Music

Done up in the style of a ’50s-era movie poster, all flat paint and a grab bag of typescript, the cover of this boxed set says all that needs to be said. There’s a smiling guitarist looking over a nighttime scene, palm trees, a silhouetted couple leaning in a loose…

Breakestra is a funk band that Bay Area hip-hop luminary Peanut Butter Wolf discovered playing in an L.A. club and promptly signed to his Stones Throw label. What piqued Wolf’s ears was not only the overwhelming tightness of the players and the James Brown-esque barks of the singer, but their…

The problem with many of the pioneers of avant-garde jazz was that they approached their music with such grave pretentiousness that no one could mistake it for anything but lofty art. What made Ornette Coleman’s first groundbreaking albums so striking was they sparkled with the sound of sheer talent thumbing…

While listening to Live on the Sunset Strip — a 1982 performance in which Richard Pryor discusses his first trip to Africa, his 180-degree turnaround on his formerly cavalier use of the word “nigger,” his visit to an Arizona prison while filming Stir Crazy with Gene Wilder, and the infamous…

Let’s say, for the purposes of this article, that’s it’s 3:30 in the morning. Only, it’s really 4:30 because the clock in your car is an hour slow. Time is of little consequence anyway. What do minutes matter when you’re sick with doubt and doubled over by the weight of…

First things first: Damien Jurado is a big guy. He’s wide and he’s tall, and if he hadn’t spent his teenage years listening to punk rock, he probably would have made someone a damn fine linebacker. Second, Damien Jurado talks like someone in a hurry. Sentences escape his mouth at…

Ken Burns apologizes for his “filibustering,” but it doesn’t stop him from talking and talking until the original question becomes a faint memory in the wake of an answer that goes on and on. But perhaps as much is to be expected from Burns, the documentarian whose films begin as…

Steve Allen is dead. I don’t think any of us has a problem with that.People who’ve lived long, prosperous and productive lives are entitled to long, uninterrupted stretches of inactivity, punctuated by blissful nada. And the spectacle-sporting comedian, who rose to prominence during the days of live television, certainly knew…

Dr. Octagon is dead. Been dead for almost four years now. The all-star project was great during its brief life span — Kool Keith’s pornographic science-fiction delusions, Dan the Automator’s way, way left-field beatsmithing and Q-Bert’s playful scratch routines were just what the dour hip-hop scene needed at the time…

The boxed set, that most ubiquitous and painstakingly completist of modern-day music anthologies, can be a force for good or ill. The form has given us both utter delights like John Coltrane’s 16-disc The Prestige Recordings and utterly useless dreck like (why? why?) Who Was That Masked Man?, a five-CD,…

When Sub Pop Records announced earlier this year it was releasing a tribute to Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska — the one he recorded in his bedroom, the one on which he sounded like Bruce Springsteen doing Bob Dylan doing Woody Guthrie doing Bruce Springsteen — it sounded like a…

Starting an indie label these days is ludicrously simple. All you need is a modest stash of cash (CDs are dirt cheap to manufacture), a smidgen of promotional savvy (two hints: Do hook up with an established independent publicist who’s into the music you’re flogging; and don’t send promo discs…

Whatever your opinion of Moonshine Records and its amazing tendency to fill store racks with a procession of Keoki mixes and comps inevitably featuring Cirrus, the label has definitely helped to bring electronic music to America’s attention. Over the past few years, Moonshine has also provided a massive boost to…

Greil Marcus is a rock-critic legend. A graduate of the late-’60s Berkeley scene, Marcus began his rock and social criticism with then-fledgling Rolling Stone magazine and quickly became notable for his highbrow style and brainy approach. His obvious talent and his professorial passion for dissecting rock ‘n’ roll had an…

In the bloated pantheon of sensitive-boy rock, with all its journal scribbling and conspicuous self-pity, it’s an accomplishment to rise above simple mediocrity — something that stellar virtuosos like Jonah Matranga (onelinedrawing) and Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes) do effortlessly, while Kind of Like Spitting’s Ben Barnett struggles and stumbles upon…

Laurie Anderson, you will not be surprised to learn, is a downright charming conversationalist. Furthermore, to the delight of anyone who’s appreciated her 20-plus years of storytelling art, she often strays from the trajectory of the central topic to indulge in illustrative narratives that somehow provide the perfect foil for…

It’s November 9, two days after the American presidential election, and the media are simply delirious, scrambling to provide the latest updates on the as-yet-undecided race, reveling in the chance to use words like “historic” and “unprecedented.” Almost everyone in the United States has an eye on Florida, awaiting –…

Within the combat zone of punk rock, growing old, and yes, even growing up, can be painful, sometimes troublesome. How does one do it? Reunion cash-in tours (Pistols, Damned), movie careers (John Doe, Henry Rollins), the college lecture circuit (Jello Biafra, Lydia Lunch, the ever-versatile Henry Rollins), or the more…

Listed below are 17 pounds of new and worthwhile music books all you fact-obsessed tune junkies will need to buy and haul around every time you move for the rest of your lives. There’s no shortage of pointless Grateful Dead books littering the bargain tables in bookstores, outnumbered only by…

I often picture myself lying naked in my trailer with the worst records imaginable spread across the floor around me. Empty beer bottles everywhere. I see myself lying there dead with a Limp Bizkit jewel case next to my head. There’s also a couple of REO Speedwagon reissues. The new…