The weird and wild Elephant Man’s new record Good 2 Go seems neither overly wild nor especially weird as 2004 begins. Blame Missy Elliott and a gaggle of Southern pop-rappers for that. Born O’Neil Bryan, the 29-year-old Elephant Man has been a creative force in the Jamaican dance-hall underground for…
Many will recognize Viggo Mortensen as the intrepid, benevolent Aragorn from the cinematic adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, in particular The Return of the King. Mortensen is a delightful rarity — poet, painter, publisher, photographer — a major league movie star who also happens to be an underground…
Henry Rollins’ press notes call him a renaissance man — and why not? He’s a bandleader and champion screamer who fronted one of the greatest Los Angeles punk bands of all time, Black Flag, and later the Rollins Band. He’s an actor, most recently seen in Bad Boys II, and…
“Here, put this on.” Nearly everyone you met in 2003 came with a personal soundtrack. From the little middle school “sevvie” in your car pool who carried a personal mix CD in her backpack to the businessman in front of you at the ATM playing Dido just a little too…
Calexico’s 2003 album Feast of Wire is a gem, a smidgen more accessible than the Tucson band’s earlier full-lengthers and stellar from start to finish. The band’s versatility continues to amaze. Their default setting — mariachi-infused country-rock with touches of jazz — is unusual enough, but what really astonishes is…
Live music in downtown Tempe doesn’t get much better than a Phunk Junkeez show at the Bash on Ash. But after one last performance December 27, the veteran rap-rock fusion band will be scrambling for a new place to play. The Bash on Ash, the 600-person-capacity downtown Tempe club that…
What does it say about the state of beat production in 2003 that as the Top 40 grows weirder (Kelis’ “Milkshake,” anyone?), songs that used to pass for normal are the rage of the underground? You know it’s a topsy-turvy pop land we live in when the alternative wears the…
How one feels about Diamanda Galás depends largely on how one feels about the term “serious art.” We Americans don’t have much use for the stuff usually; nor does anyone else, really, though college students who spend a semester in continental Europe tend to return with the idea that everyone…
The concept for this collection is dubious on paper — Christmas classics refurbished by electronic producers, who, when given too long a leash, can ruin just about any timeless favorite. Christmas Remixed, though, while something of a mixed bag, has enough redeeming moments to make it a suitable stocking stuffer…
Contemporary R&B singers can be divided evenly into two camps: the style-over-substance troupe, who believe in futuristic production tricks and outré hairdos; and the neo-soul crew, who cling to classical vocal dexterity and the warm ooze of the Fender Rhodes electric piano. Alternately, you could divide the field another way…
The common wisdom regarding the Beatles’ final record, Let It Be — which was released in 1970 to a dispirited public and critical response — is that it was tarted up and defiled by the evil pop producer Phil Spector, who was called in to remix the album after the…
Memo to Ice Cube, Mack 10 and WC, the trio known as Westside Connection: All major combat operations have ceased. Sure, that would be a debatable point in the so-called war on terror. But on the East Coast-West Coast, O.G.-No G, and pimps and ho’s fronts, Westside is throwin’ down…
When Pantera front man Phil Anselmo blasted Metallica for making safe music, he wasn’t just talking shit. Unexcited at the prospect of sullying his band’s legacy with an overly polished piece of mega-metal, he pulled the plug on his multiplatinum act, choosing instead to focus on his least commercial major…
The power-pop quartet Weezer has inspired a new generation of unassuming, garage-dwelling would-be rock stars. In fact, members of young Valley rock bands — we’re talking the 16- to 23-year-olds here — regularly cite the band and its giddy, sincere songwriting as primary influences. “They’re just cult icons. They came…
The Crystal Method has been cranking out goat-slaying electronic breaks since 1994. Like Underworld, the Chemical Brothers, Fatboy Slim and a handful of other electronic musicians, partners Ken Jordan and Scott Kirkland have a signature sound that will have you shaking your ass whether you hear it at a rave,…
No big shock here — Christmas music is about as played out as Tickle Me Elmo. It’s the unavoidable scourge of the season — oh come all ye faithful, because we’ve got you by the boot strings and you can’t escape. Holiday music is piped in through nearly every working…
Billy Bragg’s slashing stridency and plain old passion seem like an ideal pill for fearful and politically frustrating times such as these. In the early 1980s, with his lonely Stratocaster and sometimes guileless Cockney wobble, the British neo-folkie transcended his acute Anglocentrism with anger, melancholy and whimsy, all as literate…
Death metal is a victim of its own PR. Nearly every band touts itself as the most brutal, the most devastating, the most over-the-top thing to come down the pike since the Spanish Inquisition. A certain amount of preaching to an already extant choir is understandable, of course, but there’s…
To the modern ear, “boogie-woogie” sounds pretty stupid. You can trace the origin of the term back a century, to the days when the meaning of the term depended on where you said it. In pockets of black culture, it could mean a racy dance, an act of adultery, or…
Hoist up the Jack Daniel’s, unearth the buttless chaps and red bandanna and stay home and watch these DVDs, dude! Can’t wear that shit outside. It’s not 1988 anymore. But, back in the day, during glam metal’s glory years, the world was safe for aspiring rock ‘n’ roll queenies. Notable…
For a band like Denver’s DeVotchKa, whose enigmatic sound is rarely articulated fairly in print, live gigs offer a chance to provide at least an intimation to virgin audiences. Yet by the time DeVotchKa’s surging assault of Slavic and Spanish styles — via cello, trumpet, violin, accordion and raging guitar…
For the rest of us, language flows on a nonlinear yet generally straightforward neural pathway before it reaches our tongues, picking up a few personal significances and even trace bits of wit — if we’re lucky. Every so often, though, a few people receive Valis-like transmissions from somewhere, which act…
