Love letters from the past: Stuffed inside the LP sleeve of my precious, battered copy of Eli and the Thirteenth Confession — the 1968 debut from a young New York singer-songwriter whom Columbia Records impresario Clive Davis had signed practically as she was walking offstage following a controversial performance at…
Back when electronica was the next big thing — around the time the only things that needed counting in Florida were dead German tourists — Norman Cook was just another washed-up pop musician. Little wonder the former member of the Housemartins and Beats International decided an identity change was in…
Embarrassingly gifted multi-instrumentalist Powell cut his teeth working with Todd Rundgren during the ’80s before going solo, landing for a spell on Mercury Records but never quite finding his “fit.” Given his outlook — a full plate of hook-drenched power pop with a touch of lush classic rock on the…
Why is the Midwest considered the bastion of normalcy? Think about it — all that exposure to Bible Belters and the so-called moral majority is bound to warp anyone’s mind. Not only is America’s heartland a favorite breeding ground for serial killers, but creative types bloom there, too. Weirdos born…
It ought to be one of those “Where were you when?” questions. You know, like “Where were you when Kennedy was shot?” “Where were you when the Bronco chase was under way?” So, “Where were you when you heard the Gaza Strippers for the first time?” Well, where were ya,…
There’s an old saying: Pioneers take the arrows, settlers get the land. “Yeah, I’ve taken a few arrows,” says Joe Jackson, speaking by phone from New York, the city he has called home for more than 15 years and which serves as the central framework for his new album, Night…
Looking back on it now, the film roles Corey Feldman played in the late ’80s and early ’90s might have been some kind of predictor of the trouble he was to face in the years ahead: He played the attention-seeking cutup in The Goonies, the volatile, ear-mangled son of a…
Done up in the style of a ’50s-era movie poster, all flat paint and a grab bag of typescript, the cover of this boxed set says all that needs to be said. There’s a smiling guitarist looking over a nighttime scene, palm trees, a silhouetted couple leaning in a loose…
Breakestra is a funk band that Bay Area hip-hop luminary Peanut Butter Wolf discovered playing in an L.A. club and promptly signed to his Stones Throw label. What piqued Wolf’s ears was not only the overwhelming tightness of the players and the James Brown-esque barks of the singer, but their…
The problem with many of the pioneers of avant-garde jazz was that they approached their music with such grave pretentiousness that no one could mistake it for anything but lofty art. What made Ornette Coleman’s first groundbreaking albums so striking was they sparkled with the sound of sheer talent thumbing…
While listening to Live on the Sunset Strip — a 1982 performance in which Richard Pryor discusses his first trip to Africa, his 180-degree turnaround on his formerly cavalier use of the word “nigger,” his visit to an Arizona prison while filming Stir Crazy with Gene Wilder, and the infamous…
Let’s say, for the purposes of this article, that’s it’s 3:30 in the morning. Only, it’s really 4:30 because the clock in your car is an hour slow. Time is of little consequence anyway. What do minutes matter when you’re sick with doubt and doubled over by the weight of…
First things first: Damien Jurado is a big guy. He’s wide and he’s tall, and if he hadn’t spent his teenage years listening to punk rock, he probably would have made someone a damn fine linebacker. Second, Damien Jurado talks like someone in a hurry. Sentences escape his mouth at…
Ken Burns apologizes for his “filibustering,” but it doesn’t stop him from talking and talking until the original question becomes a faint memory in the wake of an answer that goes on and on. But perhaps as much is to be expected from Burns, the documentarian whose films begin as…
Steve Allen is dead. I don’t think any of us has a problem with that.People who’ve lived long, prosperous and productive lives are entitled to long, uninterrupted stretches of inactivity, punctuated by blissful nada. And the spectacle-sporting comedian, who rose to prominence during the days of live television, certainly knew…
Dr. Octagon is dead. Been dead for almost four years now. The all-star project was great during its brief life span — Kool Keith’s pornographic science-fiction delusions, Dan the Automator’s way, way left-field beatsmithing and Q-Bert’s playful scratch routines were just what the dour hip-hop scene needed at the time…
The boxed set, that most ubiquitous and painstakingly completist of modern-day music anthologies, can be a force for good or ill. The form has given us both utter delights like John Coltrane’s 16-disc The Prestige Recordings and utterly useless dreck like (why? why?) Who Was That Masked Man?, a five-CD,…
When Sub Pop Records announced earlier this year it was releasing a tribute to Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska — the one he recorded in his bedroom, the one on which he sounded like Bruce Springsteen doing Bob Dylan doing Woody Guthrie doing Bruce Springsteen — it sounded like a…
Starting an indie label these days is ludicrously simple. All you need is a modest stash of cash (CDs are dirt cheap to manufacture), a smidgen of promotional savvy (two hints: Do hook up with an established independent publicist who’s into the music you’re flogging; and don’t send promo discs…
Whatever your opinion of Moonshine Records and its amazing tendency to fill store racks with a procession of Keoki mixes and comps inevitably featuring Cirrus, the label has definitely helped to bring electronic music to America’s attention. Over the past few years, Moonshine has also provided a massive boost to…
Greil Marcus is a rock-critic legend. A graduate of the late-’60s Berkeley scene, Marcus began his rock and social criticism with then-fledgling Rolling Stone magazine and quickly became notable for his highbrow style and brainy approach. His obvious talent and his professorial passion for dissecting rock ‘n’ roll had an…
In the bloated pantheon of sensitive-boy rock, with all its journal scribbling and conspicuous self-pity, it’s an accomplishment to rise above simple mediocrity — something that stellar virtuosos like Jonah Matranga (onelinedrawing) and Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes) do effortlessly, while Kind of Like Spitting’s Ben Barnett struggles and stumbles upon…
