Music

Sure, reading about music is no substitute for listening, but probably only a music book is going to show the typical Rolling Stones fan how Jimmy Reed and Muddy Waters were the group’s daddies. Most likely it will be a Miles Davis bio that explains to a recent jazz convert…

“I’m not here trying to sell millions of copies of records,” says Knot Known Records president and sole full-time employee Chris Richardson. He says this between bites of a roast chicken sandwich at a Mill Avenue eatery staffed with nervous waiters and waitresses who look like next year’s crop of…

As various-artist-album concepts go, this one is pretty unique. Rather than celebrate one artist, this one praises an interstate. You know it, you love it, you can’t get to work without it — ladies and gentlemen, I give you I-10! You might think the assembled artists would opt to take…

Who could have imagined in 1969 that Joni Mitchell, an emblematic figure of the “Woodstock” generation, would ever try to walk in the shoes of the Chairman of the Board, an icon who identified more with Nixon than with naked mud splashing? Yet here she is in the year 2000…

Jimmy Winston’s mum must be proud. Keyboardist for the Small Faces’ first two singles, he was booted out before he got to appear on any album covers. Now, 35 years later, he finally gets to flash his surly mug, albeit on a diminished four-and-three-quarter-inch Guinness coaster of a cover. Not…

No one told Bob Nanna that trying to watch 365 movies in a year was a good idea. In fact, most of his friends attempted to talk him out of it by trying to lure him out of the house and the theaters to do something — anything — else…

Let’s be frugal. Why sell your own body to science for CD money when you can sell someone else’s, especially when the scumbag probably wasn’t a jazz or blues fan anyway? Inclined to feel pangs of guilt over digging up graves, Mr./Miss Sensitive? Then trek down to New Orleans, where…

BR5-49’s recent Grammy nomination for Best Performance by a Duo or Group could be considered a fluke. If it weren’t for the producers of the 1999 film Happy, Texas, who included the group’s “Honky Tonk Song” on its soundtrack, the cut — which originally appeared on the band’s 1996 self-titled…

You wouldn’t be to blame if you avoided Travis simply because it’s the latest in a long line of U.K. bands being hyped as the “next big thing.” Yeah, yeah, it was a No. 1 in Britain, big deal. But you’d be missing out on one of the best records…

I know, I know. . . . You’ve already been spotted hanging around emo chat rooms, wringing your hands (mouse?) over your favorite band being dropped, and unceremoniously so, by Warner Bros. Just seeing the words Sense Field on this page is enough to make you burst out in tears…

The Reverend Horton Heat is one of those guys who always seem to fill a room. The indomitable swagger, slicked-back hair, stylish threads and ubiquitous highball in hand all combine to inflate the man to mythic, or perhaps semireligious, proportions. But his larger-than-life persona is a product of fate. Born…

There’s a sticker circulating through the Valley that most sharp-eyed music fans will have seen. It’s a black-and-white line-art photo of a face at a microphone emblazoned with the motto, “Punk is whatever we made it to be.” Despite the teeny-bop conception of punk rock as an aggro-jockish excuse to…

There are more people outside the club than in it. Dozens of them loiter about as they try to catch a whiff of what’s cooking behind those closed doors. They lean against the outside walls, putting their ears to the bricks to hear just a little of what’s going on…

For local-music aficionados, there always seem to be a few trends without explanation, questions that go inexplicably unanswered. One that’s vexed most observers in recent years is the lack of capable (or even willing) exponents of the much-maligned alt-country genre. For a city with a rich history of country and…

“What came first, the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable or was I miserable because I listened to music? Do all these records turn you into a melancholy person?” So asks John Cusack, as Rob, in the opening dialogue of the film High…

For Jim Louvau, the 22-year-old lead singer for glam rock quintet Victims in Ecstacy, the transformation from civilian to superstar is a daylong event. Shunning standard rock ‘n’ roll duds — “wife-beaters, backward baseball caps and wallet chains” — Louvau is committed to a rigorous dress code. It’s just before…

One doesn’t approach the annual South by Southwest music festival like an average bout of nightclubbing. Music writers train weeks for this cacophonous conference, rigorously avoiding all kinds of music so that their hearing will be in fine fettle for a beat surrender to the senses. Otherwise they could overload…

The Flaming Lips saga has been told and retold an endless number of times. In fact, this very publication recounted it to a reasonable degree last year (“Unconsciously Brilliant,” October 28) in a review of the group’s Restless Records retrospective 1984-1990. In that article, yours truly suggested that the Lips’…

“I like trying to remain mysterious,” says Michael Schwartz, whose turntablist nom de plume is Mix Master Mike. “It’s like hitting and running — hit the spot, then go home and work on the formula until my next call comes, and I get a chance to show people real hip-hop…