The year 1979 was a watershed for gloom bands, what with the release of Joy Division’s memorably dark and unsettling debut and the Cure’s less auspicious but equally bleak first album. Still, taking top honors as the dreariest, dirgiest and most all-around depressing disc of that year was Bauhaus’ debut…
Industry wags have dubbed them “this season’s Living Colour” and “The Next Big Black Thing,” but 24-7 Spyz would rather you think of them as just another raunchy rock band from the South Bronx. You see, unlike the members of Living Colour, who consider themselves as much black ideologues as…
Just how far has Al Jarreau descended from his creative peak in the early Eighties? On his latest album, Heart’s Horizon, the singer teams up with the one-man-band vocalist Bobby “He’s Everywhere!” McFerrin to sing a little a cappella number about those ol’ denim blues. Jarreau may have composed “Yo’…
here’s a scene in the new movie Scandal no self-respecting ska fan should miss. Christine Keeler is taken to London’s West End section by her friend Dr. Stephen Ward to score some ganja. She ends up in a smoky dance hall where she meets a sharp-dressed rude boy played by…
Around the L.A. offices of Polygram Records these days, executives are already referring to Saraya as the label’s next Bon Jovi. And why not? Like Polygram’s most successful act, its newest property is also a young five-piece band from New Jersey that produces catchy, hook-laden hard rock songs capable of…
It is an old saw among the creators of advertising that the best ads often don’t run. An agency will bust tail to come up with something truly clever, unforgettable and outrageous–a campaign that is sure to sell billions of sprockets. At the last minute, Mr. Spacely himself cans the…
The members of the Athens, Georgia, band Love Tractor wish people would show more interest in their music than in the hometown company they keep. Okay, so let’s indulge them for a minute. Let’s pretend they’re not from the famous underground musical town of Athens and that they aren’t good…
It’s August 1972, and Tiger Beat has nailed Donny Osmond in Hawaii. This time, the teen magazine’s caught him with his pants down, or at least his shirt off. His bangs hanging in decidedly ungroomed, wet mop strings over his forehead, Donny stands on the cover fresh from a dip…
Little did Romeo realize how prophetic his words were to become. Reggae music (the “house of worship” he refers to) in the late Eighties has indeed become rife with corporate thieves bent on using it as a coin-generating machine while damning its spirituality. The post-Bob Marley era of reggae has…
Gordon Gano, decked out in baggy plaid Bermudas and a white baseball cap, sits sipping a soda on a picnic bench outside Mesa Amphitheatre, looking every inch the Baptist preacher’s son that he is. The apple- cheeked Violent Femmes lead singer-songwriter-guitarist downs a Pepsi (you were expecting Jack Daniel’s, maybe?)…
Though the group is generally associated with contemporary jazz, Hiroshima has eluded classification. Confounded critics just can’t decide which category it belongs in. The Grammy Award-winning Asian-American group, based in Los Angeles, combines the music of its heritage with a potpourri of reggae, rock, R&B, pop, jazz, African, Brazilian and…
n Public Enemy’s revolutionary 1988 LP, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, head M.C. Chuck D roared through one black-power anthem after another, fashioning an aural altar to Louis Farrakhan here and a sonic testimonial to Malcolm X there. Then came the last song and its…
Comedians are the poor, deprived children of the entertainment world. At least when compared to their siblings in rock ‘n’ roll they are. For every household Jay Leno, a dozen Def Leppards–five anonymous names and faces (to the general public, anyway)–manage to sell fourteen million or so records. Whereas records…
first, it feels like an earthquake with a sense of rhythm or Dom DeLuise and David Crosby walking up the driveway in ski boots. BOOM! BOOM! The refrigerator begins wiggling around the kitchen like Jerry Lewis conducting a rhumba band. BOOM! BOOM! The coffee table hovers across the living-room parquet…
The group that’s established itself as the most important in pop music during the past year doesn’t even play instruments. The only noise its members make is the sound of thoughtful hand clapping or finger snapping. Without further introduction, then, meet the Guilty White Liberals. Why did the music world…
It’s a common adage in the music business that the toughest gig is in your own hometown. That is especially true here in the Valley, where local pride is no more than a wistful memory that every April the snowbirds take back with them to Wisconsin and New York. In…
Poor, deprived Tommy Stinson. Twenty-two years old, he’s been a slave to rock ‘n’ roll and the Replacements–the grown-up garage gods he plays bass for–nigh on ten years now. As of last year, between rehearsals, recording sessions and gigs, not once did little Tommy ever make it to Disneyland. Then,…
The voice wriggles out of radio speakers quietly at first, like a stealthy alley cat stalking its prey. Husky, urgent and infused with enough racing hormones to stage its own libidinal grand prix, the voice delivers the song’s pleading tale of unrequited lust for an underage temptress with ever-escalating fervor,…
In her eight years of trying to shame the drug-loving youths of America into throwing away their needles, blotters and bongs, it’s a pity that Nancy Reagan never saw a show by Okie fuzz rockers the Flaming Lips. The Lips–if their show at the Sun Club last Saturday is any…
A scene from a recent Miami Vice nailed it perfectly. Exterior: A chic poolside party for the art world’s local elite. Startling expressionistic creations by this year’s Warhols slicing up the stark-blue skyline–unframed abstracts in vivid, high-gloss colors beside sharp, looming sculptures. Deathly solemn, culturally overbred men and women–looking like…
he problem with today’s music, as Throwing Muses’ lead singer-songwriter Kristin Hersh sees it, is simple: too much warp-speed guitar wanking and crotch-grabbing braggadocio and not enough thoughtful, intricate strumming and quiet introspection. Or, in the language of the Chinese cosmology that the singer is prone to spout, “too much…
Even under the best of circumstances, operating an independent/alternative/underground record label is more often than not fraught with trauma–distribution problems, tour hassles, a minuscule advertising budget, getting bands to the recording studio, you name it. Add to that the amount of time it takes to establish a track record of…
