayed his enormous…
Live albums? Why, they’re either contractual obligations or shameful cash-ins for someone who’s just bolted from his record label. More often, they’re the measure of an artist whose best work is behind him. Take Paul McCartney. His albums barely go gold anymore, so it’s no surprise that he’s released three…
The boys in Beats the Hell Out of Me are green! They’re babes in the woods of rock! They’re new to the ways of the Business, and by that, of course, I mean the Industry! Check this out: When I met the Tempe quintet–guitarists Tom Coffeen and Chris Bailey, bassist…
There’s nothing like an early death to prompt critical reconsideration–Frank Zappa, who succumbed to cancer in late 1993 at the age of 52, has gotten a major boost to his reputation. At the time of his passing, the music made by this grumpy auteur was heard by few listeners outside…
Rock ‘n’ roll often breeds absurdity. Artists who won’t play a show unless the backstage M&Ms are the right color or drummers whose hobby is hotel-room demolition. By comparison, Jonathan Richman seems remarkable. The man is urbane, civil, polite on the phone. “Hey, there,” chirps someone in smiley tones suitable…
From its humble beginnings in the South Bronx to “Rappers Delight” to Run-DMC, N.W.A and beyond, hip-hop has proved to be the most vital and progressive music form of the past 20 years, with enough staying power to rival even rock ‘n’ roll’s lengthy reign. Like rock, rap struck terror…
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…
