Here we have an interesting bill: three bands that started out as hungry ones with blue stars in their eyes that have deliquesced into fleshy middle-aged inurgency, making music not for the kids who once listened (or they once were), but for adults searching for the soundtrack to their undoing.Well,…
This won’t come as a shock to anyone who’s ever had the misfortune of seeing us perform that point-and-jump-and-duck step Rerun used to do on What’s Happening? or try to recreate the finale of Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, but we can’t dance. Not really. Not unless the polka counts, and…
I’ve listened to this disc every which friggin’ way: straight, stoned, sitting down, standing up, standing on my head, standing in a full bathtub holding a plugged-in toaster. I’ve played it cranked up and turned all the way down, in the office and in the car and in the house…
Dwight Yoakam: There are very few times anymore that my wife of 10 years is in the mood for marital relations. In fact, there are only three ways in which I can assure myself that I’magonnagetmesum: one, if she downs more than three Gloria’s top-shelf margaritas; two, if I clean…
If the Cardigans were, as their third album claimed, the first band on the moon, Tahiti 80 are that little car the astronauts drove in while they were hanging up there: unnecessary but a hell of a lot of fun. Puzzle, the Paris band’s just-released debut, is a superb post-modern…
The reason I don’t like Moby isn’t because Play, his steam-gathering smash record from last year, pillages from the past and calls it the present. Some folks had problems with the fact that samples of anthropologist Alan Lomax’s field recordings made up the bulk of the record, claiming that Moby…
FOR: “It took a lot of work to be the ass that I am,” sings Isaac Brock on Modest Mouse’s latest release, The Moon & Antarctica, and quite a few people would agree with him. The work has paid off: After two albums on Calvin Johnson’s K Records label, and…
When people write about Yo La Tengo, they typically concentrate on the fact that the band’s drummer, Georgia Hubley, and its singer-guitarist, Ira Kaplan, are married, and that they sometimes sing about it. But the Hoboken trio are far more than an indie-rock version of the Eurythmics. They’re really about…
“Is this the home of Rebert Harris?” I asked anxiously. The woman who had answered the phone said yes. “Rebert Harris of the Soul Stirrers?” Yes, she said again. I told her I was writing a story on the legendary gospel quartet from Trinity, Texas, and I wondered if I…
They packed into the House of Blues on Sunset Strip, that strip-mall museum with its overpriced booze and overfried food, and held their breath. They chanted (“X…X…X…X!”) and waited, pushing toward the stage until the crowd became a crush. They wore their faded tour tees and talked about their favorite…
Dean Fertita had lots of time to kill and plenty of willing assassins; he was, after all, in a record store. A drop of the needle could either chase the blues away or invite them to stay awhile, depending on his mood and which Stones record was on the turntable…
Mandarin’s debut, Driftline, hits stores this week (October 1, to be exact) courtesy of Two Ohm Hop Records, but at least one member of the band is too absorbed in another project to notice. Well, that’s probably not entirely true, but guitarist Brian Smith is pretty busy these days, about…
There’s a weird moment toward the end of Warning, Green Day’s sixth album and first since 1997’s Nimrod. Well, it’s not weird so much as unexpected, and that still doesn’t accurately describe the moment in “Jackass” when an honest-to-goodness, blow-Big-Man! saxophone solo turns off E Street and crosses the bridge…
Last time out, he stepped onstage and fell into the orchestra pit: Songs from The Capeman, in which Simon played tough-guy dress-up for the Broadway crowd while adopting the cause of an unrepentant murderer, left a nasty taste in the mouths of even the die-hards, who still love the old…
There’s a long pause–20, maybe 30 seconds. Maybe longer. Rivers Cuomo, Weezer’s notoriously press-shy front man, is in Tulsa, a couple of hours before his band is set to take the stage at the legendary Cain’s Ballroom, “the house that Bob”–Wills, that is–“built.” The doors have just opened, and the…
The Get Up Kids, it seems, have gotten up. I’m on the phone with singer-guitarist Matt Pryor. He’s in Seattle, a few hours before his band’s show at Graceland, standing on a bustling street corner in front of the Dionysian bus he and his four bandmates sleep and eat and…
You’ve heard it before. If it’s not the oldest cliché in the business, it’s the best-known: “We’re big in Europe.” “Big in Europe”–a phrase so ancient that it’s become a sort of all-purpose joke even to people outside the music industry–means you’re skirting the issue of your unpopularity at home…
While we still can’t believe someone forgot to stage a reenactment of Turner Van Blarcum’s infamous beatdown of Kurt Cobain at Trees (there’s a video file of it somewhere on the Internet), we have to say that the club has gone out its way to throw a kick-ass 10-year anniversary…
David Bowie is the Peter Sellers of rock and roll: He’s all blank slate, the chameleon who adapts to his surroundings without actually adopting an identity. He commits only to schlock, tailoring the disguise–mod rocker, dickless spaceman, fashion faux-pas–to fit the delivery, which is somewhere between smirk and sneer (the…
The thing that gets me about Hot Young Glaswegian Rockers Travis is that they’ve built their highly orchestrated American breakthrough on the backs of 15-year-old girls whose idea of high fashion is the Delia’s catalog. When Good Feeling, the band’s quite alright debut, was released in 1997, no one here…
It’s probably best to begin with an explanation, or an apology, or something. First off, I love The Beatles. Grew up with ’em, thought my dad was a Beatle, etc. But this, this is, well…hmmm…at least Paul McCartney is keeping himself busy. And it’s at least, ah, interesting. Just look…
It shouldn’t be this easy to get Peter Frampton on the phone, but it is: A publicist for DreamWorks Pictures calls, asks if you’re interested in talking to the man, and five days later, he’s on the other end of the line at the appointed time. Twenty-four years ago, such…
