Music

BR5-49’s recent Grammy nomination for Best Performance by a Duo or Group could be considered a fluke. If it weren’t for the producers of the 1999 film Happy, Texas, who included the group’s “Honky Tonk Song” on its soundtrack, the cut — which originally appeared on the band’s 1996 self-titled…

You wouldn’t be to blame if you avoided Travis simply because it’s the latest in a long line of U.K. bands being hyped as the “next big thing.” Yeah, yeah, it was a No. 1 in Britain, big deal. But you’d be missing out on one of the best records…

I know, I know. . . . You’ve already been spotted hanging around emo chat rooms, wringing your hands (mouse?) over your favorite band being dropped, and unceremoniously so, by Warner Bros. Just seeing the words Sense Field on this page is enough to make you burst out in tears…

The Reverend Horton Heat is one of those guys who always seem to fill a room. The indomitable swagger, slicked-back hair, stylish threads and ubiquitous highball in hand all combine to inflate the man to mythic, or perhaps semireligious, proportions. But his larger-than-life persona is a product of fate. Born…

There’s a sticker circulating through the Valley that most sharp-eyed music fans will have seen. It’s a black-and-white line-art photo of a face at a microphone emblazoned with the motto, “Punk is whatever we made it to be.” Despite the teeny-bop conception of punk rock as an aggro-jockish excuse to…

There are more people outside the club than in it. Dozens of them loiter about as they try to catch a whiff of what’s cooking behind those closed doors. They lean against the outside walls, putting their ears to the bricks to hear just a little of what’s going on…

For local-music aficionados, there always seem to be a few trends without explanation, questions that go inexplicably unanswered. One that’s vexed most observers in recent years is the lack of capable (or even willing) exponents of the much-maligned alt-country genre. For a city with a rich history of country and…

“What came first, the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable or was I miserable because I listened to music? Do all these records turn you into a melancholy person?” So asks John Cusack, as Rob, in the opening dialogue of the film High…

For Jim Louvau, the 22-year-old lead singer for glam rock quintet Victims in Ecstacy, the transformation from civilian to superstar is a daylong event. Shunning standard rock ‘n’ roll duds — “wife-beaters, backward baseball caps and wallet chains” — Louvau is committed to a rigorous dress code. It’s just before…

One doesn’t approach the annual South by Southwest music festival like an average bout of nightclubbing. Music writers train weeks for this cacophonous conference, rigorously avoiding all kinds of music so that their hearing will be in fine fettle for a beat surrender to the senses. Otherwise they could overload…

The Flaming Lips saga has been told and retold an endless number of times. In fact, this very publication recounted it to a reasonable degree last year (“Unconsciously Brilliant,” October 28) in a review of the group’s Restless Records retrospective 1984-1990. In that article, yours truly suggested that the Lips’…

“I like trying to remain mysterious,” says Michael Schwartz, whose turntablist nom de plume is Mix Master Mike. “It’s like hitting and running — hit the spot, then go home and work on the formula until my next call comes, and I get a chance to show people real hip-hop…

A call to his new label, Artimus records in New York, informed me that Warren Zevon “is on the road but he’s on the list to call you. It just depends on what kind of mood he’s in.” I knew the call wouldn’t come. I can respect a songwriter who…

It’s easy to pooh-pooh white blues singers. The strained sounds of earnest dilettantes with their paler shades of blue used to be one of music’s more annoying clichés. And though you still can find artificial Negroes wailing about things like levees and deltas at the occasional suburban sports bar, that…

Nestled comfortably in the dining room-cum-mixing studio of his south Scottsdale house, surrounded by walls upon walls of empirically filed (by beats per minute) records, local über-DJ Z-Trip is suddenly agitated. Midway through an interview set to coincide with the introduction of his new “Z-Trip Presents Funky Cornbread” night at…

Five years can seem a long time for anyone, and as the saying goes, that’s a lifetime in rock ‘n’ roll. Such was the case with Tucson’s Rich Hopkins, who debuted upon the scene in 1988 with his band the Sidewinders and their first album Cuacha!. With the Sidewinders, Hopkins…

A man in his 30s sits down to write his autobiography. He knows that doing so is a rather silly proposition. After all, what does a man in his 30s know? What has he lived through worth retelling? What experiences can he recount, what knowledge can he impart, that others…

Franco Gagliano, if you don’t know the name, is one of the most storied club owners in the Valley. And his bar, the Mason Jar, one of its most storied clubs. The man built the place — and its history — from years of solid work and what some might…