While a big-band arranger and pianist in the Forties, Herman “Sonny” Blount developed a fascination for Egyptian mythology and science-fiction-laced mysticism. The influences became obsessions, leading him to change his name and begin insisting he had been born on Saturn. Taking the name Sun Ra, after the Egyptian sun god…
Austin, Texas–Until recently the legacy of Stevie Ray Vaughan had been that of a modern-day blues master. He was an honest-to-God guitar hero whose fiery brilliance on the Fender Stratocaster mesmerized a generation unfamiliar with such legends as T-Bone Walker, Elmore James and Muddy Waters. The Oak Cliff, Texas, native’s…
A First Listen Stevie Vaughan and Double Trouble Recorded April 1, 1980, at Steamboat nightclub, Austin, Texas. In 1979 a young Stevie Vaughan (the “Ray” would come three years later) was still synthesizing his influences, paring them down into his own voice. On one bootleg from this period, The First…
When hillbilly ultratraditionalist Marty Brown signed on with king-of-country-labels MCA, the record company’s PR Pooh-Bahs were charged with finding a novel way to get his High and Dry music to the people. Much too country for modern country radio, Brown’s high-mountain wails, yodels and Fifties-style honky-tonk were getting virtually no…
Remember the scene in Spike Lee’s film Do the Right Thing in which everybody’s looking straight into the camera, screaming racial slurs at the ethnic group of their choice? Throw that bit into the middle of Boyz N the Hood and you get a pretty good idea of what the…
When Beth McKee first heard that her band, Evangeline, had been chosen to open Jimmy Buffett’s summer amphitheatre tour, she was elated. She became even more excited when she remembered the enthusiasm of the Buffett-loving “Parrotheads” nesting across the country. McKee is the band’s Buffett expert, having played with Greg…
Every year at Austin’s South by Southwest music conference, the who’s-hot buzz quotient gets a little more frenzied. Usually it goes something like this: “Have you heard about the urban-death-pop band from Shreveport whose lead vocalist plays spoons on his genitalia while singing The Way You Look Tonight’? “No, well,…
This is the second Sun Tracks feature for 8/19 Toss a rock into any local CD store and you’ll likely hit some sort of “tribute” disc featuring various artists paying homage to their musical mentors. For the past few years, established oldsters ranging from Elton John to Syd Barrett have…
While all those unshaven, unwashed weenies from the Northwest are busy bowing down to Greg Sage in TK’s new boxed set, Eight Songs for Greg Sage and the Wipers, the old master himself is here in the Valley making plans. Sage has purchased a parcel of land near 32nd Street…
The first thing you hear are the rhythms: bass drums, snare drums, high-hat cymbals, rattles, even stamping feet. Then the guitars begin–intricate melodies, picked instead of strummed, repeated until they become a groove. In the background, a bass guitar rumbles just behind the beat. Finally, a singer begins to sing,…
If you’ve been in line at the grocery store lately, scanning the magazine covers while you wait, you may have noticed a trend. Down below the tabloids screaming, “World’s Fattest Cat Saves Babies From Burning Building” or “Aliens Meet With Ross Perot,” are the serious mags. Almost all of them…
Chuck D said, “Elvis was a hero to most, but he didn’t mean shit to me.” Bruce Springsteen said, “That Elvis, man, he’s all there is. There ain’t no more. Everything starts and ends with him.” Worshiped and despised, Elvis Presley is still, 15 years after his departure, all things…
So Bill Clinton tried to bag votes from corn farmers and middle-class blacks horrified by the South Central L.A. riots by cluck-clucking at Sister Souljah’s musings on killing white people? And pop culture antisnob Dan Quayle got bent out of shape because of Ice-T’s cop-killing wet dreams? It’s always amusing…
Evan Dando, leader of the Lemonheads, is trying to describe a feeling he gets when things aren’t going well. “You know when you’re a kid and you play really hard all day? And then you sit down and everything’s still moving?” he asks. “I still feel that way sometimes. I’ll…
A friend of mine tells a story about his first King Sunny Ade concert. It was the friend’s first date with the woman who would later become his wife. Anticipating the usual droning, chunk-a-chunk-a-chunk reggae show, he had taken care to alter his consciousness before entering the arena. Pleasurable as…
Texas-born singer-songwriter and avid angler James McMurtry refused the bait. No, he said in his soft, deep drawl, he wouldn’t have had all this recent success if it wasn’t for his famous father, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Larry McMurtry, author of Lonesome Dove and The Last Picture Show. “Hey, if it…
One of the most frequently used phrases in the peculiar lexicon of the music business is “touring in support of.” What that deceptively clinical term means is that a record label is forcing a band to sleep in rickety vans, play empty clubs and do long-distance telephone interviews for the…
It’s an unfortunate fact that crooners and saloon singers tend to age into a fine whine. Frank Sinatra has become the grumpy, croaking godfather; Wayne Newton the willing Vegas parody; Andy Williams and Robert Goulet the desperate guests on third-rate daytime talk shows. Only Tony Bennett stands as an undated,…
Ask some slacker from San Francisco what the Phoenix music scene means, and he’d probably say the Meat Puppets or the Gin Blossoms. Call up Rolling Stone with the same question, and they’d rattle off names like Alice Cooper and Stevie Nicks. But chat with a deejay at a London…
Having a pop song with the word “teen” in it can be a scary thing these days. Just ask David Lowery. Last fall the leader of now-extinct pop eccentrics Camper Van Beethoven re-emerged with a new band, Cracker. After the group completed its self-titled debut in September, it had to…
“I must be incredibly lucky to be me. I mean, I might well explode if I exchanged bodies with someone else.” Robyn Hitchcock is doing it again. He’s acting the eccentric. He’s waxing metaphysical. His mind’s getting away from him. Hitchcock, the crazy uncle of postmodern pop, was supposed to…
Have you noticed that the EP, that five-song minialbum once considered a strictly European innovation, has come back into its own after years of disfavor? Why EPs, one of many now-extinct New Wave-inspired phenomena, lost favor in the mid-Eighties remains a mystery. But today they’re back with a vengeance, both…
