What makes a scene? No one knows for sure. In Austin it’s the mystique. In New York and L.A., it’s the mass of population. In Chicago and New Orleans, it’s the history. In this town, we’re still figuring that equation out. Sometimes it works and sometimes, well . . …
It’s the day after the South African parliament repealed the Population Registration Act, one of the last chains in the lockup of apartheid. Halfway around the planet, South African reggae singer Lucky Dube is just waking up in the Hilton hotel in Halifax, Nova Scotia. When he answers the telephone,…
On its records, Too Much Joy sounds like your average Nineties punk/pop band: jangly guitars, power drumming and lyrics about the painful intricacies of love in the last decade of the century. The group’s history as a live act, however, reads like a police blotter. In 1990 alone, the members…
“When I tell people–men, women, white, black, everybody–that I sing the blues, they squint or take a step back, or I see something move across their face as they think, `Oh, yeah,'” says blues singer Janiva Magness. Blues fans still have a hard time accepting women playing the blues, Magness…
Forget that their debut record sold two million copies. Forget the travesty of Mariah Carey beating them out of the Grammy for Best New Act. Forget even that this band’s “It’s only rock ‘n’ roll” attitude and catchy songwriting make it a meaty musical antidote to the weak, Axl Rose…
“How much are these wine coolers?” the woman asks incredulously. “Three ninety-nine.” “How much?” “Three ninety-nine,” Nathan Williams says, patiently repeating the price. The woman grumbles but change jingles on the counter. “Thank you, Ma’am. Now, where were we?” While we talk, Williams is working at the counter in his…
In 1987 a man stormed a Denver, Colorado, radio station and, at gunpoint, ordered a deejay to play the depressive pop of British band the Smiths for 24 hours–nonstop. This deranged young fan fantasized about the melancholy warbling of Smiths lead singer Morrissey ringing out all over the snowcapped city…
It’s a typical, quiet Sun City street. Obsessively neat, almost-sterile brick homes. Plaster-cast-cherub and Greek-goddess fountains. White walls. Suddenly, the rumble of tortured electric guitars and the monotone wail of a Wendy O. Williams-style voice break the unnatural serenity of Del Webb’s desert-in-bloom dream come true. Can there really be…
A bluesy slide guitar snarls as a Z-car negotiates a winding coast highway. A blues band plays while co-eds in ridiculously tight, body-sock dresses bounce around and make a bubbly show of drinking low-cal brew. A bunch of bluesmen on break sits around and talks about how baaaad a new…
If Webster’s decided to include an entry for “anti-pop” in its next edition, the definition might go something like this: 1. music lacking in pop conventions (i.e., catchy choruses and fat hooks). 2. music with rapid-fire changes in tempo, texture and mood. 3. music rarely featured on “hot hits” stations…
“You can see it in their eyes,” says Jerry Mele. Searing, seething eyes boiling over with carefully contained aggression. Bright Mack truck headlights mounted on an otherwise placid face. Jerry Mele learned how to gauge the danger lurking behind such ominous orbs during a two-year hitch in Vietnam, where the…
A new-age musician who has the audacity to call the music boring? Unlike most in new-age pianist David Lanz’s chosen genre, he seems to have a sense of humor. He even gives indications of refusing to take the music’s touchy, feely trip seriously. In a recent concert, he introduced one…
“I don’t know, I guess I’m just missing my girlfriend today,” says Johnny Rzeznik. Talking by telephone from a tour stop in Cleveland, the guitarist and singer for Goo Goo Dolls sounds wrung out and depressed. “All three of us are in a weird mood today. We all miss our…
In new-age music’s cast of characters, Mark Isham plays the part of the Seducer. The trumpeter has made a career of following increasingly darker musical directions, slowly luring the crystal crowd into the shadows with him. His latest release Mark Isham is such a heavy, overcast effort, it seems as…
It used to be that people would joke with Julie Renn about her winning ways on Star Search. “What, are you having an affair with someone on the show? Are you buying your way in?” they would say. Since 1984, when she began training dancers to perform on the now-eight-year-old…
Genetic duplicates are the latest rage in pop music. Groups like Nelson and the Triplets have effortlessly parlayed freak cell division into hugely successful careers. But things weren’t so easy for the Cuff twins of Britain’s Soho. The early days of this group played like a particularly poorly scripted episode…
Steve Winwood relaxes in a hotel room in New York City, talking by telephone to reporters in every city he’s about to hit on his current U.S. tour. The 43-year-old rock ‘n’ roll survivor has quietly endured a slew of critical jabs during the last few years for the highly…
Despite some past attitude and present whining, the Arizona music scene continues to spin. There still aren’t enough places to play, and the musicians might cooperate with each other more, but these nine Arizona releases are proof that music of every shape and sound is happening in this state. And…
Trumpeter Clark Terry and saxophonist James Moody could hang up their horns and retire to swatting porch flies. After all, these two jazz patriarchs have racked up more than ninety years between them, playing with the greatest. Terry appeared with Lionel Hampton, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Thelonious Monk, and…
A mystery is the only way to describe what’s happened to the Bulgarian State Radio and Television Female Vocal Choir. Two short years ago, these sturdy Eastern European women with babushkas on their heads and red onions on their breath exploded onto the world-music scene with their evocatively titled debut…
The night before our Saturday-afternoon talk with the Kentucky HeadHunters, the boys played a gig in Baltimore, Maryland. It was the kind of show their growing cadre of fans has come to expect: energy to rival or best any hormone-driven thrash punktet; massive doses of homemade, hot-from-the-barbecue Southern rock; plus…
If all the peeling Bauhaus stickers you see in cars’ rear windshields prove anything, there are still a few die-hard goth-rock fans out there. Brooding goth bands will probably always have an audience as long as there are pallid, chronically mopey, black-clad teens around. But for most listeners, self-consciously gloomy…
