Magnus Sveningsson says the Cardigans aren’t as happy, happy, joy, joy as they sound. “I hope we fool listeners to think we only play happy songs,” says the bass player and chief lyricist for the fluffy pop band from Sweden. “I hope people like the chorus, but the third or…
Vanessa Daou Slow to Burn (MCA) Virgin Island jazz-pop/dance diva Vanessa Daou and her producer/instrumentalist husband Peter Daou earned the favorable notice of dance-club feminists in 1994 with Zipless, an album that set the poetry and occasionally the voice of Erica Jong to music (the Fear of Flying author is…
For a company president, Superchunk front man Mac McCaughan starts work late. It’s 11 a.m. in North Carolina by the time he slides into the Chapel Hill offices of his label, Merge, for an interview. McCaughan sounds relaxed and amiable on the phone, and with good reason. Besides recently releasing…
“Welcome to the Nappy Jungle.” Black Moon Graffiti vocalist Napoleon “Leo” Powell divides the air with his hand, magician style, and whisks open the door to his Tucson home. From the emerald abundance of plant life inside, it’s clear where the “jungle” comes from, but what’s up with “nappy”? Powell…
“Once you pose naked on a stage, you can do anything in front of a crowd,” says blues mama and ex-porn queen Candye Kane. “Every night I hit the bandstand, I do my show from the perspective of a disenfranchised, fat, X-rated star in a skinny world where sex is…
Up from the ceaselessly rumbling, garbage-truck-choked avenues of Brooklyn, New York; spawned in the midnight blackness of iron-latticed parkscapes in the ultimate gothic city; falling sonically somewhere between Sisters of Mercy, Black Sabbath and the Cocteau Twins, comes Type O Negative. Garbage trucks? Hold that thought. Over its four-album career,…
Marilyn Manson’s children of the scorn bustled about their suburban bedrooms early in the evening of Friday, January 24, applying makeup and fish net in prep for the pop-industrial-shock artist’s first Valley concert since his new recording, Antichrist Superstar, was released last October and went insta-platinum. Then they flocked by…
Despite the bombardment of mediocre Elvis impersonators, the world still largely acknowledges that the Elvis Presley who toppled off his porcelain throne 20 years ago is the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll. But now that longtime Elvis handler Colonel Tom Parker has kicked the bucket–Parker died of a stroke January…
Supersuckers Nita’s Hideaway January 21, 1997 “Welcome to the rock show,” Supersuckers singer/spokesman Eddie Spaghetti exhorted a packed house from behind his “rock-star shades.” Looking a lot like Andy Kaufman in a cowboy hat, Spaghetti kept the absurdity level high throughout his band’s roller-coaster set of hillbilly hard-core. “Here’s a…
Bjork Telegraph (Elektra) Bjork’s the fairy queen of post-rock pop, and on Telegraph, several of the finest producers and DJs in the European club, underground dance and hip-hop scenes attend to her at court. The former Sugarcube’s third solo release is mostly remixes of material from her second, Post. Nonetheless,…
Q: What did the snail say on the turtle’s back? A: “Wheeeeeee!” If you were at Hollywood Alley last Saturday night (January 18), you probably heard Les Payne Project guitarist James Karnes tell that one. I was, and I did. And I’m glad for it, because I also heard Karnes…
The Louvin Brothers were country music’s best-ever brother team, and when they titled their greatest album Tragic Songs of Life, they weren’t kidding around. Over the course of the recording, a woman wanders “this wide world all over,” leaving her abandoned lover to contemplate suicide; a man, rich beyond his…
Shaquille O’Neal You Can’t Stop the Reign (T.W.IsM.) It took $120 million to persuade Shaquille O’Neal to apply himself on a basketball court (free-throw percentage as of this writing: 46 percent). How much of himself can he be expected to commit to a rap album that returns but a fraction…
Caroline Whisnant is an attractive woman. Tall, well-proportioned, nice smile. Easy on the eyes, as it were. Sexist statements? Not when you consider that Whisnant performs opera and makes a career of playing beautiful, alluring women in various stages of duress. The soprano appeared as Freia, the Goddess of Youth…
Last summer, blues guitarist Jono Manson passed through Tempe on a national tour. He was booked into Gibson’s, but arrived to find his gig had been bumped to Balboa Cafe, a much smaller venue on the other side of Hayden Square. Between sets, Manson stepped outside for a smoke and…
So you gotta ask yourself–here are two bands, both clones of the Boogie Knights, who are managed by the BK’s firm, Perfect World, and use the same keyboard samples, play the same song selections (what’s the fascination with “Copacabana” anyway?) and buy their wigs from the same thrift shops. So…
Music Editor’s Note–This week I turn over Coda to local hip-hop impresario Mr. P-Body Scott, who observes that some of the urban club patrons who complain about club closings are the same ones contributing to the negativity surrounding hip-hop/R&B events. The characters in his time line are fictional, and any…
Music and language. Tracks and lyrics. Beats and rhymes. East Coast. Queensbridge, motherfucker–the brutal public-housing projects in Long Island City where the fundamentals of hip-hop never fell out of flavor. The Juice Crew’s Marley Marl and MC Shan immortalized “The Bridge” with their 1986 cut of the same name. But…
Johnny Cash Unchained (American Recordings) Just when his myth was in danger of being destroyed by too many mediocre albums–and too many wonderful albums underpublicized by uncaring labels and ignored by country radio–Johnny Cash was rescued from the country-music trash heap and restored to the sort of honorary status afforded…
Smokin’ Joe Kubek and his band have terrific timing. Although Kubek and singer Bnois King are music-biz vets, their first album appeared only five years ago–just in time to surf the new wave of interest in blues. “Thank God,” Kubek says from his Dallas home. “Several years ago, I was…
On New Year’s Eve, Deon Foreman and a sport-utility-vehicle load of fellow Tempe ravers arrived at the Grand Olympic Auditorium near downtown Los Angeles about an hour before midnight. Shit was hectic. “There were cops on the freeway trying to block the auditorium exit, and looking down you could see…
Wilco Being There (Reprise Records) The cynics who would dismiss rock ‘n’ roll–the formula kind, the guitar-vocals-bass-drum kind, the kind Chuck Berry created and the Beatles and Brian Wilson made perfect–look instead toward a rave new world; they write off rock as a dead form to be discarded like a…
