Jack Ingram Close enough (Lucky Dog/Sony Nashville) It might not be fair to blame Jack Ingram for such acts as the execrable Pat Green or a thoroughly unoriginal and clichéd newcomer like Adam Carroll, but as one of the originators of the post- Robert Earl Keen syndrome, Ingram has definitely…
Del McCoury Band Don’t go see Del McCoury just because he cut an album (last year’s The Mountain) and toured with Steve Earle. Not that it isn’t a fine recommendation, but McCoury’s anointment by postmodern country icon Earle is just part of the story with the bluegrass singer, guitarist, and…
Elvis Costello with Steve Nieve It would make more sense if Elvis Costello were coming to Starplex Amphitheatre with a band, any band, rather than just his acoustic guitar and former Attraction Steve Nieve and his piano. It might not be better, but it would definitely be more appropriate. Starplex…
Mandy Patinkin There’s a lot to admire about the guy — and not just that he had the good sense to leave Chicago Hope, only to return when people stopped remembering why it was such a big deal that he left in the first place. Patinkin’s probably the last singer…
Dance Hall Crashers Nine years and four albums (including the recently released Purr, but not counting two subsequent reissues of its 1990 debut) into its career, Dance Hall Crashers is still mainly known for the fact that Operation Ivy’s Tim Armstrong and Matt Freeman started the band before going on…
At the beginning of this year, Momus (known around the house as Nick Currie) began soliciting participants for a “portrait album” he was calling Stars Forever. The idea: People would give Momus $1,000 to write and record a song about them, and they would become “stars forever” when he released…
At the time, no one could have known how important Nirvana’s appearance on Saturday Night Live would be, how many bands would form in its wake, how different the world would sound soon after it happened. Nirvana was just another band on the way up that Saturday Night Live was…
Trees was packed that night, and you couldn’t help but wonder whether the club would have been quite so packed if the band on stage, Sleater-Kinney, were made up of three men instead of three women. Drummer Janet Weiss was capable but not great, suffering from that awkward, constipated look…
Terror Twilight, Pavement’s fifth full-length album, is a hard record to get a fix on. Scott Kannberg, Pavement’s guitarist, is having problems explaining it himself. Over breakfast in a restaurant near his home in Berkeley, he’s doing his best. “Parts of it are pretty light,” he says, “but at least…
By all rights, Smash Mouth should have come and gone by now, one-hit wonders saddled up on their one-trick pony and headed into the dimming sunset. “Walkin’ on the Sun” — with its cheese-log Farfisa beat and British-Invasion-by-way-of-Southern-California big-beat pop — was so ubiquitous in the winter of 1997 and…
Jon Randall is thinking about moving back to Dallas, coming home after 12 years in Nashville spent working on other people’s projects while watching his own fall apart. Well, he doesn’t say the last part, but it’s not too hard to finish his sentence. It’s a story that’s all too…
David Bowie “Hours…” (Virgin Records) He spent two recordings (Outside and Earthling) trying to cop Trent Reznor’s moves, which sounded as foolish as it looked. The Man Who Fell to Earth landed with a giant thud, proving once and for all that chameleons do indeed age with the gracelessness of…
Scattergun Reflex laughing at a dead man (Laser Trax Records) All too often, bands are defined by recommended-if-you-like comparisons, first impressions that stick around long enough to pick up negative connotations. Influences become indictments, the end of a sentence that begins, “They’re just ripping off…” It’s certainly difficult to avoid…
Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt It’s easy to think of Harris and Ronstadt’s new Western Wall: The Tucson Sessions as Duo; the only thing missing is Dolly Parton, which is like saying the only thing missing from daylight is the sun. That said, the trio’s first record in 1987 beats…
Motörhead How many years, how many allusions to This Is Spinal Tap must a band endure before digging its own grave and graciously crawling into it? You would have thought that singer-bassist Lemmy Kilmister’s need for speed, tempo and otherwise, would have severely curtailed the group’s staying power. Yet here…
Nerves There are pretty much two kinds of punks in the world: the ones who think the thunderous miasma of the Stooges’ Funhouse is the greatest album ever and those who believe the tinny, ripping sneer on Iggy and the Stooges’ Raw Power is what makes the world go round…
Self DreamWorks could have released Self’s second full-length, this year’s Breakfast With Girls, right into the cutout bin; this nifty little record’s been greeted with as much fanfare as Christmas at an Orthodox rabbi’s house. Too bad too, since Breakfast is a rather satisfying, uh, late-night snack — precocious new-wave…
Ask The Chemical Brothers’ Tom Rowlands which band has had the biggest impact on him and his music, and his answer begins before the question ends — New Order, he declares, no hesitation or hedging necessary. Actually, what he says is Norder, his response so quick that it catches his…
A friend of mine believes Tori Amos is some sort of cross between the Pied Piper and Frank Sinatra in The Manchurian Candidate. That is, she plants secret buzzwords in her songs that have been helping her recruit an enormous army of young women in their late teens and early…
Bruce Goldberg doesn’t have much time to talk. Every few minutes, the phone begins beeping incessantly, meaning someone on the other line is placing an order. And if the other line isn’t ringing, one of his six full-time employees is trying to get his attention so they can fill an…
David Dennard is doing God’s work — if your definition of God is, say, Johnny Cash or Carl Perkins or Gene Vincent. Come January, the man responsible for releasing collections celebrating the rare-and-unreleased work of such local heroes as Johnny Dollar and “Groovey” Joe Poovey will ship to stores what’s…
Bucks Burnett presents the latest, and last, installment of his Variety Nightmare series at Club Dada on September 29, featuring sets by The Glory Brothers — a duo featuring Paul Averitt (who plays with Burnett in The Volares) and Salim Nourallah (The Moon Festival) — and doublepluspop, which also includes…
