Sophomore slump. Sophomore jinx. One-hit wonder. The idea that a band can release one record and with its next attempt either fade into oblivion or fail miserably is so common as to be a cliché. The story goes something like this: Band writes and rehearses songs for years. Record company…
Robyn Hitchcock is an acquired taste like the decadent cheeses he exalts in “The Cheese Alarm,” a song from his most recent release, Jewels for Sophia. This is as it should be. Mass ingestion of Hitchcock’s surrealist salad, Syd Barrett-as-fifth-Beatle music could make for an uncomfortable ear-meal for most. Although…
Gay Dad Leisure Noise (London) Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young Looking Forward (Reprise) If any CD can test your tolerance levels, it’s Leisure Noise. On three separate occasions, it stared up indignantly from high atop my trade-in pile as if to say, “It’s because I’m Gay Dad, isn’t it?” Gay…
Trying to describe Bardo Pond’s music is a little like explaining what water tastes like to someone who’s never had it. There really isn’t an apt description. Yet the words “psychedelic drug band” pop up again and again when the Philadelphia quintet’s name surfaces. Is Bardo Pond a psychedelic drug…
Wandering into the burrow of the unwell while making an enemy of the future and anyone who gives a damn. Turning the body to a toxic trash can. Insurmountable and unjustified self-hatred with a healthy sense of martyrdom and the dramatic. All trite finger-wagging signs of a suicide waiting to…
In case you dispute that the “classic rock” demographic cared way more about the music of their youth than any generation before or since, consider this: No one ever replicated 78s. C’mon, if you dug Bing Crosby that much, wouldn’t you demand reissues of those clunky albums with the lousy…
The year 1999 was originally pegged to be the point when rock officially was pronounced dead. All Detroit was supposed to be remembered for was launching white rapper Eminem, while Woodstock’s attempt at countercultural revivalism left little more than a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. Every hard-rock act worth its…
The Supersuckers look like satanic cowboys and sound like punks-gone-metal. Onstage, front man Eddie Spaghetti, guitarists Dan “Thunder” Bolton and Rontrose Heathman and drummer Dancing Eagle strike rock-god stances in black clothes and matching shades while ripping through gonzo anthems like “How to Maximize Your Kill Count,” “She’s My Bitch”…
Beck Midnite Vultures (Interscope Records) Beck Hansen’s latest personality is his best joke yet, as this gawky-yet-funky white boy makes himself over as a smooth-talking, hard-partying sex machine, accompanied by the live equivalent of the Dust Brothers’ waxploitation soundtracks. Hiding behind gibberish less often than on previous releases, Beck tries…
Even for those who were more into Speed Racer and Toughskins than the Sex Pistols when they invaded America, there was a time when the prospect of stage-diving into middle age wasn’t so far-fetched. But the problem with so much punk rock (Suicidal Tendencies, the Exploited, DRI and Fear come…
By somehow sidestepping cheap Wendy O. Williams connect-the-dot punk-rock jive, the black electrical tape over the shouter’s nipples worked. The trashy and busted-up way in which she carried herself across the stage, too, lurking, at once stiff and sinuous, was equal parts Iggy, peepshow barker and Nazi femme dom. Her…
Music is supposed to be the universal language, but a swish pan across your CD collection and mine will only illustrate how much music keeps us apart. There’s only a fraction of stuff we can both listen to without forcing infomercial smiles. Half of my enjoyment of music stems from…
Remixing is kind of like rearranging the furniture in somebody else’s house. It’s like doing plastic surgery on your best friend’s wife to make her more attractive to you. It’s like cooking a meal with stuff from your neighbor’s fridge. The name comes from taking isolated snippets of the basic…
When Bomp! Records manufactured promo tee shirts a couple of years ago that proclaimed: “Bomp! The label that invented punk, garage, power-pop . . . and possibly everything else in the last 30 years,” some people were pissed off by the bold claim. The label meant it as a joke,…
It’s been hard not to feel a little bit sorry for Gloritone. It’s not that the local trio isn’t a good band; it is. It’s just that the group had the misfortune to come along a couple of years ago, as the golden age of Tempe music had ground to…
Counting Crows This Desert Life (Geffen) Adam Duritz is fine. Really. We know it because he says so. “I’m doing all right these days,” he reassures on This Desert Life. “Things are getting worse, but I feel a lot better. And that’s all that really matters to me.” Well, bully…
Archer Prewitt is one of the hardest working musicians in Chicago’s fertile indie-rock scene. A few years ago, the guitarist/singer/songwriter/comic-book artist moved into the neighborhood with his lounge-jazz outfit, the Coctails, and now he lends his guitar and composition skills to the rock and electronics of Windy City favorites the…
When I am alone and doing it, I always think of Mariah Carey. Maybe thinking about Mariah Carey this much is not good. But I can’t help it. It all started with this girl named Tiffany, who looks just like Mariah Carey. She lived with her mom and little brother…
Many people say that Ricky Martin’s crazed career was never going to get any better than on the night of February 24, 1999, when his electrifying performance at the Grammy Awards jolted Anglo America out of its indifference to barely Latin pop music. Others say the pinnacle was achieved on…
Rock is not dead. Just ask anyone who was onstage at Sunday’s Arizona Music Forum’s all-day festival. Performers made frequent references to just how much “local music rocks” or “how great all the bands are here today.” Unfortunately, those making the observations must have been at an altogether different event…
There’s a fantasy that probably every rock fan and critic has shared at one point or another. It involves the notion that somewhere, likely in a bedroom or basement in some small town, a group of unknowns is working in the shadows to create music as powerful and important as…
LeAnn Rimes LeAnn Rimes (Curb Records) October 26, 1999: Perhaps stung by the criticism that her “Purple Rain” cover on last year’s presumptuously titled Sittin’ on Top of the World made her sound like an aging and incoherent drag queen, LeAnn Rimes releases an eponymously titled album of country standards…
