Week after week, I spout off about what I like and don’t like here in this column, and, while it may be hard for the legions of Screed loyalists out there to comprehend, there are some who do not always agree with my opinions. Believe me, for every teeming mail…
Willy DeVille Backstreets of Desire (Forward) Since DeVille’s last effort, Tower Records stopped stocking vinyl, Doc Pomus passed away and John Cougar went Mellencamp. What hasn’t changed is DeVille’s voice (except it’s got a lot more phlegm in it now) and his overriding passion for Brill Building songwriting (he dedicated…
Wanna know what’s wrong with the CD single? Get a copy of Belly’s new CD maxi-single, Moon. If this were a vinyl 45 release, the A-side would be the group’s recent cover of Jimi Hendrix’s “Are You Experienced.” The snazzy take of Tom Jones’ “It’s Not Unusual” would be the…
Pablo Picasso once said, “The chief enemy of creativity is good taste.” Of course, Pablo never heard Cannibal Corpse. He never heard songs like “Fucked With a Knife,” “Stripped, Raped and Strangled” or “Force Fed Broken Glass,” and he’s no longer around to tell us whether good taste should perhaps…
Okay, folks, it’s that time once more. Get out your six-packs and handkerchiefs and prepare to get steeped in local color, but first this: You may want to check out the Smoking Popes, coming to us all the way from Chicago. If the band’s Get Fired CD is any indication,…
His nose has been broken seven times during frank confrontations with Everlast boxing gloves, and he’s rolled around in the waves on a deserted beach in the arms of a beautiful model and been well-paid for it. All for your viewing pleasure, of course, in a video for a song…
The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black Mason Jar June 19, 1994 Maybe it was when the topless woman with the purple body paint, blacked-out teeth and twisted fright wig stood on her head with her back to the audience and her legs spread, and a smaller, chubby girl painted orange…
Try as they might, the evil powers that control the recording industry haven’t yet been able to completely stamp out vinyl; there are still seven-inches aplenty filling the bins at your hipper Valley record stores (Stinkweeds, Eastside, Zia are a few). The short-playing discs are inexpensive to put out and…
It’s a Friday night in June on Tucson’s Fourth Avenue. The influx of University of Arizona summer-school students hasn’t yet begun, so the numerous watering holes that dot the street are playing host mostly to locals. This is the case at one shoebox of a bar called Trolley’s, where only…
It all started with a series of phone calls that never seemed to arrive when I was actually in the office. I’d return from a brief constitutional on the New Times Executive Tanning Deck, step into the chilled comfort of my chambers–kept at a regulation 56 degrees Fahrenheit, in tandem…
Have you ever wondered if there was a real Peggy Sue? A real Lovely Rita, Meter Maid? An actual Girl From Ipanema? Well, there isn’t. And now, joining this illustrious bevy of nonexistent beauties is Kim the Waitress, the heroine and namesake of Material Issue’s current hit. But that would…
In 1962, he mastered the fine, primitive art of banging out rhythms on coffee cans with a pair of Lincoln Logs. Soon after, he graduated to a toy Indian tom-tom, and by January 1968, he had himself a real–albeit secondhand–drum kit. Twenty-six years later, Dennis Diken is all grown up…
Had you walked into a local Tower Records store recently, made your way to the “Rock” section of the CD-listening stations, clamped on a pair of headphones and pressed the proper buttons, you could have heard the Latin Playboys’ self-titled debut. But what would you have heard? A weaving, lo-fi…
I could tell you about the time my friend John and I took the bus to Groucho Marx’s house in Beverly Hills, rang the doorbell and heard him tell someone, “Get rid of those kids.” We then went across the street to Morey Amsterdam’s place, where he answered the door…
Perhaps the event that most influenced Iris DeMent’s professional trajectory occurred before she was born. See, her father had been a fiddler–and a good one, too. Iris, the youngest of 14 children born to Patric and Flora Mae DeMent of the cotton-farming community of Paragould, Arkansas, pestered her siblings to…
Blow Pops American Beauties (Get Hip) There was an old Saturday Night Live joke between Chevy and Gilda that went like this: “Knock knock.” “Who’s there?” “Babs’ uvula.” “Babs’ uvula who?” “I don’t know, Babs . . .” That’s sort of the way I feel about this album. Not because…
If I owned an enormous, influential, major label, a lot of things would be different. For me, anyway; a bigger bank balance, more yes men, the finest aspirin money can buy, and–for the Beat Angels–there’d be a big, fat recording contract. This is one of the few tapes I’ve come…
Shonen Knife The Roxy May 19, 1994 They were cute! They were funny! They were endearing! They rocked! They were Naoko Yamano, Michie Nakatani and Atsuko Yamano–Shonen Knife–in Phoenix for the very first time, all the way from Osaka, Japan. Before we continue, this is what you need to know…
It is dawn, and I am sitting atop Squaw Peak, as is my wont, clad only in black jockstrap and simple yachting cap. The sun hits me and glances upon the crystals at my feet, arranged in a classic tantric form derived from the sacred teachings of Baba Gin Rummy,…
Are you afraid for rock n’ roll? Do you wince at summer tour offerings that seem to consist of the same, tired dinosaur acts that punk rock was supposed to have killed off a decade ago? Are you flabbergasted that people actually wait in line to see simpering trash like…
When Zig Zag Black guitarist Michael Venell died unexpectedly at the age of 23 on April 7, I made a brief mention of it in this column. I didn’t know Venell, but many of you did. Going by the phone calls and letters that I’ve received over the last few…
The record company is “shocked.” Classical-music minds call it “freakish.” Skeptics are crying “fad,” and cynics are thinking “Faust.” The hubbub concerns an inexplicably best-selling CD of Gregorian chant performed by a heretofore little-known group of Benedictine monks in Spain. The CD is titled Chant, and quite simply, it consists…
