There’s a fantasy that probably every rock fan and critic has shared at one point or another. It involves the notion that somewhere, likely in a bedroom or basement in some small town, a group of unknowns is working in the shadows to create music as powerful and important as…
LeAnn Rimes LeAnn Rimes (Curb Records) October 26, 1999: Perhaps stung by the criticism that her “Purple Rain” cover on last year’s presumptuously titled Sittin’ on Top of the World made her sound like an aging and incoherent drag queen, LeAnn Rimes releases an eponymously titled album of country standards…
Saturday, July 17, 1999: A sold-out crowd of 70,000-plus crammed inside Pasadena’s Rose Bowl to watch one of the final performances of Sarah McLachlan’s three-year-old fem-festival, the Lilith Fair. At 6:30 p.m., a plane buzzed over the stadium. Trailing the aircraft was a banner bearing a message intended to be…
Sure, no contemporary Phoenix “rock” venue can even hold a dusty seven-inch to beat dives like The Star Club and three-decades-ago bands like The Spiders, who gashed its stage, taking the piss out for bored kids, prompting waves of cops, curfews and shutdowns. And perhaps when history books retell of…
Since the last time our vainglorious vanguards of verbiage joined forces, each was cooling his head at home, listening to trusted old favorites in an effort to drive any lingering trace of the Puff Daddy/Christopher Cross merger out of his mind. Bill Blake was busily extricating the pristine jewel cases…
It’s not surprising that the band named after a larger-than-life icon representing the overstimulated pop culture of the ’80s would aim to mimic the cocaine-fueled power-pop of that era. But what may surprise new listeners and seasoned fans alike is the Mr. T Experience’s (relatively) mature songwriting and unconventional recording…
Kimber Lanning is a petite, fair-haired lady. Plopped down in a beanbag chair in a corner of her Tempe Stinkweeds record store and surrounded by records, tee shirts and magazines, Lanning’s youthful face and diminutive figure suggest an earnest indie-rock kid rather than the self-made businesswoman she is. Lanning has…
Nebula To the Center (Sub Pop) Duuuuuuude! “Please do not call Nebula ‘Stoner Rock,'” begs the press materials for the Los Angeles band’s first full-length. There are a few variations on the stoner rock theme, so let’s be specific. Among the subgenres, there are the “only sounds good when high”…
“Detroit is a virtual ghost town except for the music scene.” So says John Krautner of Motor City rock band The Go. The 22-year-old guitarist speaks with authority, having lived in and around the city his whole life. He’s watched as depressed economic conditions and urban flight have turned the…
“Flying through the air with the greatest of ease!” the thrash-voiced singer crows as a pair of cherry-colored panties floats onto the Coliseum stage. “Oftentimes, they are still warm.” A woman from the front row stands, moves to the stage’s bow and raises her hand to the singer. The singer…
Wanna know how come no one paints his or her favorite band’s name on the back of a denim jacket anymore? It’s not because blue jean jackets are out of style — it’s that rock bands are. No kidding, there ain’t a group out there worth cracking out the acrylics…
Retrospectives of bands are so de rigueur these days that no one even blinks when they walk into a store on new-release day to encounter a new four-disc boxed-set anthology of some rock superstar’s collective wheezings, a handy-dandy greatest hits package (featuring, of course, two “new” compositions to enhance the…
Over the course of the last decade or so, rappers have made a tradition of exaggerating the misery of their childhoods. Some emcees truly grew up in environments marked by grinding poverty, rampant crime and utter hopelessness, but plenty of others who claim to know about the mean streets firsthand…
Paul McCartney Run Devil Run (Capitol) When Paul finds himself in times of trouble, personally or professionally, like most veterans he turns to the oldies. From “Get Back” to Choba B CCCP, he’s retraced his baby steps in an effort to figure out where he’s lost his one-fourth of the…
This is the type of thing you dream about. A bloated celebrity making a horrible slip like this. This is the type of thing a whole country can mock. I hope Garth (or Chris?) likes shame, because he’s gonna receive a heapin’ helpin’. — a music fan from Detroit, Amazon.com…
Pennywise is probably the most pleasant, friendliest band that sometimes pukes on people and takes hostages. The Hermosa Beach, California, quartet are punks, though they are positive rather than nihilistic, and thought-provoking rather than typically didactic. The band’s upbeat-yet-laid-back attitude makes sense considering its surf-town home base is the party…
Just as there’s a lot of dreadful music worth avoiding, there’s also no shortage of truly rotten books about music to waste your time. As a culture, we’re inclined to think that just because a book makes it into the library, it’s literature. But anyone who’s ever checked out a…
Bill Bentley never met Alexander “Skip” Spence, never even spoke with the man whose music meant so much to him. He had come close before, when Spence’s erstwhile band, Moby Grape, played at the Catacomb Club in Bentley’s hometown of Houston. But Spence wasn’t there that night, kept off the…
For much of 1999, word was that the seeming demise of pop eclectics Trunk Federation had been the result of two main factors, the first being lead singer and de facto leader Jim Andreas’ relapse into substance abuse after eight years of sobriety. Sensing that things were taking a dark…
Mark Lanegan I’ll Take Care of You (Sub Pop) There are some kinds of music that really work only at certain times of day or during specific activities. You’ve got good driving music, good drinking music, good dishwashing music. Mark Lanegan’s records are of the late-night, half-tanked, down-and-miserable, stare-out-the-trailer-at-the-stars variety…
“My idea,” said Bruce Springsteen in 1996, responding to a reporter’s query about the songwriter’s intent, “wasn’t to get the next 10 songs and put out an album and get out on the road. I wrote with purpose in mind, so I edited very intensely the music I was writing…
Here’s to the girl with the little red shoes, She likes to party, She likes the booze, She lost her cherry, but that’s no sin, Thank God, she’s still got the box the cherry came in. — from Warrant’s official Web site With the same courage we’d imagine a fly…
