As a kid, I went through a very brief infatuation with the clarinet after watching The Benny Goodman Story on TV with my dad. All these years later, it’s as clear to me as the horn-rims on Steve Allen’s ugly mug that this film was a ludicrously romanticized bio-pic typical…
In the liner notes to his new bluegrass album, Steve Earle concedes that his primary motive for engaging in the project in the first place was to achieve immortality. An “ambitious and selfish” desire to be sure, but as Earle puts it, “I wanted to write just one song that…
It’s impossible to talk about Valley music for long without the subject turning to the sad state of local radio. Even natives frequently shake their heads in disgust, unable to comprehend that a market of this size could be stuck with so few credible music options. The most glaring omission…
Irony visited Charles Brown in his final months. The great rhythm-and-blues pianist and vocalist, best known today for having penned “Merry Christmas, Baby,” made it through one last Christmas, but he couldn’t make it to what probably would have been the biggest celebration of his career–his Rock and Roll Hall…
For years Nick Francis dreamed of producing a contemporary instrumental album. For years Cliff Sarde dreamed of having a producer to help him shape his musical ideas. These dreams collided two and a half years ago when Sarde–a veteran Valley musician who’s recorded for MCA and done extensive film and…
Built to Spill Keep It Like a Secret (Warner Bros.) Since the dawn of psychedelic music in 1966-1967, rock auteurs have searched for ways to stretch the pop song into longer and wider shapes. But it’s unlikely that anyone has ever expanded the form with more twisted grace than Doug…
When you tell people you’re writing about Squeeze, you get one of three responses: a) “Are they still together?” b) “They used to be really good.” c) “They’re a little too clever for their own good.” Yes kids, Squeeze did split up back in 1982, but the band reassembled three…
For most people, this space in the ’60s-style condo in downtown Phoenix would serve as a small bedroom, the kind your teenage sister would complain about before she packed up her things and moved into the garage. But to Brian Talenti, guitarist, singer and primary songwriter for the local rock…
Finally. That’s what the members of Sistah Blue considered calling their brand-new debut CD. For three-and-a-half years, the members of this all-female blues quintet have patiently endured the same question from their ultra-avid local fans: When is that CD coming out? Now, finally, the band has a satisfactory response, in…
Blondie No Exit (Beyond) It’s pro forma in the world of rock that whenever a band reforms after a long absence, the band members always claim that working together felt like they’d never been away, that they’ve picked up right where they left off. The good news surrounding No Exit,…
There is a moment during “See You Around,” the final track of Vic Chesnutt’s 1996 album About to Choke, where he sings “I must admit I’m flattered by your consecration/It’s a mind-numbing spine-chilling/But nevertheless heartwarming gesture/As you make your advances so clumsily/I’ll save us both the hassle and leave.” It…
Charlie Levy has something in common with Michael Corleone. No, Levy isn’t a Sicilian mob boss (at least as far as we know), and his dad probably looks nothing like Marlon Brando. But, just like Corleone, every time Levy thinks he’s out, they keep pulling him back in. In Levy’s…
About to leave the Valley on a personal version of FarmAid, Rena Haus pauses, amid the confusion of packing, to page through her scrapbooks. Whenever she points to photos of the performers she’s opened for, like Maria Muldaur at the Rhythm Room, or Pat Benatar at the Celebrity Theatre, she…
Just north of New Orleans on Highway 61, the swamps give way to the pines, and “dirt for sale” signs dot the countryside. Logging trucks race from what used to be thick forests to paper mills. Antebellum homes and plantations line the way. As the four lanes narrow to two,…
It’s too bad we can’t take a Soundscan of all the lives the recent $10.4 billion merger of PolyGram and Universal Music will ruin. Sure, we can do a feasible head count of the hundreds of artists and managers whose necks will meet the chopping block, and those ratzafriggin’ bean…
To an outsider, the rave culture probably looks a bit like an impenetrable, monolithic beast composed of blissed-out, glow-stick kids who’ll respond to any beat that jumps off a turntable. It’s a bit like the perspective that the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff had on the Communist bloc in the…
Jesus, I had never enjoyed a beer less. The stuff went into my overheated and plugged head, fizzed in the brassy confines of my mouth and crept past the burnt spot in my throat–the part that is swollen just enough to allow only liquid to pass. The agony of my…
New Radicals Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too (MCA Records) I’ve never had a lot of faith in the old adage about not judging a book by its cover. This has been especially true when it comes to music. I’ve always believed that if they look like a “hair band” and…
If you want to get in the game at the Winter Music Conference–the electronic dance music industry and club culture’s annual mecca in Miami–then you have to be where the players are. Poolside. Specifically, poolside on the opulent deck outside the Fontainebleau Hotel, Winter Music’s social nexus and command center…
Ahmad Jamal is reminiscing about Pittsburgh. Known to much of the world simply as a grimy steel town, Pittsburgh has also been one of the great breeding grounds for jazz. It’s a city whose musical legacy is so imposing that Andre Previn turned down other offers for a chance to…
Bldg 5 is not the most serious band in the world. If you spend any time at all with this funky hard-rock quartet, you’ll find that practically every topic–from the group’s recent road mishaps in snowy Colorado to its contempt for conservative state authorities to its collective appreciation for the…
Jimmy Eat World Jimmy Eat World (Fueled by Ramen) Local bands haven’t gotten much love from major labels lately. Jimmy Eat World is relatively lucky, since it hasn’t been axed like so many other Valley bands, but the band’s crystalline new LP, Clarity, has been sitting on the shelves at…
