From H.L. Mencken to the Coen Brothers, patronizing Yankees have always been quick to giggle at the rubes down south. Three decades ago — after watching Harvard-educated Dick Cavett grill high school dropout and then-Georgia governor Lester Maddox on national TV — Louisiana-born singer-songwriter Randy Newman decided he had seen…
Occasionally, a celebrity phone interview can reveal a slice of life not intended for print. It’s usually something mundane, maybe a rock star reiterating he needs his groceries to his nanny or personal assistant. But since rock journalists are like priests and not only in a monastic sense, revealing even…
The rich man can have his green grass back next week. This is our field tonight. I stand surrounded by tens of thousands of party people on this terra-formed oasis. They look happy, smiling, throwing Frisbees, disco napping in pockets of shade, dancing in celebration, rushing from one attraction to…
Virtually all of the hatorade that’s been spilled over Madonna’s sharp American Life has actually succeeded in pointing out what’s great about the album. A sonic palette limited to sliced-and-diced guitar and producer Mirwais Ahmadzaï’s signature synth squelch; over-the-top pontifications from the singer about America’s consumer culture and her search…
Yeah Yeah Yeahs, a female-fronted three-piece from (where else?) Brooklyn, are being hyped as the latest saviors of raw fucking rock ‘n’ roll, especially in Tony Blair’s kingdom, where mania over the garage-rock phenom runs high. They come to us as yet another American garage-rock tsunami in the wake of…
Every great band has a so-called “quiet” one — they’re the ones you gotta watch. For indie-rock statesfolk Yo La Tengo, that’s James McNew, the “new” member, third wheel to guitarist Ira Kaplan and drummer Georgia Hubley’s marriage for a mere decade. As with most quiet ones, the mask’s a…
The recent chart success of French duo Les Nubians’ One Step Forward is a heartening rebuke and disturbing indicator of our country’s xenophobic culture. Usually, foreign-speaking artists have to sing in English (like Shakira or t.A.T.u.) to succeed in the U.S. at the risk of becoming childlike novelties (like Falco…
Tim McGraw is a kind of fluke — he’s got movie-star looks and a big old hat, and to the casual browser he might seem like a post-Garth clone, especially considering that so much of his public presentation is tied to his marriage to country pop diva and video glamour…
Somehow, someway, critical darling Richard Thompson still makes a go of it. Thompson is one of rock ‘n’ roll’s most gifted everythings — guitarist, songwriter, singer, lyricist. The Brit helped shape U.K. folk rock with his Celtic-informed group Fairport Convention more than 30 years ago. Then, with his wife Linda,…
When Napoleon’s army discovered the Rosetta stone along the banks of the Nile in 1799, little did they know that the tablet of black basalt would provide them with a key to unlocking the thorny riddles of Egyptian hieroglyphics. “Perhaps someday,” they might’ve thought, “this slab of carved symbols will…
It’s been a decade since Uncle Tupelo released its major-label swan song, Anodyne. In the passing years, the Belleville, Illinois, band’s two front men — the sullen, grieving and earnest Jay Farrar and the eager, hoarse and earnest Jeff Tweedy — have seen an entire genre, called “alternative country,” emerge…
The Bronx is hundreds of miles away from house-music giant Little Louie Vega’s vantage point on the patio behind Miami Beach’s Panna Café, where he sits and enjoys a cup of coffee. He’s here under some duress: In three hours he has to rejoin his wife, the beautiful Cape Verdean…
At 4:20 p.m. on April 20, the hippies take over. They flock to the Sail Inn, a larger-than-average dive with an outdoor patio and stage tucked anonymously onto a quiet side street in central Tempe, for 4:20 Fest, an Easter Day party for the local jam-band faithful, though a few…
There is a well-worn piece of music theory that states, in sum, that all enduring compositions are constructed around a tonal center. Songs introduce a central pitch, the theory goes, and in returning to this pitch numerous times over the life of the song, the listener earns a release. It’s…
Last year, the skinny white English dude Mike Skinner convinced lots of skinny white American dudes that Eminem wasn’t the only skinny white rapper dude worth lending an ear; on his potent debut as the Streets, Original Pirate Material, Skinner countered the widespread American idea that Brits can’t rap with…
He’s given U2 the ambiance to match their soul-searching, Emmylou Harris the atmosphere to surround her angelic voice, Bob Dylan the perfect foil to create his best work in decades, and Peter Gabriel a palette for his passion. What Daniel Lanois hasn’t done, though, is write an interesting album’s worth…
This past March, around the same time that Norah Jones was scooping up an armload of Grammys for her polished pop-cum-jazz debut, the Atlantic Monthly ran a lengthy obituary bemoaning the death of jazz. The once-lofty genre was dead, music scribe David Hadju concluded, murdered in part by the antiseptic…
For those who like to argue about the evolution of British punk rock, several bands always top the list of originators: the Sex Pistols (duh?), the Clash and the Buzzcocks. The Sex Pistols self-destructed and the Clash went the way of American radio, while the Buzzcocks flew under the radar,…
When El Tri co-headlined a massive concert with the Rolling Stones in a Mexico City soccer stadium a few years back, Keith Richards sported an El Tri tee shirt, paying homage to Mexico’s own version of the Stones. Like Richards, Alex Lora, the singer, bass player and songwriting force behind…
Cursive front man Tim Kasher recites the incident clinically. “It ended up being one of those really unusual life and art reflecting each other coincidences that we had already named the album The Ugly Organ,” Kasher says dryly. He’s describing the collapsed lung and resulting surgery that landed him in…
John Logan, lead singer and guitarist for the Phoenix guerrilla rockers the MadCaPs, has been performing a song as part of his band’s sets lately called “Happy Baghdad.” His composition strongly opposes military action in Iraq and makes military aggression seem like a mortal sin. “You got nothing to be…
The Phunk Junkeez and Illegal Substance mine the same material. The latter’s a group of Phoenix youngsters whose self-titled debut leads with the track “Let’s Get Fucked Up.” The Phunk Junkeez, meanwhile, have been tearing up stages since the Illegal Substance crew was still in grade school. But the sentiment…
