The only negative thing I can say about Joe Myers’ new release is that you might get splinters from it. The guitarist has gone all out with the packaging of Sonoran Snake Lady, creating a roughly hewn wooden box for his second CD to live in. And before you begin…
By now, almost everyone has seen those nauseating beer commercials. They feature twentysomething slackers with thirtysomething memory banks rattling off their favorite TV shows, cultural artifacts and popular music from the Sixties and Seventies, with nary a receding hairline or beer gut in sight. The worst one to date offers…
Until the beginning of this summer, Jack Logan was one of the best-kept secrets in the history of rock n’ roll. He and his musical cohorts (he calls them his “enablers”) had been churning out songs in rural Georgia for years, to little notice and no acclaim. Now, though, an…
Felix Cavaliere remembers it vividly. One day in early 1966, he was walking down Madison Avenue in Manhattan and first heard the Young Rascals on radio. “Somebody had a transistor radio and told us that Cousin Brucie, who at that time was the disc jockey in New York, was going…
In 1963, in Cardiff, Wales, there was a music store named Barrett’s of Manchester, located just down the road from the Capitol Theatre. One day in late May, the biggest band in Britain stopped there to play, and the afternoon before the show, the manager of Barrett’s–no fool he–sent one…
Week after week, I spout off about what I like and don’t like here in this column, and, while it may be hard for the legions of Screed loyalists out there to comprehend, there are some who do not always agree with my opinions. Believe me, for every teeming mail…
Willy DeVille Backstreets of Desire (Forward) Since DeVille’s last effort, Tower Records stopped stocking vinyl, Doc Pomus passed away and John Cougar went Mellencamp. What hasn’t changed is DeVille’s voice (except it’s got a lot more phlegm in it now) and his overriding passion for Brill Building songwriting (he dedicated…
Wanna know what’s wrong with the CD single? Get a copy of Belly’s new CD maxi-single, Moon. If this were a vinyl 45 release, the A-side would be the group’s recent cover of Jimi Hendrix’s “Are You Experienced.” The snazzy take of Tom Jones’ “It’s Not Unusual” would be the…
Pablo Picasso once said, “The chief enemy of creativity is good taste.” Of course, Pablo never heard Cannibal Corpse. He never heard songs like “Fucked With a Knife,” “Stripped, Raped and Strangled” or “Force Fed Broken Glass,” and he’s no longer around to tell us whether good taste should perhaps…
Okay, folks, it’s that time once more. Get out your six-packs and handkerchiefs and prepare to get steeped in local color, but first this: You may want to check out the Smoking Popes, coming to us all the way from Chicago. If the band’s Get Fired CD is any indication,…
His nose has been broken seven times during frank confrontations with Everlast boxing gloves, and he’s rolled around in the waves on a deserted beach in the arms of a beautiful model and been well-paid for it. All for your viewing pleasure, of course, in a video for a song…
The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black Mason Jar June 19, 1994 Maybe it was when the topless woman with the purple body paint, blacked-out teeth and twisted fright wig stood on her head with her back to the audience and her legs spread, and a smaller, chubby girl painted orange…
Try as they might, the evil powers that control the recording industry haven’t yet been able to completely stamp out vinyl; there are still seven-inches aplenty filling the bins at your hipper Valley record stores (Stinkweeds, Eastside, Zia are a few). The short-playing discs are inexpensive to put out and…
It’s a Friday night in June on Tucson’s Fourth Avenue. The influx of University of Arizona summer-school students hasn’t yet begun, so the numerous watering holes that dot the street are playing host mostly to locals. This is the case at one shoebox of a bar called Trolley’s, where only…
It all started with a series of phone calls that never seemed to arrive when I was actually in the office. I’d return from a brief constitutional on the New Times Executive Tanning Deck, step into the chilled comfort of my chambers–kept at a regulation 56 degrees Fahrenheit, in tandem…
Have you ever wondered if there was a real Peggy Sue? A real Lovely Rita, Meter Maid? An actual Girl From Ipanema? Well, there isn’t. And now, joining this illustrious bevy of nonexistent beauties is Kim the Waitress, the heroine and namesake of Material Issue’s current hit. But that would…
In 1962, he mastered the fine, primitive art of banging out rhythms on coffee cans with a pair of Lincoln Logs. Soon after, he graduated to a toy Indian tom-tom, and by January 1968, he had himself a real–albeit secondhand–drum kit. Twenty-six years later, Dennis Diken is all grown up…
Had you walked into a local Tower Records store recently, made your way to the “Rock” section of the CD-listening stations, clamped on a pair of headphones and pressed the proper buttons, you could have heard the Latin Playboys’ self-titled debut. But what would you have heard? A weaving, lo-fi…
I could tell you about the time my friend John and I took the bus to Groucho Marx’s house in Beverly Hills, rang the doorbell and heard him tell someone, “Get rid of those kids.” We then went across the street to Morey Amsterdam’s place, where he answered the door…
Perhaps the event that most influenced Iris DeMent’s professional trajectory occurred before she was born. See, her father had been a fiddler–and a good one, too. Iris, the youngest of 14 children born to Patric and Flora Mae DeMent of the cotton-farming community of Paragould, Arkansas, pestered her siblings to…
Blow Pops American Beauties (Get Hip) There was an old Saturday Night Live joke between Chevy and Gilda that went like this: “Knock knock.” “Who’s there?” “Babs’ uvula.” “Babs’ uvula who?” “I don’t know, Babs . . .” That’s sort of the way I feel about this album. Not because…
If I owned an enormous, influential, major label, a lot of things would be different. For me, anyway; a bigger bank balance, more yes men, the finest aspirin money can buy, and–for the Beat Angels–there’d be a big, fat recording contract. This is one of the few tapes I’ve come…
