In 1978, RSO Records was the most successful record label on planet Earth. From Christmas of 1977 to May 20 the following year, the Robert Stigwood-owned label maintained a 21-week stranglehold on the top position of Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart. No other record label has ever managed to score…
Beastie Boys Hello Nasty (Grand Royal/Capitol Records) Along with Beck, the Beastie Boys have become the embodiment of postmodern music in the late ’90s. The comparison goes beyond their shared use of the Dust Brothers or the perpetual ironic distance they both maintain, which allows them to simultaneously celebrate and…
James Mather and Mike Heffington have two consuming passions: recording punk-rock bands and drinking as much Natural Light as they can get their hands on. Fortunately, they live in a world where their hobbies frequently intersect. It’s well-known in local punk circles that Natural Lights are as essential a component…
Mark Sandman can’t help it. He knows he should be moody. He appreciates how he’d make a more lasting impression as a Gloomy Gus spinning torturous tales of woe. Fans expect that kind of thing. Journalists, too. After all, the guy leads a band called Morphine. But Sandman can’t find…
“Shoeshine” Joe House, guitarist for Tempe funk-rockers Polliwog, looks like a cross between Medusa and a billy goat. He’s got enough shocking red hair in all the right places to make the comparison stick. He says exactly one word–“vagina”–during a 90-minute interview, and even that doesn’t come easy. Slumped against…
Rock stars are so self-regulating and image-conscious nowadays it’s hard to imagine even dreaming about one without being forced to pay for use of their overexposed likenesses. You’d probably have to sign waivers indemnifying them for any make-believe anguish they might cause you. Back in the days when rock stars…
You can almost see the headline splashed across music-industry tabloids: “Phoenix Declared Power-Pop Capital of the World!” Give it another year. It’s only a matter of time before the former “Desert Jangle Rock Capital” sports its new title courtesy of terminally stunted A&R honchos eager to strip-mine the Valley for…
“Our question posed to the media, labels, and fans is, ‘What does emo mean?’ Was Christie Front Drive emo or just dark and sad pop-rock? Is Jimmy Eat World emo or is it just good pop-rock with a punk edge? Is the Promise Ring emo or happy-go-lucky pop? Was Quicksand…
How long are you gonna last? Well, you can’t say. You can be bigheaded and say, ‘Yeah, we’re gonna last 10 years,’ but you know, we’re lucky if we last three months. –John Lennon, 1963 John Lennon’s statement was far more humble than he could have imagined at the time…
Andre Williams doesn’t mince words. He doesn’t have time for that. He’s seen a promising R&B career go up in smoke, he’s fallen victim to drug addiction, and he’s spent more time hustling his way out of the gutter than he’d care to remember. So when this resuscitated soul man…
Brian Wilson Imagination (Giant Records) In the months leading up to the release of Brian Wilson’s second solo album of new material–and first in a decade–the buzz was that Imagination marked a return to the innocence and warmth of 1965’s Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!). In the hands of co-producer…
For the past four months, word has been out that Nita’s Hideaway was up for sale. During that time, it became a kind of parlor game to speculate on what shape Nita’s would take when owner Nita Craddock found a buyer for the Tempe club. The optimists among us imagined…
Trevor Askew is a night person. The singer for industrial monolith N17 attributes these tendencies to the withering Arizona heat that drains his energy during the day. Some suspicious types, mindful of the band’s relentlessly brooding vision, louder-than-bombs musical assault, and Askew’s apartment complex on Seventh Avenue and Camelback, which…
In most professions, a deficiency of smarts would seem a serious liability. After all, don’t we insist on seeing every last medical diploma a doctor can tack up on his office walls, just to make sure we’re not about to be sliced and diced open by an uncertified moron? Don’t…
Exactly 10 years ago, the mass media was abuzz with a new phenomenon in the music biz: the sudden rise of women in rock. The startling success of Tracy Chapman’s debut album–along with the rapidly growing profiles of Natalie Merchant, Suzanne Vega, Sinead O’ Connor, and Toni Childs–had the likes…
Tricky Angels With Dirty Faces (Island Records) Anyone can build a majestic structure if you give him unlimited materials and resources. The real test is what you can achieve with the sparest of tools. Tricky, the Bristol studio alchemist who brought trip-hop to the ears of dance mavens before the…
If there is a hill behind the sun, it ain’t Heaven Hill. It ain’t the brown-colored liquid that is sold at two bucks per half-pint in neighborhood liquor marts where food stamps are the legal tender of choice. No, it can’t be the same Heaven Hill that ruins lives faster…
There’s a scene in the 1981 Bill Murray Army comedy Stripes that’s always stood out for me. It comes after a depressed Murray admits to his girlfriend that he’s once again lost his job and had his car repossessed. In response, she blows up at him for his chronic slacker…
River Jones fancies himself as something of a young music-industry renaissance man. His big heroes are the Beastie Boys, who’ve managed to be ever-evolving artists while running the Grand Royal label, and Perry Farrell, who’s organized multimedia festival tours while maintaining his own musical career. But even the most ambitious…
The Pastry Heros Horn Rim Fury E.P. (Submersible Recordings) Pure, unabashed pop bands are a rare commodity locally; the few bands that place themselves in the pop category are generally either pretentious or too talentless to appreciate the measured aesthetics of truly beautiful pop music. When Alison’s Halo broke up,…
Poughkeepsie, New York, your time is gonna come. It almost came in 1988 when Poughkeepsie resident Rosy Carnemolla amassed 850 pounds of too solid flesh and snagged herself “the world’s heaviest woman” slot in the Guinness Book of Records. Matt Strangewayes, lead singer of Windigo, also happens to hail from…
The Valley may not be hyped as one of the great jazz meccas on the planet, but it has long had something that more ballyhooed areas don’t have: a genuine scene, a community where jazz players intermingle, exchange ideas, and sit in with each other’s bands. For years, the command…
