Here’s a snatch of overheard conversation, circa 1983, taking place inside a Greenwich Village record store on Bleecker Street called The Golden Disc. At the counter, two men are quietly conferring like doctors around a malignant x-ray. The shopkeeper is holding the sleeve of XTC’s latest import single, “Wonderland,” now…
In the long line of limey trailblazers that couldn’t move unit one stateside, the Stone Roses at least proved themselves predecessors to navel-gazing U.K. teen-a-ramas like the Charlatans, Ocean Colour Scene and the vaguely remarkable Primal Scream, Manics and Oasis. On Brit shores, the Roses’ ’89 self-titled debut was considered…
If you polled a Family Feud studio audience for “reasons people become musicians,” answers like “sex,” “drugs,” “fame,” “money” and even (yawn) “the music” would all be greeted with dinging bells and a deep tongue kiss from Richard Dawson. Just as surely, Greg Sage’s reason, “the appearance of the grooves…
Quarter to five on Sunday afternoon and still in bed. Torn between a desire to catch up on my REM sleep and flicking back and forth from the Lakers’ playoff game and a presentation of The Shining — a Nicholson double bill. So profound was my lethargy that I actually…
It takes an unusually patient hip-hop enthusiast to be a Blackalicious fan. Collectors of the Oakland (by way of Sacramento and Davis, California) twosome’s product have had some serious drought years to deal with, getting through the lean times by putting stubborn faith in the maxim “quality over quantity.” Over…
“Reggie and the Full Effect Promotional Copy was never intended to be released. We have only an unidentified person to thank for the recovery of the master tapes.” So reads the succinct liner notes on the reverse of Promotional Copy’s cover. Every great, posthumously bemoaned band needs a rock ‘n’…
“We got a whole lot more ass coming up,” chirps the frat-perky host who’s standing on some sunny South Florida beach. All around him is a seemingly endless cache of fab booty, the natural-bodied kind romanticized in travel brochures with pictures of Mozambique beaches or any one of John Stagliano’s…
Like many roots-oriented idioms, the parameters of what is considered “true” reggae music are often dictated by stringent dogma. It’s a sort of musical fascism that frequently ostracizes bands that don’t toe the strict ganja party line. Unfortunately, such narrow dictates usually result in groups that either come off like…
Robert Schneider takes the small stage at Austin’s Waterloo Records looking as if he’s just wrapped up a brisk game of Frisbee golf, a shaggy beard twice as long as his thinning thatch of hair almost obscuring his face, a pair of flip-flops on his feet. Tuning up his beat-up…
Jangly, quickly strummed, hard-edged guitar lines and popping bass riffs shuck and jive over stuttering, nearly danceable beats in the song “Buckle Down,” off the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ eponymously titled 1984 debut. The voice of lead singer Anthony Kiedis is distinct: “Hah/On the ice/No holdin’/My soul/I want men/Not mice.”…
She was a junkie when I married her. I knew this. But I was sure I could fix her. We were kids, really, why else would a beerswill and a junkie marry? We shared an apartment in Hollywood on the top floor that offered a little view of the town…
In place of a bio, Elliott Smith’s press kit features two documents: a time line of important events and a selection of his own sound bites from articles written about him. This much we know about Smith: He moved to Portland at age 14, made his first solo album in…
Christianity and rock ‘n’ roll have never been comfortable bedfellows. Though attempts to reconcile the two have been made repeatedly over the years, no act has successfully bridged the gap between Christian and secular music. There’s a long list of those that have tried, but, whether it’s Stryper or Jars…
Singer-guitarist Chan (pronounced Shawn) Marshall, who records under the alias Cat Power, didn’t set out to become a rock star. In fact, it was by accident that she got her first gig at New York’s infamous CBGB. At the time, a friend had booked her to play a small show…
Sure, reading about music is no substitute for listening, but probably only a music book is going to show the typical Rolling Stones fan how Jimmy Reed and Muddy Waters were the group’s daddies. Most likely it will be a Miles Davis bio that explains to a recent jazz convert…
“I’m not here trying to sell millions of copies of records,” says Knot Known Records president and sole full-time employee Chris Richardson. He says this between bites of a roast chicken sandwich at a Mill Avenue eatery staffed with nervous waiters and waitresses who look like next year’s crop of…
“I’m not really that sick,” says Bruce Connole, coughing as he shuffles through his east-side apartment. While the singer was forced to cancel a recent gig with his bluegrass side project, the Pearl Chuckers, because of a cold, the spring sniffles have been the last thing on the mind of…
As various-artist-album concepts go, this one is pretty unique. Rather than celebrate one artist, this one praises an interstate. You know it, you love it, you can’t get to work without it — ladies and gentlemen, I give you I-10! You might think the assembled artists would opt to take…
Who could have imagined in 1969 that Joni Mitchell, an emblematic figure of the “Woodstock” generation, would ever try to walk in the shoes of the Chairman of the Board, an icon who identified more with Nixon than with naked mud splashing? Yet here she is in the year 2000…
Jimmy Winston’s mum must be proud. Keyboardist for the Small Faces’ first two singles, he was booted out before he got to appear on any album covers. Now, 35 years later, he finally gets to flash his surly mug, albeit on a diminished four-and-three-quarter-inch Guinness coaster of a cover. Not…
No one told Bob Nanna that trying to watch 365 movies in a year was a good idea. In fact, most of his friends attempted to talk him out of it by trying to lure him out of the house and the theaters to do something — anything — else…
Let’s be frugal. Why sell your own body to science for CD money when you can sell someone else’s, especially when the scumbag probably wasn’t a jazz or blues fan anyway? Inclined to feel pangs of guilt over digging up graves, Mr./Miss Sensitive? Then trek down to New Orleans, where…
