Somewhere in the Midwest, 1998. In a cold, dim basement, three university students sit among stacks of blank CD cases, a few guitars, a four-track recorder, and an ambitious plan. They will record and release an album all by themselves, thereby sidestepping the cruel and carnivorous music industry. Hell or…
After spending half an hour preaching the evils of Marilyn Manson and those pale-faced, black-clad Goth-rock kids who he insists are gang members, no different from Crips and Bloods, Ramon Jacquez lets out a slight chuckle. He is about to hang up the phone when the program director at the…
When the surviving ex-Beatles put together their three-volume Anthology series a few years ago, they faced a daunting artistic challenge. On the one hand, they had to satiate long-suffering fans clamoring for a collection of the band’s best unreleased tracks. On the other hand, because the Anthology CDs were conceived…
The forgettable fire The B-Sides: The Best of 1980-1990 U2 Island Records Hard to believe U2’s first record (Boy) hit stores 18 years ago; harder still to believe they’re regarded as futurists even now, the fathers and sons of post-modern rock and roll. Until this double-disc “limited-edition” collection arrived last…
Breaking up, it seems, was the most successful thing Sunny Day Real Estate ever did. Four years ago, it could not have played a place like Seattle’s Moore Theatre; the band never even would have attempted it. The venue, with its 1,700-plus capacity, was much too big for the group,…
Jumpin’ jive Big Night in Cowtown Cowboys and Indians Self-released The very first bars of Cowboys and Indians’ second album are enough to convert even the most dubious listener. Lean in. Must be the way the sliding horns slap their way over the spare landscape of playful gee-tar strum. Then…
Alan Govenar is the patron saint of lost causes, which is the highest compliment anyone can be paid in a city where history is replaced by a parking lot or a mega-grocery store every few days. Thirteen years ago, while researching his oral history Meeting the Blues, he shook hands…
DJ Spooky chooses his words methodically, with the same kind of care he uses to pick samples for his deeply atmospheric hip-hop records. Posed with a question, the young man also known as Paul Miller leans back in an old wooden office chair and slowly rakes his hands over a…
You really got me…depressed Poor Me Fury III Self-released Stephen Nutt’s sense of humor is black enough to get lost in the dark. To him, life is a joke; death, the punch line. The Fury III singer-guitarist is almost laughably obsessed with failure and disappointment of all kinds, resulting in…
Yes, yes. Laugh all you want. C’mon, get it out of your system. Ask the inevitable question: A greatest-hits record? What–is it a CD single? Harharhar. Stop. You’re killin’ me. The album will not be in stores till February, at the earliest, but already the folks at Geffen Records are…
Fifteen minutes into Velvet Goldmine, director Todd Haynes’ love letter to England’s glam-rock scene of the late ’60s and early ’70s, the film has already promised to be many things: a missing-person mystery, a meticulous period piece, an essay on sexually liberated dandyism, a quasi-musical, a portrait of the Machiavellian…
Two guesses as to how Robyn Hitchcock might describe meeting Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme, just after Hitchcock’s 1995 concert in upstate New York. 1. “So then he came backstage after the show to shake my hand, and he was just a really nice guy. We talked about getting together for…
In 1970, Randy Newman wrote a song for Frank Sinatra called “Lonely at the Top,” and it went like this: “Listen all you fools out there / Go on and love me–I don’t care / Oh, it’s lonely at the top.” Newman, then a 27-year-old singer-songwriter with two albums of…
Bedtime stories Mutations Beck DGC Records Electro-Shock Blues the eels Dreamworks Records The eels’ Mark Oliver Everett and Beck Hansen sound like the same man singing in the same muted voice. More often than not, theirs is a mournful whisper and a flat drone, the echo of a thought rather…
It’s a crazy-hot Saturday evening at the Dessau Music Hall, a dancehall in far North Austin. It’s so hot that the sun sweats all over the people in the parking lot outside. The place is abuzz–even the mosquitoes know something’s up; they’re out in force. The people know it too…
Since the Toadies’ major-label debut Rubberneck was released, Barry Switzer began his first season as the Dallas Cowboys’ head coach, won a Super Bowl, then got replaced by Chan Gailey. O.J. Simpson has been found innocent and guilty of killing his old lady. Bill Clinton has been re-elected, only to…
Tract houses of the holy The Night We Taught Ourselves to Sing The Volares Rockadelic Records James “Big Bucks” Burnett has never lost faith in rock and roll’s promise to upraise, comfort, and groove all at once. His tastes exist in the 1960s and ’70s because that’s where his heroes…
Exile on mainline Acme The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion Matador/Capitol Records Jon Spencer’s all concept–post-punk, post-blooze, the Delta by way of SoHo–so the execution’s not a problem; hasn’t been since he and Pussy Galore turned the blues into performance art and boogied on that fine line that separates revolutionary genius…
Willie Hutch’s studio sits along a desolate stretch of Highway 67 in Cedar Hill. It is just off the highway, not far from an exit no one seems to use very much–unless, perhaps, they are in need of used tires, which are sold at the establishment sitting next to the…
Uncle Tupelo’s 1990 debut No Depression was a lousy way to start a musical revolution. Taking everything they’d learned from their beloved Gram Parsons and Replacements records, Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy strived to create a country-rock synthesis and wound up just making a mess. For all its youthful exuberance,…
Let me begin by stating that I have seen Simon Reynolds do the methylenedioxymethamphetamine boogie. Moreover, I have on occasion shared water bottles with him. This seems important to note for two reasons. One is to reveal that books are sometimes reviewed by colleagues or friends of the author (yes,…
Hair today, gone yesterday Buried Alive Chet Arthur Presidential Records It’s not hard to imagine the members of Chet Arthur watching This is Spinal Tap and not getting a single joke, so blissfully unaware are they of rock-and-roll cliches. I mean, any band that writes “You can be my rock…
