Albums like Pleasure Forever’s eponymous release make me think of that great Charlie Parker quote, the one about how there are only two kinds of music: Good and Bad. By which I mean that Pleasure Forever is a genre-resistant beast that works more often than it doesn’t, but having said…
Summer’s here and the time is right for . . . well, not much, seeing as how there’s precious little on the horizon worth anticipating except for maybe the new Joe Stummer LP. Still, that release is a few weeks away. In the meantime, here are a handful of musical…
If the Chemical Brothers represent dance music at its most intelligent — and Daft Punk represents the genre’s cheesy, crowd-pleasing appeal — then Basement Jaxx most assuredly offers the art form at its emotional, sensual, visceral best. Remedy, the U.K. duo’s debut after years of DJing in London, flowed cohesively…
Big in Japan is either a name you own, or one that comes back to bite you in the ass later — particularly if your band’s a power-punk trio in an era when Green Day is now being touted as the “grandfathers” of anything. Big in Japan’s debut, Destroy the…
Most musicians like to shroud themselves in mystery. Cast themselves as enigmas, riddles never meant to be solved. It’s an accepted part of the marketing process these days. That somehow a bit of carefully calculated inscrutability will enhance the lure of the product. For journalists, deconstructing those fiercely guarded walls,…
On contemporary maps, Teoc, Mississippi, rests as far off the path as it did in the twilight years of the 19th century. Located almost exactly between Texarkana, Arkansas, and Birmingham, Alabama, Teoc lies several miles from the nearest U.S. Route. And there wasn’t a single paved road anywhere near it…
On a wickedly humid afternoon in late June, singer/songwriter Billy Sedlmayr sits in the sunken room of his barrio bungalow, cursing to the heavens. He’s battling demons and not faring too well. The bestial horrors lurking in the narrow margins between shadow and darkness move too quickly for him, and…
While last week’s Bash & Pop took great pains to mention the impending concert arrivals of music legends Lee Hazlewood (July 9 at the Rhythm Room) and Joe Strummer (October 18 at the Cajun House) we neglected to note perhaps the most anticipated upcoming Valley gig, that of an August…
My Morning Jacket is sort of like a Louisville Ween: Playful but heartfelt, artsy but unpretentious, and capable of shelving bizarro freak-tunes alongside evocative and nostalgic songs. It’s a toss-up as to how 22-year-old Jim James, the Neil Young-channeling singer and songwriter for MMJ, would take to that comparison, but…
As it turns out, Tricky’s been making records even he hates — contract-killers, he might call them, if not audience-killers in the process. (Everything since 1995’s Maxinquaye has been one “fuck-off” record after another, he explains, as in: “Fuck off, I’m not giving people what they want,” he offers in…
“Oh, man, don’t ask me. I don’t know where the fuck we’re headed next. We had plans to go off someplace else on the next part of the actual tour, but our cuckoo label decided to send us out to play for some distributors’ thing . . . in Washington?…
Mark Eitzel sits at a long table in a conference room, his trademark short-brimmed hat in front of him. He’s taking part in a panel on new technology issues at the CMJ Change Music Festival with a number of other artists, including Creeper Lagoon’s Sharky Laguana, the Mountain Goats’ John…
Given rock’s smutty half-century, it’s a wonder that The Mammoth Book of Sex, Drugs & Rock ‘n’ Roll (Carroll and Graf), edited by Jim Driver, is only 600 pages long. Fortunately, the British collection passes on the well-known shock fodder by stateside writers and shovels up a pile of lesser-known…
There are ominous rumblings emerging from singer Robin Wilson’s much-maligned Gas Giants camp. The latest bit of info more or less confirms long-circulating rumors that the group has all but called it quits. According to Wilson, the band is on an “indefinite hiatus,” but it appears that may be an…
Memorial Day, 2001. Hung over. Dive-bombers unload on the insides of your skull. You are sitting on your couch appreciating little, and doing less. It is not yet noon and already a thin layer of sweat covers your body. Your face stings of bursting blood vessels. The agonizing knob on…
In the lengthy liner notes that introduce the new three-disc collection Thelonious Monk: The Columbia Years, jazz pundit Peter Keepnews is oddly apologetic about the music included in the anthology, at one point confessing that, among his fellow critics, “the notion has taken hold that, all things considered, maybe this…
Best band ever, if only for turning “. . . Baby One More Time” into the most poignant ballad of 2000; best band ever, if only for making “Killer Queen” live up to its billing. Yes, Travis is the world’s most astute and least finicky cover band — it renders…
The packaging for the rerelease of this 1982 West Berlin concert is designed to distract you from the fact that the show was staged in support of Trans, the album where Neil Young’s obsession for Devo spilled into Kraftwerk and Klaus Naomi territory. But the After the Gold Rush-era portrait…
When Billy Joe Shaver gives directions to his modest house on the outskirts of Waco, Texas, he says to disregard the handwritten sign on his front door. “Please do not disturb I haven’t slept in two days,” it says. “That’s just so some ol’ drunks don’t come by at 5…
It’s a late Friday night at Modified, the tiny art/performance space on Roosevelt Street in downtown Phoenix, and everything is going to hell. Youthful noisemakers Thee Apologies, who come on like a bunch of hyperactive teenagers playing in the basement while their parents are on vacation, are forgetting words and…
Meet Paque, Daisy and Stella, a trio of trend-trawling, Bananarama-obsessed Gen Y’ers from the Phoenix ‘burbs whose lives are dedicated to the quest for fame and celebrity. Never mind that these girls possess zero talent or the aptitude to develop same, they have that need to “make it.” They simply…
