Face it, the National Endowment for the Arts isn’t leaving many jazz and blues guys all that well-endowed, which, if you make a living wailing onstage about the behemoth in your britches, can be a pretty shameful thing. So, how about corralling more government arts bucks by taxing the film…
Writing reviews of recordings by freshly dead artists is a tricky business that frequently results in overrating, a critical embarrassment that keeps on giving. Think about all those poor schmoes who, rightly thunderstruck by John Lennon’s murder, found themselves raving about Double Fantasy, a modest album that’s not even within…
Only the most jaded music fans could’ve ignored the full-page review — more like a white-knuckled hosanna — that Britain’s Uncut offered to Denton, Texas, power trio Lift to Experience a few months ago. Just to recap one of the more evocative passages: “They walk onstage, unannounced, looking truly frightening…
Breathy gasps occupy empty space on Vespertine, Björk’s newest and best album, as though she’s drowning in nectar. Elsewhere on the record, snow melts in her mouth, water surrounds her thighs, ripe black lilies swirl. She ingests little glowing lights and warm golden oil. Objects caress — her own fingers,…
Although its members insist otherwise, my guess is that Tha Alkaholiks changed their name to Tha Liks mainly to ensure that their new disc, X.O. Experience, wouldn’t be rejected out of hand by rack jobbers at Targets and Wal-Marts from sea to shining sea. After all, E-Swift, Tash and J-Ro…
The summer rock-festival season is almost over, Yahweh be praised. We made it through again. So you might be reasonably forgiven for getting that glazed look in your eyes when we tell you about another wagon rolling through town, but hold that thought. It’s hard to get too cynical about…
The Streetwalkin’ Cheetahs found the inspiration for their colorful name in the first line of “Search and Destroy,” one of Iggy Pop’s most incendiary Stooges songs (“I’m a street-walkin’ cheetah with a heart full of napalm . . .”). The Cheetahs didn’t take just their name from the Stooges; they…
A couple years back when Beachwood Sparks first stepped into the spotlight — its members looking very much like they’d just stepped off the cover of the Notorious Byrd Brothers LP — it was an easy group to tag. Four guys wrapping themselves up in Gram Parsons’ Nudie suit, sailing…
If anyone should understand the pitfalls of being labeled, it’s DJ/producer Roni Size. Back in 1997, on the release of his innovative platter New Forms, made in conjunction with a crew collectively known as Reprazent, he emerged as the most public face of the dance music style dubbed “drum ‘n’…
There seems to be an endless supply of sad-sack troubadours, singers who spill their guts for art and turn personal pain into pretty poetry. Jeff Buckley, Nick Drake, Mark Eitzel, Elliott Smith: The list is a mile long. Over the course of his group’s first two records, For Stars singer/songwriter…
Bob Dylan’s last studio album, 1997’s Time Out of Mind, was about as much fun as a eulogy. With its songs of remorse and regret, with its plaints of begged-for salvation and yearned-for deliverance, that collection sounded like a last will and testament — a big adios from the jokerman…
The résumé: After leaving pop-psych outfit Adventures in Stereo, Simon Dine spent a couple of years in Europe scavenging records and fine-tuning his sampling gear, and upon returning to the U.K. he hooked up with classically trained Daisy Martey, the daughter of Ghana’s top saxophonist. Taking the name Noonday Underground…
Soul brothers can’t win for losing. While sisters can share the throne — there seems to be plenty of room at the top for Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill, Macy Gray, Mary J. Blige, and even rising divas like Mya — in the guys’ court, as in the Highlander series, there’s…
These days, at the foot of Johnny Thunders’ pedestal sit loads and loads of pie-eyed faces, young men and women looking up adoringly, and casting the love, L-U-V. And it’s a strange thing, too, ’cause Thunders was, in reality, just your basic junkie who was blessed with good genes. Like…
Alex Chilton did it, and so did Henry Rollins. Todd Rundgren was able to do it for a little while. John Cale did it early on, then stopped. Brian Eno did it — did he ever — with style and class.What we’re talking about here is the process by which…
When Juan Esteban Aristizabal woke up on July 17, he was not a rock star. By the time he went to bed that Tuesday night, he was. “It’s completely absurd,” says the 27-year old called Juanes, while a television camera caresses his face, a newspaper reporter scribbles notes, and a…
Beyoncé Knowles’ eye-seizing image flashes from the arsenal of giant video screens towering above the briefly vacant stage. And 10,000 mostly young, mostly female concertgoers, all decked out for the last big summer concert before heading back to school, erupt in a spirited siren of “Whoo!”s worthy of MTV’s Total…
For a media whore like John Vanderslice, 15 stinkin’ minutes probably aren’t enough. “I think a lot of bands are afraid of publicity,” says the 33-year-old indie rocker from Bethesda, Maryland, who presently resides in San Francisco. “[They’re] afraid that they’re prostrating themselves. Like they’re not supposed to be looking…
Summer is a lovely time to catalogue worthlessness. Particularly one’s own. The pitiless heat is wonderful in helping clarify feelings of futility and defeat. Long, bitter months stewing in your own stink is time well-suited for detailing a hatred of everybody and everything. The summers around here reflect my inner…
Fall, ’76: Blue Öyster Cult is sitting pretty in the Top 20 with “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper.” The brainy Long Island quintet once pitched somewhat inaccurately to consumers as “the American Black Sabbath” has already consolidated a formidable live reputation and is now enjoying the fruits of nearly a decade…
Sometimes it’s less dangerous to be an honest-to-God revolutionary than to quietly redraw boundaries. Eve, a.k.a. Eve of Destruction, has had to shoulder more than her share of next-big-thing hype ever since her 1999 debut album Let There Be Eve . . . Ruff Ryder’s First Lady. And first lady…
Stake a place near the front of the stage at Nita’s Hideaway on Saturday to see a guy trying hard to define himself playing music that works against that.A self-styled Paul Westerberg type, young media darling Pete Yorn’s debut album, musicforthemorningafter (cute, huh?), presents a ruggedly handsome guy with a…
