In 1986, as American singer/songwriter Paul Simon was about to release his Afro-pop manifesto Graceland, one of Simon’s inspirations was about to hang it up. Born Simon Nkabinde, but known by his stage name Mahlathini, this spry, 55-year-old Zulu is to African popular music what Dylan or the Beatles are…
“We’re an alternative to the alternative, which is just a clever way of saying we’re the mainstream,” says Miles Hunt of The Wonder Stuff. “We’re just a pop band.” Being a pop band, though, places The Wonder Stuff squarely on music’s cutting edge. Pop is so old it’s brand-new again…
It began when Elvis Presley became Mr. Sex” by humping the air on The Ed Sullivan Show. It spread when the Rolling Stones secured their bad-boy image by grinning through drug arrests, and when John Lennon declared himself a saint through his more popular than Jesus” pontificating. Shock value and…
It’s November 1, 1976. A little New York City club called CBGB’s is holding an audition night. The audience is buzzing. It can sense that a music scene is developing around the club’s new and exciting emphasis on punk” rock. One of the bands on the evening’s bill is called…
For most bands, playing songs by other songwriters is a mark of shame, a sign that they don’t have enough original material. But for the Neville Brothers, the opposite is true. Despite excellent original material, they want to sing other writers’ songs. It gives them a chance to hone their…
Webb Wilder is quite a guy. Just ask him. He’ll poke his chest forward and gladly tell you he’s the last of the full-grown men” and the idol of idle youth.” Without missing a beat, he’ll boldly claim that he’s not just a musician, but a mujician.” I can pull…
By 1983, crazed country iconoclast Gary Stewart had finally slipped one toke over the line. The days when he’d peppered the C&W charts with classic cuts like “Drinkin’ Thing” and “She’s Acting Single (I’m Drinking Doubles)” were roughly ten years and 10,000 Quaaludes in the past. His long, rocky relationship…
The twin pillars of the music business are talent and hype. Although talent gets all the respect, it’s hype-an art that bears no relation to taste, trends or the truthÏthat’s made the music business what it is. Make no mistake, hype is not easy. Press releases and other printed materials…
The night I attended my very first concert, Led Zeppelin was playing in town. That’s where all my friends were, bathed in marijuana smoke and ten-minute guitar solos. The next day, they bragged about how great the concert was, and when they saw I didn’t care, they added that a…
Eleven years ago, on New Year’s Eve, the Jetzons played their first gig. Next Tuesday, New Year’s Eve, all of the group’s original members will reunite after almost nine years apart to try to recapture a little of what made the Jetzons, for a time, the Valley’s biggest band. Cultivating…
The only thing worse than a Christmas fruitcake is Christmas music. The damned stuff is everywhere. Toddle down to your local ABCO these days, and each check-out line has a display of “specially priced” Christmas cassettes. Go fill your car up with super unleaded and what do you get? Exxon’s…
Dan Wilson is laughing. He’s chuckling from a pay telephone on the concourse of a shopping mall in Minneapolis. The background tinkling of a holiday bell-ringer accents Wilson’s conversation over the long-distance line. Dan Wilson’s happy because he’s recalling the time when his band, Trip Shakespeare, was deemed the absolute…
In Dallas two weeks ago, a couple from Finland stood silently at the grave of guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan. After 20 minutes or so, the Finnish man reached into his pocket and walked to the tombstone. He took something out and clicked it across the letters in the name, then…
“Now, let’s get one thing straight–I’m really a pussycat,” Kim Wilson says, able to hold back the laughter for only a second. Considering the history of his band, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, a bulldog is closer to the truth. For 17 years, through good times and bad, Wilson has pushed an…
Although every record label wants to claim it was the first, no one really knows who invented the boxed set. Usually comprising a cardboard box, a handful of CDs and a book full of pictures, boxed sets focus on the music of a single artist, time period or genre. A…
It wasn’t so long ago, if you were able to snag a pair of tickets to a George Jones concert, only half the battle was won. For certain, you wouldn’t get many betting types to make book that this country music living legend would actually perform. And if he did,…
It’s an autumn afternoon in downtown Tempe. The sun is clear and strong and there’s a breeze kicking around the aromatic remnants of the previous night’s rain. Business is brisk at the Coffee Plantation. The Tempe hot spot is cluttered with the usual crowd–students, artists, the fashionably underemployed and the…
In 1987, Vern Gosdin was ready to chuck the whole music business. He’d spent the last three decades playing his clean, pure, Southern-style country music in ornery taverns and toiling on teensy labels, and dammit, it was high time to start thinking about a pension. “You get a little age…
AZMC ’91: PLAYING FOR KEEPS Ahhh . . . there’s nothing like a music conference. Musicians of every size, taste and hair style steal into town. Music-business people–everyone from writers and deejays to promoters and record-company executives–fly in and schmooze themselves silly. During the day, everyone drifts in and out…
The lights went down. From the buzzing P.A. system a voice requested, “Won’t you please welcome Nirvana!” The band ambled out onto the stage 15 minutes later. After the usual tuning of guitars and pounding of drum heads, Kurt Cobain leaned over the microphone stand, strummed the opening chords and…
Charles Michael Kitteridge Thompson IV is bored. Mr. Thompson, better known by his stage name “Black Francis,” is submitting to an interview about his band, the Pixies. But the singer-guitarist sounds like he’d much rather be doing something else. “I’m not comfortable making a big deal out of things,” he…
“Uh, can I get you something?” asks the waitress. “Yeah, a beer please,” answers Nirvana’s giant, ragged bassist Chris Novoselic. The Howard Johnson server promptly leaves the table, as if she’s just been given an order in an alien dialect. Maybe she doesn’t realize she’s speaking to one of America’s…
