Matthew Sweet is chuckling. At times, he’s even laughing. Sprinkle in some giggles, a chortle and an occasional “tee-hee,” and you pretty much get the picture: Matthew Sweet, one of the darkest songwriters in pop, is, in person, about as glum and gloomy as a high school cheerleader. “People always…
John Hiatt’s heard it all before. Over 40. Past his prime. Lost his edge. Too old, too tired and, lately, too happy to still be relevant. “Too happy is the one that gets me,” Hiatt growls over the phone from L.A. “Has anyone ever been too happy?” These days, Hiatt…
It took me by surprise. Listening again to “Linger” by the Cranberries, I now heard heretofore undetected bird trills. Actually, this very minor aural revelation wasn’t what startled me. After numerous spins of the disc, I was used to the abrupt emergence of quirky, tantalizing sonics. The band got the…
Rockabilly retrorocket Colin Winski has spent most of his life in a love-hate relationship with the ghost of Elvis. Blessed–or cursed–with a physical resemblance striking enough to trigger an Elvis sighting, Winski has spent 15 years alternately promoting and defending himself against comparisons to the King. Looking like Elvis has…
Without drugs, there’d be no such thing as popular music. Virtually every major form of tonal exploration in this country has gotten a good measure of spunk from a particular drug of choice–bluegrass and corn liquor, folk and caffeine, techno and ecstasy, jazz and heroin, reggae and pot, rock and…
There’s an agonizing scene in Saxophone Colossus, the 1986 documentary film about jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins. The tenor man is playing an outdoor gig in New York in which, in the course of three minutes of unaccompanied soloing, he quotes from “A Tisket, A Tasket,” “Over the Rainbow” and “The…
From the outside, the mobile home where Joe Harless launched his journey to musical fame and fortune looked like just another tin can on another street in Chandler: There was a faded Chevy van with smashed windows and a flat tire, browning palm fronds littered the yard, a cage of…
Arizona’s music scene is in an unusual state these days. Here in the Valley, hip-hop knuckleheads Phunk Junkeez and smooth R&B singer Malaika are blossoming into national acts. And speaking of Blossoms, the smashing success of Tempe’s Gin Blossoms has grown to the point that divine intervention is the only…
Will success spoil Alison Krauss? The pressure is certainly building. On July 3, 21-year-old Krauss became the first bluegrass player in 29 years to be inducted into the Grand Ole Opry. That night, the praise for this extraordinary fiddler and singer was flowing thick and sweet. Vince Gill, renowned for…
“I was stone-cold sober, and I still don’t remember playing that night!” Grant Fitch is straining to recall events from a weekend two years ago when he and his bandmates in Paw were the talk of Austin’s South by Southwest music conference. After the band’s showcase performance, one populated almost…
Every city loves its homegrown musical heroes. Here in the Valley, alternative bands Meat Puppets and, lately, Gin Blossoms have scored huge national successes, and we’ve rightfully cheered them every inch of the way. Now, imagine having played on more than 100 albums, not one of which your old Phoenix…
Local music carries a stigma. “Local” conjures up visions of being trapped without a seat in a crowded bar with pushy waitresses and a bad band. Inevitably, such bands feel compelled to release album-length examples of what they can and, mostly, cannot do. Local-music compilations try to solve that problem…
It’s bad enough that the band calls itself the Posies. It doesn’t help that one of the Posies is named Ken Stringfellow. And it certainly makes for dubious PR when another rock performer, Bob Forrest of Thelonious Monster, refers in song to his ex-girlfriend “walking off with some faggot from…
He’s the most bodacious rebel to come out of Music City’s narrow corridors since David Allan Coe, but Travis Tritt has done one thing Coe hasn’t: sell millions of records, real quick. See, those folks in Tennessee don’t suffer independent insolents or musical infidels–and they certainly don’t cotton to those…
If you could pick one symbol of the way hip-hop has infiltrated American society to its core, it might be Dave Bowers’ car. Parked on a Scottsdale street lined with neat suburban houses, it’s a wholly respectable Honda Accord, except for the two bumper stickers that howl B-boy rebellion. One…
On the morning two years ago when my father died, the music I immediately turned to was that of Sam Cooke. To me, that hypnotic voice and those tranquil ballads always seemed to come from a deeper well than most pop music. In its own way, Cooke’s music has, for…
Fans have dubbed him “the psychedelic cellist,” but he’s more aptly a guerrilla, tearing through the jazz/gospel/country-colored fabric of Lyle Lovett’s shows to lob a musical Molotov and then duck back into camouflage: starched and sober stage demeanor, painstaking posture, politely arranged face. Whatever the label, John Hagen has found…
There’s no use mourning the Replacements. They were irreplaceable. They were the finest, most visceral example of that great staple of rock n’ roll: the bar band. But most of all, they’re history. As a white, male rock critic–a breed distinguished by its weakness for distorted guitars and suburban angst–I…
On a television screen in a quiet, north Phoenix home, a frightening scene is playing itself out. It’s a musical snuff film. The victim? Hip-hop. In the video, Phunk Junkeez, two local rappers with the same skin color as Vanilla Ice, is whipping a crowd of more than 1,000 white…
When he first began playing his redneck-meets-white-boy’s-blues in the late Sixties, David Allan Coe billed himself as “The Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy.” He wore a mask and refused to reveal his true identity. Critics, naturally, dismissed the hulking, bearded, bemasked, country-grit singer as cheap gimmickry. But Coe maintained he was simply…
Rockabilly savant Reverend Horton Heat has an eye on the moral corruption damning the music industry. To wit: “It needs repairing. But it’s not the music,” he says. “I just think there are a lot of mediocre bands that get hyped and somehow end up on MTV. All these unproven…
Although facing campaign allegations that she has used her powerful union position to sell out members, Karen Ortega has been handily reelected to the Executive Board of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers local that represents U S West Direct Yellow Pages salespeople in Arizona and six other states. IBEW’s…
