Club Congress in Tucson is an intimate room with good acoustics that books important bands on a regular basis. For example, the Congress was one of the few places in the U.S. last year where Frank Black played before he went into the studio to record his new album, The…
I’d heard the stories about Mason Jar owner Franco Gagliano and his temperamental impersonation of Godzilla on coke (a shorter, squatter Godzilla, that is). But I didn’t believe them because I hadn’t experienced any firsthand. Now I do, because now I have. Here’s my story: It is Saturday night, February…
Tori Amos Boys for Pele (Atlantic) Kate Bush is the artist to whom Tori Amos is most often compared–usually in cynical accusations of aesthetic plagiarism and emotional fakery–but Jerry Lee Lewis makes a good, if not a better, parallel. Like Lewis, Amos is the rebellious, piano-playing child of a conservative…
Think the rock pantheon’s already overcrowded with mad musical geniuses, do you? Well, make way for England’s Joe Meek–the late, great Sixties record producer who merits an entire mental ward all for himself. Because he was highly eccentric and specialized in over-the-top production techniques, Meek is typically compared to his…
AC/DC Ballbreaker (AC/DC) AC/DC albums are about as interchangeable as Heinz Ketchup bottles on your grocer’s shelf, but you’d notice a quality-control problem right away if Heinz started making its condiment with the smelliest, most bruised tomatoes instock. And AC/DC screecher Brian Johnson has become onebad, battered tomato who’s been…
It’s one minute to sound check when Blort–a rather ugly converted airport shuttle bus that Chico, California’s Mother Hips call home on the road–scrapes the curb outside the Fillmore in San Francisco. It’s Friday night, the Hips are in town and the old room is sold out. Tim Bluhm, the…
Some nights I wonder why I even bother, and this is one of them. When the end is so obviously and rapidly approaching, what point is there in this? And by “this” I mean whatever you are doing right now, as I am writing this column. I don’t know how…
Kronos Quartet Kronos Released: 1985-1995 (Nonesuch) After ten years of forcing the issue, the relentlessly eclectic Kronos Quartet can safely consider itself the hippest, baddest, most adventurous and unsettling string quartet in classical music. Which isn’t saying much. After all, the competition has been minimal. Most other string quartets are…
By David Holthouse Various artists Exile on Cameron Harper Street (Epiphany) Exile on Cameron Harper Street–an ambitious compilation of Arizona bands produced by Planet magazine and (irony of ironies) released just before that publication folded onJanuary 17–is well worth the $10 asking price, if only for historical value. Ten months…
This interview, conducted by Bob Mack, is excerpted with permission from the Beastie Boys’ ‘zine Grand Royal. You remember the “Thrilla in Manila”? The third and final superfight between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier? Well, what follows is more like the “Illa in Vanilla,” the worst, wettest, whitest exchange between…
“The worst thing about this whole Ice Cube thing,” says Cypress Hill rapper Louis “B-Real” Freese, “is that if this was back in the day, I would have taken care of him already.” A few definitions to clarify: “This whole Ice Cube thing” refers to Real’s recent accusation that fellow…
Mr. Mirainga Mr. Mirainga (Way Cool Records) Mamba-punk? Samba-core? That’s how the PR folks at Way Cool describe their label’s latest artistic acquisition. Considering that the mamba is a poisonous tree snake from Africa, it’s safe to assume they meant “mambo.” But that doesn’t really make sense, either, given that…
The Smithereens Attack of the Smithereens (Capitol) The same day Capitol issued its much-ballyhooed first installment of The Beatles Anthology, it also put out a cache of rare, unreleased Smithereens recordings. But unlike Anthology, which has the Beatles paying tribute to rock pioneers with covers of Chuck Berry, and the…
Peach Springs, Arizona, can be found where old Route 66 swings through the southern tip of the 993,000-acre Hualapai Indian reservation. The burg was originally a resting spot for railroad workers. Now, it’s a collection of several dozen prefab houses and dirt roads. When the wind howls through Peach Springs,…
Nestled within this year’s list of nominees for the Chicago-based Blues Foundation’s annual W.C. Handy Awards–which most blues artists and their industry kin rightly lend at least as much weight as the Grammys–is an item with a sharp local kick. You’ll find it in your program under category 19, “Traditional…
The life expectancy of the average hip-hop group is comparable to that of the average housefly. Have a smash one year, and you’d better have a smash the next, or you’ll wind up as extinct as the dodo. Sure, a few rhymers (such as Queen Latifah) have beaten this death…
Boss Hog Boss Hog (DGC) It’s hard not to think of Boss Hog as the Mrs. Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Not only is the Hog led by Cristina Martinez–Spencer’s wife and fellow Pussy Galore alum–but Spencer himself plays guitar and shares vocals in the band. Barely even a side project,…
The Bad News: Despite KUKQ’s business-asusual broadcasting, the indie-rock AMenclave will cease to exist sometime Monday–the third and, evidently, final time the financially strapped station has folded since it signed on in 1989. The Good News: There really isn’t any. The Cause of Death: What else? Money. Sandusky Newspapers, a…
Ian MacKaye is a man who likes to get to the point, so here it is: MacKaye was one of the primary architects of punk rock in America. The British invasion pulled stateside rock ‘n’ roll out of a creative morass in the early ’60s. MacKaye–son of a U.S. senator…
Alice in Chains Alice in Chains (Columbia) Alice in Chains’ new, eponymous album would make a perfect soundtrack to one of Hieronymous Bosch’s paintings of hell–it’s a claustrophobic, harrowing piece of work that is conversely beautiful and uplifting in the most unexpected of moments. Like its predecessor LP, Dirt, and…
The late Frank Zappa was both paradoxical and perverse: As a musician, he was influenced primarily by the late-19th-century ideas of composers such as Stravinsky and Varese, yet most casual listeners will probably remember him as a quintessential ’60s- and ’70s-style rock ‘n’ roll guitar strangler. He was an instinctual…
The unofficial bio for the Chimeras has all the stereotypical ingredients of a rock ‘n’ roll miniseries: alcoholism, drug addiction and rehab, chronic depression and suicide. It’s not a happy tale, but after nearly four years in development, the plot line finally seems to be aligning with what the band…
