On the first Saturday in December, the hip-hop capital of Phoenix–if there is such a thing–turned out to be a hall on a side street near Seventh Avenue and Camelback called Rockin’ Freddy’s. Inside, a deejay spun funk and rap until Shatonya Davis took the stage for a performance that…
Most performers set out on solo tours to indulge mammoth egos or to achieve that elusive goal called “artistic fulfillment.” Black Francis did it for gas money. See, the Pixies singer-guitarist recently became the proud owner of a lemon-meringue-colored 1986 Cadillac, complete with cassette deck and CB radio. He figured…
It seems like the dawn of each decade brings out the pied piper in Todd Rundgren. At the sunup of the Seventies, when Rundgren was beginning to make a name for himself as a recording studio whiz kid and veritable one-man band, the Philadelphia-born rocker often ballyhooed the joys of…
Aside from your multiplatinum Tracy Chapman records, acoustic folk albums aren’t exactly Top 40 fodder in this post-Peter, Paul, and Mary age. The Grapes of Wrath want to change that. The Vancouver quartet follows Chapman’s lead with its new album, Now and Again, which contains several songs that wouldn’t have…
Before Bon Jovi, before Billy Joel, even before glasnost, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown took American music behind the Iron Curtain. But unlike the mega-ego, multimillion-dollar, hype-O-rama rock stars who got their pretty-boy mugs plastered all over TV sets from coast to coast, Brown did not rate evening news coverage. Still, Brown…
Double truck, no jumps You say you don’t know Love and Rockets from Loggins and Messina? Can’t tell the Sugarcubes from Supertramp? Well, maybe in the early Eighties you could get away with feeling inadequate where alternative music was concerned. After all, back then, bands like R.E.M. and the Cure…
In the heavy-metal game these days, it’s hard to tell what’s Spinal Tap and what’s not. When a musician puts a cucumber in his pants, is it hilarious or just painfully true to the genre? And when a group thinks up song titles like “Iron Cock” and “How Delicious She…
It seems like just another fraternity beer party. There’s a band on-stage and cerveza in the keg. Prepped-out college types are toasting the home team’s latest gridiron exploits and boasting over the spoils of a recent panty raid. Everybody’s had some juice, and the crowd is feeling a wee bit…
Surely the meeting of the king of Seventies rock, Robert Plant, and the clown prince of Eighties rock, Cult singer Ian Astbury, has to qualify as one of the more ironic pop music encounters. It was 1986, and the Cult was laying tracks for its Electric LP while, in the…
Ten acts that recorded in the Eighties that shouldn’t go near a studio in the Nineties. 1. R.E.M.: If any band ruled the underground in the Eighties, it was this Athens, Georgia, quartet. But the group’s steady ascent from clubs to arenas has dissipated its energy; all that’s left is…
Ten acts that recorded in the Seventies that shouldn’t have gone near a studio in the Eighties. 1. THE RAMONES: Their one-joke, three- chord escapades stopped being amusing sometime around 1979. Dee Dee even went solo as a reborn rapper. What’s the punch line? 2. PATTI SMITH: With 1975’s Horses,…
If there’s one maxim we believe, it’s that musicians and other people in the biz– like record-company bigwigs, deejays and retailers–are really frustrated critic. MICHAEL CORNELIUS BASSIST Housequake, Jodie Foster’s Army, Junior Chemists, Zuwal (in alphabetical order) BAD BRAINS I Against I (SST, 1986). BAUHAUS Mask (Beggars Banquet, 1981). BEASTIE…
Songs to learn and sing. The Eighties’ Top 10 singles: 1. PUBLIC ENEMY “Fight the Power” (Motown, 1989). PE drove home the decade’s most vital and direct statement with a hip-hop hammer. No wonder Radio Raheem fought to death for it in Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing.” 2. MADONNA…
BORN YESTERDAY Ten albums from the Sixties and Seventies that sounded better in the Eighties: 1. THE VELVET UNDERGROUND & NICO The Velvet Underground & Nico (MGM/Verve, 1967). While everyone else was doing peace and love in 1967, Lou Reed and John Cale explored the degenerate, gritty, stinging reality of…
1. PRINCE AND THE REVOLUTION Around the World in a Day (Paisley Park, 1985). Prince thought he was making Sgt. Pepper II and forgot he was the world’s premier funkateer. Then again, whenever Prince stepped out of character–witness his acting–it turned out to be a blunder. 2. NEIL YOUNG Trans…
As you’re no doubt aware, we’ve been granted Top 10/Bottom 10 licenses by the proper authorities. In other words, these are official lists of what was good and bad about Eighties music. If you see similar lists elsewhere and someone tries to pawn them off as the real thing, just…
It’s never pretty when a band makes that monumental plunge from cult favorite to big-money, arena-playing, leather-clad rock group. Critics inevitably scream, “SELLOUT!” Long- time fans feel betrayed. And the college radio stations promptly hawk the band’s back catalogue to used record stores. Most bands only have to face the…
In the Eighties, your grandmother listened to enough Eric Clapton to join in any discussion of guitar heroes. Of course, grandma only heard one Clapton song during the past ten years–and that short number was always interrupted at the end by a commercial announcer proclaiming, “The night belongs to Michelob.”…
Had Trevor Rabin been alone when he headed down to L.A.’s Roxy recently to catch Steve Stevens in concert, the latter-day Yes guitarist probably would’ve gone unnoticed for the night. While Rabin is well-respected among serious six-string students, his long rocker’s hair and boy-next-door looks don’t exactly make him stand…
Well, we’ve seen the waning of the Woodstock wankarama, thank you very much. Unless newscasters and the glossies run totally out of filler for the next ten summers, we won’t have to hear that story again for a decade. Today marks the year’s true dash down the gauntlet of memory:…
1989 will go down in history as the year racism came into vogue in pop music. Guns n’ Roses, Public Enemy and an ugly rash of skinhead bands have taken command of the public ear and commenced to babble on about the superiority of their own races. As these groups…
If you thought it was wacky, cool, normal or stupid when everyone in the world from critics to moshers started liking Led Zeppelin a few years ago, check this out: In the time since, “Zeppelin” has become an entire category of music, and scientists have come up with Zeppelogical studies…
