Tim Finn Say It Is So (Sonny’s Pop Records) Split Enz was kind of a mess before the younger Finn, Neil, joined up and dragged big brother’s art-school band into pop land. The elder Finn, Tim, had up to that point driven New Zealand’s most aggressive export on equal parts…
Space Cadet Space Cadet (Ffroe Records) Every band has to learn to play through its influences at some point, whether that means figuring out how to play the same old song better than anyone else, or actually coming up with something new — you know, the more difficult and far…
As with most things concerning indie labels, especially local ones, it’s best not to believe something until you see it. There are always more trip wires to navigate when you don’t have a major label’s deep pockets to rely on. And that’s what’s happened to the latest releases from Dave…
Making a list of the worst records of the 1990s takes just as much effort as compiling a concise countdown of the best records of this past decade, maybe more. Sometimes, a few slip through the cracks, such as on Jim DeRogatis’ run-down of the most influential discs of the…
Thirty years ago — on December 6, to be exact — the Altamont Speedway, located about a half-hour away from Berkeley, near Livermore, on the way to Sacramento, was the site of a free concert presented by the Rolling Stones. The band’s 1969 U.S. tour (its first in three years)…
Last March, the Dallas Observer published a list of rules (“The rules of rock,” March 17, 1999), a guide that specified more than 100 things local musicians should and shouldn’t do. Among them were tips such as “Getting a tattoo is like sewing platform shoes to your feet,” and “Don’t…
Chappaquiddick Skyline Chappaquiddick Skyline (Sub Pop Records) Not enough people heard the Pernice Brothers’ here’s-where-the-strings-come-in debut, 1998’s Overcome by Happiness, a record full of big melodies and tiny sentiments. And you can bet that in a year, the same will apply to Chappaquiddick Skyline, because both records never fly high…
Pinkston Pinkston (Last Beat Records) Last Beat kicked off 1999 with Captain Audio’s My ears are ringing but my heart’s ok; now, it inaugurates 2000 with another EP by a band made up of local vets. And like Captain Audio, Pinkston is more than a new beginning tacked onto a…
Good Night, Little Girl of My Dreams Budapest One Self-released Keith Killoren has enough charisma to be labeled a dangerous man. Hell, he even got me to dance with him once, which is like talking a polar bear into vacationing in Death Valley. That charisma, plus obsessions with Rudy Vallee,…
When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts… Fiona Apple Clean Slate/Epic Records The second installment of Apple’s engaging brand of White Girl Angst. Fueled by longing, acrimony, and regret, Apple vocalizes what most of us only dream of unleashing on our exes. Though her debut, Tidal, expressed some of the same…
1. Emergency & I The Dismemberment Plan DeSoto Records Imagine Talking Heads, Prince, and Fugazi forming a musical think-tank in order to make a sassy, astoundingly literate, infinitely danceable masterwork. 2. “Heartbreaker” 12-inch remix Mariah Carey featuring Da Brat & Missy Elliott Sony Records I hate Mariah Carey, but this…
In the next century, please bring me freedom from these dreaded Top 10 album lists. May I never again have to enumerate for the public the fact, obvious by omission, that I do not give a hoot about hip-hop or modern rock or the latest bit of arch obscurity that…
Lists, lists, lists; why do these freakin’ rock critics love their lists so much? Well, for one thing, they’re a way to keep track of an ever-rushing torrent of music — a vine to hang on to for dear life as the rapids sweep us over the falls. This particular…
You’ll no doubt notice that many of the best-of lists that appear on the following few pages repeat the same names over and over: The Flaming Lips, the Magnetic Fields, Wilco, Beck, Moby, and on and on. You’ll also probably catch on pretty quick that many of the aforementioned lists…
All I can remember of last year’s personal top 10 was the inclusion of an acoustic Prince CD tacked on to the mail-order-only Crystal Ball. Smelled like hard-up then, reeks of it now — haven’t listened to the damned thing since December 22, 1998, and probably won’t again till I…
Wiring Prank at Rubber Gloves, July 19 Absolutely worth the wait. The half-irritating low-profile mystique perpetuated by a drummer who left the band earlier this year has fallen away and finally given the others a chance to breathe. Denton’s longtime best-kept secret took the stage at Rubber Gloves last summer…
The Immaculates will play their last show together on December 23 at the XPO Lounge, at which point the world will come to an end and the Exposition Park area will become a scorched mess of imploded buildings and paranoid looters trying to keep their footing among freak storms of…
New Year’s evil Maybe it’s just us, but it seems like very few people are ready to party like its 1999 one last time on New Year’s Eve. After scanning the club listings, New Year’s Eve just looks like another night — the same lineup of bands at the same…
Russell Hobbs laughs a little when he’s told about a mural he allegedly painted a decade ago on the side of what is now the Curtain Club on Commerce Street. Yes, he remembers the mural, the one that simply had two words painted on it: “style,” with an arrow pointing…
Turtle Creek Chorale The Best of Turtle Creek Chorale (TCC Recordings) Over the years, I have been asked a few times to attend a Turtle Creek Chorale concert, and whenever I have declined, there has always been surprise. It’s like — “Hey, you’re gay, they’re gay. It’s a natural marriage…
In these pages last year, Robert Wilonsky wrote, “I can’t remember a year when so many local bands released so many albums that I’ll play well into next year and beyond.” And, at the time, I agreed with him wholeheartedly. Looking at the 20 albums we had singled out, it…
Around this time of year, I like to take a while to assess the annual output of rock-and-roll reading, acknowledging the good, the bad, and the stuff that just leaves you wondering, “Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to publish this?” Here, then, are the results of…
