In a world where Hanson outsells Fugazi and “girl power” conjures images of the Spice Girls rather than Bikini Kill, there’s a smug sense of satisfaction when entertainment institutions unwittingly recognize anyone from the indie-ground. Nearly a year ago, Elliott Smith was on the front porch of Revolver HQ, playing…
Turbulent times produce turbulent music. The jazz of the early ’60s is proof enough of that. As the civil-rights movement’s cries for justice became increasingly insistent, the music of young jazz titans also strained for greater freedom. These daring, noisy, almost cacophonous sounds were reviled by older listeners. Many white…
As the bowling ball plunges down the narrow wooden lane, Kevin Dye, guitarist and lead singer of Bldg 5, pivots on one leg, raises clenched fists and flashes a big-league smile. Before the group of onlookers at Tempe Bowl exhales so much as a cheer, the ball swiftly and unexpectedly…
James Iha Let It Come Down (Virgin Records) There are a couple of different reasons longtime band members make solo albums. One is fairly legitimate: to explore musical avenues that just don’t fit on your band’s itinerary. The other reason is more ego-based. When people like Mick Jagger, George Michael…
The phone rings and I let it go. (That the thing still operates is shocking enough, considering I haven’t opened a bill in months.) I sit some more and do nothing. The ringing stops. Then it starts in again, and instead of picking it up, I count off the rings…
Interviewing T.S. Monk is akin to setting a car on cruise control at the outset of an 800-mile trip. You know that you really don’t have to do much except glance up every few minutes to make sure you’re still on the road. The 48-year-old drummer, and son of legendary…
Lookout for Hope has its very own heckler. He shows up from time to time at various places where the Tempe jazz trio is gigging, and stands right in front of the band. The jazz dissident, described by tenor sax player Bryon Ruth as a “crazy-looking motherfucker,” generally stands in…
At the beginning of this century, the American labor movement galvanized behind a very simple premise: There’s strength in numbers. It didn’t take much insight to see that if you were working for the man every night and day, and you didn’t have a smidgen of power, the only way…
Cappuccino and Cash sit outside Tempe’s Coffee Plantation on an uncomfortably cold Thursday night. If it’s a little ironic that many customers inside are plunking down cash for hot cappuccinos, no one bothers with such ironies. Certainly not Cappuccino, Cash, nor their producer P-body Scott, who sits to the right…
Just a short time ago, Ken Jordan and Scott Kirkland were flat broke. The digital duo had to bum rides to and from work in their hometown of Las Vegas from a girl named Crystal. But in Vegas the drinks are cheap, and the couple were able to drown their…
Most people, especially those of you who just gawked at the photo on the right, wouldn’t disagree with the assessment that glam rock is dead. Few, however, might agree on what exactly is glam rock and when the bedecked patient actually stopped breathing. To some, it died when the New…
Only three months ago, Autumn Teen Sound heralded its name change with a big bash at Hollywood Alley in Mesa. The beloved local power-pop quartet took to the stage and played its Vic Masters-penned theme song one last time, while beneath it, a mock coffin slammed shut and buried its…
John Wozniak’s seen the review. It’s hard to miss. There, big as life, in a recent edition of Rolling Stone, Wozniak’s band, Marcy Playground, received all of one and a half stars in a record review by a critic who likened the band’s CD to everything bad in alternative rock…
A few months ago, indie folkstress Ani DiFranco complained to Rolling Stone that the media are so fixated on her image that they rarely consider what she’s doing musically. While her argument is valid, it overlooks one key facet of her career: She had a pretty big hand in sculpting…
Champaign County in central Illinois is home to some 175,000 people and 1,500 farms. Glaciers, like massive bulldozers, moved through this land during the last Ice Age, producing a topography so monotonous, so level, it approaches the Platonic ideal of flat. Corn is a big deal here. Detassling that corn…
Fire is motion. Work is repetition. This is my document. We are all all we’ve done. –Cap’n Jazz, “Oh Messy Life” For years now, the recordings of Cap’n Jazz have been sought after futilely by the small percentage of the indie nation lucky enough to have heard and been touched…
Bruce Connole and Richard Taylor sit outside Tempest Studio taking a smoke break. They’re relaxed and upbeat, but something feels faintly awry. Maybe it’s just because I’m so used to seeing these honky-tonk devils tear up Nita’s Hideaway on Wednesday nights, but they seem a bit out of place in…
Ben Folds Five has a brand-new album in the stores, but Darren Jessee doesn’t sound too thrilled about it. The drummer for the quirky North Carolina pop trio is hanging out at his Chapel Hill home, taking a brief respite from the band’s arduous, yearlong series of road excursions. Buoyed…
Bldg 5 Foundation (self-released) It’s no accident that this Phoenix trio decided to lead off its debut CD with a song called “Freedom Sleeps in the Arms of Diversity.” On one level, the song can be seen as just a likable reggae skank with a few bars of metal aggression…
The kids are not alright. That’s the message fostered by an endless stream of books and magazine articles during the course of this decade. They tell us that this generation of youth is jaded, nihilistic, apathetic, selfish and easily bored. It’s a caricature further propagated by films like Kids, All…
Ryan Adams has a bad case of the flu. The singer/songwriter/guitarist for North Carolina sextet Whiskeytown has spent the better part of this afternoon zonked out in the back of a tour bus in College Station, Texas. His tour manager has twice postponed today’s interview, apologetically explaining that Adams is…
What separates truly gifted entertainers from (insert yawn) merely competent ones? It’s the ability to wrench liabilities into assets, turn catastrophes into calling cards. It’s the difference between merely recognizing chance and running chance down a dark street, then slapping it upside the head until chance screams for mercy. Chance…
