There, on one corner of Sixth Street and Congress Avenue, stood Ray Davies, hiding behind don’t-fuck-with-me shades. Just across the street stood David Byrne, camouflaged from head to foot in khaki, his omnipresent red backpack draped across his shoulder. Davies looked larger than life, in a way–like a Rock Legend,…
As we mentioned last week, Flickerstick has signed with Epic Records, capitalizing on its Bands on the Run notoriety in the manner everyone thought it would. Initial plans call for Epic to re-release F-Stick’s debut, Welcoming Home the Astronauts, in October, with a pair of songs–“Smile” and “Execution by X-mas…
Though Denton likes to believe it was the home of Texas’ best psych rock in the 1990s, that title actually goes to Houston’s The Mike Gunn. This early-’90s quintet brazenly brandished guitar indulgence that warped more minds in the Lone Star State and beyond since the six-oh days of Josefus,…
By this point, there isn’t anyone out there still eager to play the serious-music card, is there? No one champing at the bit to discredit hip-hop or heavy metal or twee-pop as lesser forms of a medium that counts boring ol’ Beethoven or Jeff Lynne or whoever as despot? If…
Leave it to ex-Faith No More vocalist Mike Patton to give a new meaning to the saying “beating a dead horse.” The guy who’s pop-cult fame was bound by wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with images of Jesus masturbating (that had to be airbrushed out of the band’s Spin cover shoot)…
A year after the debut of her critically acclaimed first album, there are those who are still asking, “Who is Jill Scott?” You can hardly blame them, because the answer is multiple choice. Scott is R&B’s latest It Girl and the current poster child for the neo-soul movement (see: Lauryn…
La Crescenta is hardly known as a hotbed for rock and roll, nor is it the place you’d expect to find America’s most prominent dance/rock group. But this far northern Los Angeles suburb in Crescenta Valley, tucked up against the Verdugo Mountains, is where Ken Jordan and Scott Kirkland, otherwise…
Whoever it was who first said bad things come in threes–it was probably Lucius Annaeus Seneca, the Younger, that poor, stoic sap–had obviously never met Beyoncé Knowles. She’s the undisputed focal point of Houston’s Destiny’s Child, but she knows better than to pass herself off as a solo act. It…
San Diego guitarist John Reis has a résumé that looks like a page from a book of Dada poetry. The guy started laying metal-esque licks for Pitchfork, before moving on to a different sort of twin-guitar mettle in Drive Like Jehu. Along the way he formed the sextet Rocket From…
The birth of Bleed American was a fairly adventurous one: After a difficult two-album turn with Capitol Records, Jimmy Eat World decided to strike out on its own in 2000, parting ways with its label and management and mortgaging its financial future to fund the recording of the album on…
It starts with a phone call and one question: “Have you heard about the Toadies breaking up?” A week or so later, we’ve heard that same question over and over in phone calls and e-mails, and we’ve even asked it a few times ourselves, but we still don’t know the…
There’s something entirely too precious about a young, indie-rock musician with a classic music background. It’s a fact you just can’t shake out of your head. You’ll see some skinny, androgynous, moppy-haired hipster onstage adorned in whatever young-adult Geranimals are fashionably out of season and think–awww, s/he must’ve looked absolutely…
The liner notes for Eternal and Lowdown, Ray Wylie Hubbard’s new record, open thusly: “If F. Scott Fitzgerald had known Ray Wylie Hubbard, there’s no way Fitzgerald would ever have conceived that notion about American lives having no second act, much less put forth the idea.” And if the story…
Though he routinely denies it–including about seven times in the half-hour I spend with him–Pharrell Williams is dying to be a rock star. You can tell with one look, if he’s got one of his trademark mesh trucker’s caps on, an ugly yellow or red thing with a crude depiction…
It ain’t easy being easy listening. With a voice that’s smoother than satin undergarments and equally as alluring, the Nigerian born Helen Folsade Adu to an African father and English mother has the dubious honor of being one of the few mixed-race vocalists in a genre that tolerates camouflaged ethnicity…
With a voice incisive enough to slice through Kevlar and a body that’s more butter than Land O’ Lakes, Bed-Stuy native Inga Marchand fuses equal parts LL Cool J braggadocio and early Boogie Down Productions’ street sagas as rapper Foxy Brown. And with Broken Silence, her third album, Brown shows…
In 1971, Marvin Gaye released his classic What’s Going On, and all hell broke loose in the world of R&B. Smiling hit makers became serious artists and social commentators, and within months Sly Stone, Stevie Wonder and Curtis Mayfield had all followed suit, creating their own distinctive brand of soul…
Citing exhaustion, Aden Holt has decided to take a hiatus from One Ton Records, a break that began July 9 and will continue until, he jokes, “I win the lottery.” Meaning: One Ton is pretty much gone for good, ending the local label’s five-year run as the best record label…
The six members of Detroit-based D12 (it’s short for Dirty Dozen; the discrepancy between the actual number of rappers in the group and its double-size moniker has something to do with the fact that each person’s alias is also counted) made a pact years ago that if any of them…
The man known as The Legendary Fritz sits on a concrete slab next to the makeshift parking lot beneath the Dallas Observer office on Commerce Street, explaining what happened between a week ago and today. To kick-start the story he’s about to tell, he laughs a little, sighs a little…
You don’t have to be a paranoid android to know who’s gonna show up at a Radiohead show. It’s like a modern-rock rogues gallery: You’ve got your music-nerd types (the guys in the seventh row squinting hard at guitarist Jonny Greenwood’s new bank of keyboards), your Top 40 refugees (the…
When he walked onstage at the 20th anniversary of the Tejano Conjunto Festival at San Antonio’s Rosedale Park in May, Steve Jordan was resplendent in a purple jumpsuit with gold buccaneer sleeves. But what stood out most was how frail the 62-year-old accordion legend looked. Like a skeleton clinging to…
