There’s no need for the exchange of overpriced trinkets to distract me from the agony of having to play the same old tired roles — rankled adult child, tormented kid, alcoholic uncle — that I spend the rest of the year struggling bravely to escape. Hardly. This Christmas Eve I…
In theory, one without the other is like bread without jam. But sometimes in hip-hop, the DJ and the MC are at war, even if the rhetoric is all together-forever. Case in point: Cypress Hill’s trackmaster Muggs, and the crew he’s hitched to. Muggs constructs deeply satisfying music. He boasts…
As film critics everywhere have pointed out, the first Ocean’s Eleven, released in 1960, isn’t much of a movie. The assorted “actors,” led by Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr., look as if they’re either suffering from lingering hangovers or are still tipsy (which mostly they were), and…
A spiritual aura surrounds the legacy of John Coltrane. No other jazz musician has been given the hallowed blank check that was long ago bestowed on the late saxophonist. When his work is considered now, too often it’s treated as one more step in a mystical — rather than a…
In this threatened Yuletide of 2001, it’s comfort items that are shaping up to be the season’s big sellers. Fluffy slippers. Bubble bath lotion. Comforters. Cozy sweaters. The same goes for music. The charts have gone soft in the head with good ol’ fluff country, airheaded new age, soft-core dirty…
Oscar-nominated Alfre Woodard chooses to call herself an actor rather than an actress, because “actresses worry about eyelashes and cellulite, and women who are actors worry about the characters we are playing.” Adapting that comparison for a discussion of female musicians, let’s say that a pop diva is more concerned…
Lots of colorful musician biographies have recently been added to bookstore shelves, as well as a handful of other unique music tomes. Surprisingly, nearly all of them are worth your time — and you’ll get more smut for your entertainment dollar than you would with a VH1: Behind the Music…
When we last encountered Less Pain Forever (previously known as Lush Budget Presents the Les Payne Product), the mercurial duo was going mobile, hitching its fate to a 1983 Chevy Southwind RV, and heading for the East Coast.More than six months ago, the irreverent, jumpsuited musical pranksters (guitarist-singer James Karnes…
“I’m in the mud and the mud’s in me.” So sings North Mississippi Allstars front man Luther Dickinson near the end of the Allstars’ sophomore album, 51 Phantom. On the one hand, it’s a declaration of loyalty to the band’s Mississippi Hill Country roots, but it’s also an explanation of…
Like the Repeater/Steady Diet of Nothing days of Operation Desert Storm, Fugazi is still keenly aware of the injustices in the world and suspicious of the bigwigs with the big bucks, suspicious of where their loyalties lie. It’s even in the band’s name — Vietnam slang for “a fucked-up situation.”…
You ever notice that it’s much more fun to talk about Britney Spears than to listen to her? As an artist (and that term is used very loosely), she gives audiences banal, dry, teen pop and gussies it up with a shiny, enticing sheen — the musical equivalent of slathering…
The sound comes popping and stuttering out of tinny-tiny speakers from all around, and underfoot. Glitchy, itchy beats blare from little HitClips micro boom boxes key-chained to bicycle handlebars and school backpacks. Chunky guitar rhythms and airy, kittenish vocal harmonies ring out on bright translucent pocket CD players, scooter radios…
In Greek mythology, the Muses were gods and goddesses who were so proficient in the arts and sciences that they would inspire followers to glory by their mere presence. In the modern lexicon, the word “muse” refers to a simple source of inspiration, connoting a creative force that lies beyond…
For a singer-songwriter with a decidedly traditional streak, Mark Insley seems remarkably attuned to contemporary necessities. At 44 — and as a 20-year music veteran — Insley’s hearty demeanor is matched by an uncommon business savvy, as suggested by the following exchange.New Times: Have you ever been so down and…
Jim Andreas and Chris Kennedy have played in bands together for nearly a decade.Through all their musical incarnations — namely Trunk Federation (which released two CDs on Alias Records) and the current Down With Buildings — there is one common thread. Andreas (guitar, vocals) and Kennedy (drums) have spent all…
Hip-hop fans and Wu-packers across the world have hogged bandwidth to download the advance release of Bulletproof Wallets, the new album from Ghostface Killah (and featuring Raekwon). Already, many have indulged, digested and waxed poetic on its successes and failures. And as a true testament to the cult status of…
Bob Corritore, according to the booklet accompanying this live set recorded at the Valley’s premier blues hut, the Rhythm Room, is “a native Chicagoan who started a small blues label at the tender age of 21 and who possesses one of the world’s finest blues record collections. Corritore moved to…
There’s something immediately arresting about David Bazan’s vocals, though nothing particularly dramatic is going on. His words are almost always delivered in a slow, off-hand lope. Bazan sounds somewhat congested, as if he barely has the strength to form the words and tap out a somnolent rhythm with one drumstick…
For Chrissakes, you wouldn’t buy a car without first dialing in the radio. And you wouldn’t rent an apartment without asking if it came with its own indigenous creepy crawlies. These are high-commitment decisions you could be enmeshed in for months, maybe years, depending on your threshold for self-flagellation. In…
“This song will become the anthem of your underground.” This first line of “At Your Funeral,” the first track on New Jersey emo quintet Saves the Day’s album Stay What You Are, is proving far more prophetic than its author, eager-voiced Chris Conley, could’ve intended. Though written as a tongue-in-cheek…
It’s one of the sad ironies of George Harrison’s passing last week to cancer that he was memorialized by the international media as little more than a member of the world’s most exclusive club: the ex-Beatles. Of all the former Fabs, Harrison was always the least comfortable with both his…
About a year ago, Prince Paul, as part of Handsome Boy Modeling School, opened for Radiohead at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, segueing playfully behind the turntables from song to song — kitsch tunes, classic jams, whatever in between. And then something truly startling happened.Paul played the opening, ingratiating…
