Various artists Masters of Jazz: Volumes 1-4 (Rhino) Anyone compiling a CD look-see at the history of jazz is setting himself up for a fall. Especially if the project is stamped with a lofty title like Masters of Jazz. Such an anthology, to be truly representative, would have to include…
MEXICO CITY–Betsy Pecanins’ life has always blurred the borders. The 42-year-old singer grew up in Arizona, Mexico and Spain. She is the child of an American father and a Catalonian mother, whose family emigrated from Barcelona to Mexico. She speaks and sings in three languages–English, Spanish and Catalan. Starting out…
Scrawl Travel On, Rider (Elektra) If I were a boy, and I found out that my girlfriend was listening intently to Scrawl’s new recording, I’d take a good, hard look at our relationship and try to figure out what was bugging her. But boys don’t usually think that way; it’s…
Love Nut Bastards of Melody (Interscope) As a genre, power pop didn’t always guarantee great songwriting, a la XTC, Elvis Costello or Blondie. The term also covers second-tier acts like 20/20, the Dwight Twilley Band and the Producers, who consistently adhered to one simple formula: Leave the verses bland and…
KISS America West Arena August 21, 1996 “Dude, didja go see KISS last Wednesday?” “Oh, hell, yeah. You see Gene’s boots, dude?” “The dragon heads?” “Old-school, bro. Straight offa the Destroyer cover. Six-inch metal teeth for platforms, red eyes that shoot laser beams and shit. Now that’s rock ‘n’ roll.”…
The Wipers are playing a show in town this week. That’s big news, even though head Wiper Greg Sage, a longtime icon of American indie rock, has lived in the Valley for almost seven years now. Sage takes the Wipers on frequent tours of Europe and the rest of the…
Hamell on Trial Big As Life (Mercury) David Lowery, chief smart ass for Cracker, once intoned in song that, “What the world needs now is another folk singer/Like I need a hole in my head.” David Lowery needs to meet Ed Hamell. Or, at least, check out Hamell’s striking debut…
About a Mover Among other things, the history of soul music is the story of a handful of regional labels that flourished 20 to 30 years ago, releasing strings of sublime 45s before the long night of disco fell. Their passing success owed a lot to house bands such as…
According to the kids who were inside the Inclusion Art Space the night it got raided, it’s hard to say what gave away the scout team of undercover cops first–the fake nose rings, the advanced age, the silly clothes or the ill-informed attempts to score drugs at a straight-edge punk…
George Jones I Lived to Tell It All (MCA) Issued to tie in with George Jones’ tell-all autobiography of the same name, this album picks up Jones’ story at one of its most infamous low points. Married to his first wife, Shirley, the King of Country Music is reduced to…
It’s the final night for the Equinox, an underground punk club crammed into a central Phoenix office space, and Xs mark the spot. About 120 punkers have gathered to pay their last respects to the venue, listening as the local Christian hard-core band Overcome grinds away in a back corner…
Here’s my variation on Jeff Foxworthy’s “You might be a redneck if . . .” routine. Call it “You might live in the Valley if . . .” The kickoff item: “You might live in the Valley if . . . you go to a yard sale where people are…
Ever go to a KISS convention and see people clamoring for a Bruce Kulick doll, or a lunchbox with Eric Singer’s mug plastered on the side? Of course not! It took Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley 13 pageant-free years to figure out what the rest of us knew all along–KISS…
One of the first things you notice about Simone Grey is the violet eyes. They’re contacts, of course, but set against her black hair and beautifully sculpted, unmistakably Middle Eastern face, the effect is still striking. And, like a lot of things about Simone, carefully calculated. There are the black…
Ray Bailey Blue Street (Visa Records) Ray Bailey calls his label Visa because that’s how he paid for it–by maxing out his credit card once he got pink-slipped from Zoo Records. Not that it was Zoo’s fault. The L.A. bluesman never belonged on the label in the first place; after…
Ween 12 Golden Country Greats (Elektra) There’s something very wrong with Ween’s new CD. For starters, 12 Golden Country Greats has only ten songs. And though they may indeed be “golden,” it’s doubtful that even the most encyclopedic of country connoisseurs would recognize such titles as “Piss Up a Rope”…
Screaming Trees Dust (Epic) The Screaming Trees are proof that people at major labels do occasionally sign and foster acts just because they like them. On first glance, there is no less commercially appetizing prospect than the Screaming Trees: two gigantically fat guitarists and a recalcitrant front man, the three…
Zach Lind thinks back on the good old days and sighs. Lind, the drummer for Mesa upstarts Jimmy Eat World, recalls when he and his fellow Jimmys would pile into a van and head for Colorado or California, playing all-ages shows set up a day in advance by friends in…
Creedence Clearwater Revival’s 1970 hit “Lodi” immortalized the New Jersey town as a hard-luck haven for touring musicians, as far removed from fame and fortune as Earth is from Uranus. But imagine John Fogerty turning punk, wearing a Toys “R” Us skeleton costume and employing sidemen bedecked with “devil locks”…
For Cash and Cappuccino, it was not brotherhood at first sight. 1991, sophomore year, Cortez High. “We was both the pretty little niggers in school,” says Cappuccino, now 20. “The girls be likin’ us. But we was competitors, see? Girls he be dating wanted to talk to me, and girls…
Sebadoh leader Lou Barlow has been the reluctant godfather of experimental lo-fi since his groundbreaking acoustic four-track work on the Boston anti-folk trio’s first two albums (Freed Man, 1989, and Weed Forestin, 1990). Those two records were followed by Barlow’s Sentridoh solo series, most of which he recorded in his…
Elvis Costello and the Attractions All This Useless Beauty (Warner Bros.) In his sleeve notes for this year’s Goodbye Cruel World reissue, Elvis Costello congratulated us for purchasing his worst album ever. He was good to his word–until recently, that messy aberration was the substandard bearer for Costello’s extensive body…
