Before getting the call from Paul, session pro Michael Brecker figured he had pretty much squeezed every kind of music imaginable out of his trusty tenor saxophone. Besides recording three highly acclaimed jazz albums on his own and another six with his brother Randy under the moniker the Brecker Brothers,…
Paul Simon prefers to explain his suburban musical globetrotting this way: “We’re sailing cultural seas that haven’t been charted,” he says in a record-company press release, “instead of merely pursuing popularity.” Okay. Love it or hate it. Hail it as a godsend or damn it as heresy. Whatever you think…
When Steven McDonald sees bell-bottom teens parading down L.A.’s Melrose strip, he can’t help but feel responsible. After all, his band Redd Kross was the pioneer in resurrecting misbegotten Seventies music and elephant-leg flares. And now with the current wave of Me Decade nostalgia, it seems fad and fashion have…
To say that 1969 and 1970 were big years for Dan Seals is to say that Texas has a lot of cows. At the time, Seals was a 21-year-old veteran of the Lone Star State skating-rink-frat-house circuit, playing bass and the occasional saxophone in a band called Southwest Freight on…
Although the fame and riches usually associated with legends have thus far escaped Texas-blues Queen of the Keyboards Marcia Ball, there’s no detectable complaint in her lovely, lazy drawl. A pinch of bemused irritation, maybe, but no chip on the shoulder for this Vinton, Louisiana, native. Given her accomplishments–which include…
Break out the Chivas. Dim the lights. Switch on the CD player. The blue-eyed king of heartbreak is back, Jack. Frank’s just turned 75, which is as good a reason as any to get all hot and bothered over his legacy. Both Capitol and Warner Bros./Reprise Records have simultaneously cracked…
Prowl through our hit list of 1990’s killer tunes, lyrics and riffs 1. FASTER PUSSYCAT Rubaiyat “You’re So Vain” (Elektra). For anyone who’s ever secretly desired to headbang to Carly Simon, here’s a chance to get off royally. 2. JANET JACKSON Rhythm Nation: 1814 “Black Cat” (A&M). Doing her best…
Mojo Nixon gets worked up when he recalls his introduction to the Sonics. It was back, back somewhere before he became Mojo. “I must have been ten,” he remembers, “but I knew then that here was something ugly. A bunch of guys out gettin’ big boners on rock ‘n’ roll…
Just a few years ago, Mary-Chapin Carpenter was a staple on the respected Washington, D.C., folk scene, the launching pad for Emmylou Harris, among others. Freshly graduated from Brown University with a degree in American civilization, she found herself in the early Eighties rattling around the capital mope scene, strumming…
Like many other teenagers, rapper Kamron has disagreed with his father on more than one occasion about his lifestyle. Unlike many teenagers, Kamron and his father have exchanged punches. The B-boy says his father called him a “nigger” for participating in hip-hop culture. That’s not unheard of in black families…
Bands just don’t get much less glamorous than the Pirates of the Mississippi. Sure, they’re sitting pretty now with a chart-happy debut album, fueled by a driving cover of Hank Sr.’s “Honky Tonk Blues,” but Nashville’s grimiest-sounding country band spent a good part of the late Eighties, literally, in the…
When most proud papas want to show off their offspring, they pop a home video into the VCR or pull out a stack of wallet-size photos. But when Rave-Ups singer-guitarist Jimmer Podrasky wants to give friends an eyeful of his number one son Chance, he turns on MTV or pulls…
For sixteen years, fans of heavy-metal band Judas Priest have been accustomed to seeing lead singer Rob Halford in his trademark stage dress, a menacing armor of black leather and silver studs that even Attila the Hun might have found a bit too butch. But a few months ago, as…
Flashback to the late Sixties: A prepubescent Dan Murphy is drooling over the cover of an album from his parents’ collection. It’s a Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass record featuring an unclothed Hispanic beauty slathered up to her false eyelashes in whipped cream. Murphy calls the provocative cover of…
Every time she scanned the Billboard chart in the summer of ’89, Indigo Girl Amy Ray had to chuckle. Perched near the top of the pops, frighteningly close to the likes of Paula Abdul’s Forever Your Girl and Don Henley’s The End of the Innocence, was the Indigo Girls’ self-titled…
It’s easy, at first, to like, even admire Jane’s Addiction singer Perry Farrell. Ever since JA made its way onto a major label in 1988, he’s shown off a nasally sonic voice that hits you in the heart and solar plexus at the same time. And he’s one of rock’s…
Whether they like it or not, the Blazing Redheads are one of the more confrontational groups on today’s music scene. But it’s not the San Francisco band’s “rhythmo-fusion” sound–a percussive concoction of danceable rhythms reaching from Africa to Brazil by way of jazz and R&B–that gives its audiences pause. Simply,…
Anyone who thinks the blues ain’t nothin’ but a doggone heart disease needs a stiff dose of Little Charlie and the Nightcats. This Sacramento-based band substitutes comedy for sorrow and gets away with it. “That’s the way of dealing with life’s troubles–laughing at them,” says guitarist Charlie Baty in a…
In its heyday, Chicago produced some of the best bluesmen ever. Legendary names like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Willie Dixon, and Otis Spann called Chi-Town home. But behind all these legends was a slew of back-up musicians who got no glory. One lesser-known who played with all of these cats…
A couple dozen black-clad kids are moping around outside Tempe’s Asylum nightclub. It’s a full five or six hours before the Rollins Band show is scheduled to start, but apparently these punks want to stake out their slamming space early. Of course, it isn’t the Rollins Band these teens are…
Scrawl guitarist Marcy Mays straddles a barstool at Tempe’s Sun Club, sipping a beer and reflecting on the small-potatoes status of her all-female band. “You have to wonder,” muses Mays in a preshow interview, “where we’d be if we wore corsets.” Mays wouldn’t be caught dead in a corset. In…
Three years have slipped by since the last Michael Franks release–a risky lapse for an artist who continues to rely on radio airplay for exposure. But Franks is accustomed to tempting the specter of career failure. For starters, he offers a hybrid of jazz, R&B and pop that defies marketing…
