Don Henley’s massive 1989 hit “The End of the Innocence” was a complex piece of songcraft that reminds me of the kind of portraiture that Paul Simon writes on a good day. Paced at a crawl, with co-writer Bruce Hornsby’s immediately recognizable keyboards underpinning the melancholy sentiment of the lyric,…
‘N Sync and its lacquered ilk might induce more screams from the ardent nymphets packing our great nation’s stadiums, but no one has inspired more teenage girls to grab guitars than Kathleen Hanna. Bikini Kill, the Olympia, Washington-based punk group she fronted from 1991 to ’98, epitomized the Riot Grrl…
Much has been made of the renaissance composer Burt Bacharach has been enjoying as of late. The Maestro’s sudden resurgence is the result of a number of high-profile collaborations and media appearances, and a new retro craze that has put the work of classic ’60s tunesmiths on a pedestal. But…
Feel like you’ll throttle Dionne Warwick’s scrawny little neck if you hear her version of “I Say a Little Prayer” one more time? Don’t throw Burt out with the bath water. Here are loads of Bacharach covers: some idyllic, some idiosyncratic, some idiotic, but none boring. The postpubescent bands on…
In a way it’s not surprising, though categorically unfair, that Taj Mahal often gets snubbed by blues purists. As far back as his self-titled first album, Mahal’s records were an amalgam of musical styles only partially rooted in the blues — modal and roots music were his clearest influence –…
Rob Withem sits cross-legged on his living room floor in the Phoenix apartment he shares with his wife. On the couch are two of Withem’s bandmates from Fine China, bassist Greg Markov and drummer Thom Walsh. Missing from the quartet is keyboardist Joshua Block. “Morrisey and Marr were, like, it…
There is much to be said for failure. It is more interesting than success. — Max Beerbohm There’s the blackness that’s tethered to an overwhelming sense of failure. That point where you see no joy, so you figure there is no joy. No joy anywhere. That’s the kind of shit…
Back in the day, kids, there used to be this shaggy musical wildebeest called the triple album. Great bloody sprawling affairs were these, six sides of the ultimate exercise in artistic hubris, implying that there was more utter wonderfulness to this particular artist’s contemporary output than even a double album…
Once upon a time, Led Zep front man Robert Plant plaintively inquired from the stage, “Does anyone remember laughter?” Not so much flower-powerish drivel as a genuine lament for rock ‘n’ roll’s loss of innocence, it could be paraphrased these days along the lines of, “Does anyone remember aggression?” “Aggression,”…
David Bowie is the Peter Sellers of rock ‘n’ roll: He’s all blank slate, the chameleon who adapts to his surroundings without actually adopting an identity. He commits only to schlock, tailoring the disguise — mod rocker, dickless spaceman, fashion faux pas — to fit the delivery, which is somewhere…
The best thing about being a fan from way back is experiencing the delight of listening to a young band become better than you ever imagined. It’s easy, after all, to fall in love at first sound; there’s the thrill of getting turned on to a singer or a song…
Writing lyrics? Well, nothing rhymes with “orange.” Or “Arpaio.” Except maybe, a joint got me six months and now I want to die-o, which only works if you have an Irish brogue or can excuse it with a speech impediment. The artists listed below represent Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Criminal Element:…
These days many DJs lay claim to either a “purist” or “eclectic” style. For most turntablists, “purist” means only shopping in the house section, while “eclectic” means throwing on a heavy-metal record after a breakbeat record after a hip-hop record, with no hint of rhyme or reason. See Armand Van…
With Electric Waco Chair, the bloodshot, burly bunch from punk country has muscled its manly rage to a mature sound. And the sound is great. Chair is the most consistent of the band’s five full-length releases, proving that edgy aggressiveness can be even more effective when it’s hardly sloppy at…
Blues history is fraught with lurid tales of ballers and brawlers, so much that the fans of the genre usually take in as much lore as music. Consider how few neophyte blues aficionados would know of ’30s-era Robert Johnson if it wasn’t for the sold-his-soul-at-the-crossroads legend (lots of Johnson boxed…
It’s just another Friday night at a Tucson java hut with the usual folk singer serving up some low-key strum ‘n’ hum as accompaniment to young coffee achievers’ nonalcoholic mating rituals. However, on this particular evening the entertainment is provided by longtime scene veteran Chris Holiman, late of the Old…
It gets so you don’t even read the adjectives in the press releases. Week after week, brown envelopes full of this typescript hooey come sliding through the mail slot, each one painted in the broadest histrionic strokes: “a band to make even the most jaded postpunk listener pump his fist…
It’s 3 o’clock in the afternoon. Isaac Brock, lead singer, guitarist and lyricist for Modest Mouse, wakes and wipes the sleep syrup from his eyes for the second time today. After a morning spent drinking beer and a mid-afternoon nap, Brock has awakened to discover he has a strange, unattributable…
Downtown L.A. during the Democratic National Convention has the eerie, abandoned feel of a circus after the tents have been collapsed. Standing in the shadow of the Staples Center, Stew and girlfriend Heidi Rodewald — bandmates in the Negro Problem — are checking out the activist pageant. Trudging along for…
Garage rock was not about taking rock ‘n’ roll and handing it to creepy label guys with shaky checkbooks. Nor was it about having your parents, teachers, priests and rabbis giving it the thumbs up. It was none of that. It was all about your own, about breathing some kind…
You just gotta do things. There was unfinished business with the Plimsouls and it still seemed like there was a lot of life in it. I just went for it,” says singer/songwriter Peter Case on what he was thinking when he re-formed his New Wave garage band nearly 15 years…
For those of you going through Survivor withdrawal, this month’s Mail or Muse has been conceived with your shallow needs in mind. If you ask us, that series signed off a few weeks too soon. What good is calling Richard Hatch a “survivor” and then shipping him home? Let him…
