First time I saw The Artist Then Known as Prince, he was ushering in 1983 with a set culled from 1999, then his latest and greatest. He funked and spunked (his guitar did, anyway) like a man leading a proper Revolution (ah, Wendy and Lisa…), and even a 15-year-old then…
John Darnielle, the one-man band known as the Mountain Goats, is too smart for his own good. Overqualified for his rock-and-roll songwriting vocation, he’s as much at ease expounding Mexican mythology and quoting Eugene O’Neill as he is peeling off a standard love-ditty chorus. Releasing albums with the regularity of…
Ronnie Dawson, Dallas’ legendary Blond Bomber, released his first single, “Action Packed” b/w “I Make the Love” in 1958, when he was 19 years old. Since then, he’s gone from adored up-and-comer to hidden hero to comeback kid. During the 1960s and ’70s, he bounced from one label to another…
Stevie Wonder: The Wonder Years It was 1971 and Stevie Wonder had just turned 21, but when he reached into the trust that was to hold the estimated $30 million he had earned with such hits as “For Once in My Life,” “My Cherie Amour,” “I Was Made to Love…
Nearly four years after she busted out of town and broke big-time, Erykah Badu returns–unbowed, unbroken, and somehow, unchanged. It seems the revolution she began in February 1997, when Baduizm sold in the millions and “On & On” played on and on every time you switched on MTV, has yet…
Back when electronica was the next big thing–around the time the only things that needed counting in Florida were dead German tourists–Norman Cook was just another washed-up pop musician. Little wonder the former member of the Housemartins and Beats International decided an identity change was in order; better to check…
As far as the blues go, I might as well have just heard Robert Johnson for the first time last week. It’s a form I’m just getting familiar with, having just discovered the Howlin’ Wolfs and the Willie Dixons and the John Lee Hookers. Dunno why it took so long…
Oh, to be around in the glory days of the Drunken Irish Bastard, when chinless messiahs such as James Joyce, Damon Runyon, John Ford, Stephen Foster, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Eugene O’Neill were fighting and fucking and falling down all the way to the top. I don’t know what happened,…
There’s not much need for Christmas discs once you own A Charlie Brown Christmas and…aw, heck, that’s about it as far as this Hanukkah Harry’s concerned. But this collection of local artists doing the jingle-bell rock contains a version of Vince Guaraldi’s “Christmas Time Is Here” worth owning–a peppy, sparkly…
Ken Burns apologizes for his “filibustering,” but it doesn’t stop him from talking and talking until the original question becomes a faint memory in the wake of an answer that goes on and on. But perhaps as much is to be expected from Burns, the documentarian whose films begin as…
A sort-of interview with J. Mascis, Part One: It’s not that J. Mascis is sullen or inarticulate or any of the accusatory words with which he’s generally described. He’s extremely–you might even say legendarily–reserved when talking to the press. But if you’re willing to give just a little leeway to…
Willis Alan Ramsey is the most reluctant and least likely of Texas singer-songwriters. With the requisite three names (the calling card of most Texas singer-songwriters, from Townes Van Zandt to Robert Earl Keen, and, of course, serial killers), the dashing looks, the heroic narratives, and the memorable songs that became…
Ten years and three months after his death, Stevie Ray Vaughan releases yet another disc–three, actually, plus a bonus DVD of unreleased Austin City Limits performances, as this long-awaited boxed set finally arrives a year later than promised. For those keeping score, SRV makes 12 albums that Sony has released…
The Rock*A*Teens’ latest album, Sweet Bird of Youth, opens with “Car and Driver,” a deceptively sweet tale that, soon enough, turns into a warning pilfered from the Roxichord-loving loins of Sam Coomes. The organ jaunts along, covering melody and bass, with drums beating a soft path through a lane of…
k.d. lang: There are several good reasons to make the trek to downtown Fort Worth to catch k.d. lang, chief among them the ideal merging of artist and venue: Her sumptuous vocal artistry fits perfectly and warmly inside the acoustic flawlessness of Bass Performance Hall, like your daughter’s hand in…
Might wanna stay home for this, only because the floor might get a little sticky around last call, and not because some tourist from Plano spilled his Bacardi and Coke. “I want people to make love to this” album, says Guru in the liner notes to his latest, Jazzmatazz Vol…
Le Shok: While tight pants and white belts have become the leisure suit for the ’00s, San Diego’s Le Shok has taken the all-looks-no-hooks philosophy to new heights. Featuring Locust keyboardist Joseph Karam on drums, the fivesome has attracted that band’s prissy, pretentious, and style-conscious following, despite making music less…
Of these two discs–both from would-be Becks from south of the border–Plastilina Mosh’s sophomore release, Juan Manuel, is the better, mostly because it’s more of a live-band thing than band-in-a-box product. “Boombox Baby,” the record’s second track, is its best: bubblegum bass, chicken-scratch guitar, lemon-meringue synth. Its tongue barely fits…
Merle Haggard is contemplating quitting country music, and it’s your fault. The 63-year-old Haggard isn’t ready to walk away just yet. In fact, he’s about to embark on a two-month national tour to promote his biggest recording in more than a decade. Yet Haggard, if anything, is a realist. A…
I’ve interviewed Cypress Hill four times, but on each occasion, Muggs, the DJ/architect of the rap act’s sound, was conspicuously absent. It’s not that he’s shy, or hates reporters, or wants to maintain a low, mysterious profile. It’s just that he has better things to do. Like make records. He’s…
By now, the story is familiar. Steve Earle, a more-than-promising Nashville record-maker on the verge of major stardom, ends up in the Gray-Bar Hotel after burning out on drugs. Then comes the artistic rebirth: an acoustic disc, followed by small-label releases focusing on a tight Americana sound, followed by an…
In case you haven’t heard, and unless you hang out on The Toadies’ Web site (www.thetoadies.com) you probably haven’t, Interscope Records has finally set a release date for Hell Below, Stars Above, the band’s second album for the label and first since 1994’s Rubberneck. (Yes, yes–it’s been a while; no…
