In the hands of amateurs–or even average professionals–Herb Gardner’s I’m Not Rappaport easily could be turned into an ordeal for its audience: The lengthy Tony-winning comedy employs complex verbal imagery and detailed monologues to advance its story. The two main characters, on-stage almost nonstop, must run a gamut of emotions…
Darkness falls on the edge of town where East Washington finally breaks loose from the Phoenix city limits and funnels the bumper-to-bumper procession of commuters out of the business hub and toward their after-five suburban oases in Tempe, Mesa, Ahwatukee and beyond. To the west, a gorgeous Arizona sunset illuminates…
any rock groups have made stabs at foisting political agendas on the public, although none have managed to succeed as Laibach has on a post-doctorate level. And there’s no other band using the Rolling Stones and the Beatles to push a thesis. Laibach, which is Yugoslavia’s most visible new music…
Conventional wisdom has it that the blues is undergoing yet another “revival”– witness the success of such artists as Robert Cray, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and the Fabulous Thunderbirds. Cray has made it big by injecting pop, soul and gospel into his urban blues style. Vaughan seems to rely more on…
Shortly before their last Valley gig a year and a half ago, the Dead Milkmen did an interview on onetime progressive radio station KEYX that quickly deteriorated into an impromptu bitchfest. “There are three things that I hate more than anything in this world,” groused lead singer Rodney Amadeus Anonymous…
Until about six months ago, when Rodney Crowell’s latest album, Diamonds and Dirt, started cranking out the first of three number-one singles (“It’s Such a Small World,” “I Couldn’t Leave You If I Tried,” and “She’s Crazy for Leaving”), only a small group of liner-note readers and musicians knew who…
Since the death of zydeco king Clifton Chenier a little more than a year ago, the scramble has been on to assume his throne. And when you consider that such famed accordion pumpers as Buckwheat Zydeco, Terrance Simien and the Mallet Playboys, Rockin’ Dopsie and the Twisters, and Good Rockin’…
No, they aren’t all blind, and there are seven of them, not five. Clarence Fountain, the man who founded the Five Blind Boys at Alabama’s Talladega Institute for the Deaf and Blind back in 1939, patiently explains the current status of one of gospel music’s most revered singing groups. “There…
