Violent Femmes vocalist Gordon Gano is smoking something in a fancy hotel room somewhere in Cincinnati. His drags are too long for a cigarette, and it can’t be a pipe. Not enough sucking noises. One deep, long, exaggerated whoosh. “It’s a cigaaaar,” Gano breathes passionately. He’s sucking on an Ashton,…
Ask any big star about telephone interviews, and he’ll tell you that there’s an art to blowing them off. The trick, from a musician’s point of view, is to dust off a writer without stirring up a grudge. After all, you never know when your tour or album might need…
Pearl Jam Vs. (Epic) They’re back for round two, folks. Vs., the second album from Pearl Jam, finds the Seattle grunge men cranking it out in top form. Though Eddie Vedder’s voice has always been the band’s main feature–the vibrating, gut-driven growls of one white boy’s angst–the guitars of Stone…
It’s hard to believe that in 1906, the term “funk” referred to sexual body odors, and only some 50 years later to a music that sounded just as dirty. No one in yer grandma’s lifetime has done as much as George Clinton, the Parliament/Funkadelic kingpin, to supply a soundtrack for…
Time and rhythms are fluid for George Clinton. His clock and metronome have always ticked at speeds different than the remainder of humanity’s. “Damn, was ‘Up for the Down Stroke’ 20 years ago?” the father of funk asks by telephone from the Detroit studio where he’s producing a duo of…
The rules of music promotion force stars to help sell their products by declaring each new album to be a) a work of genius, or b) different from anything they’ve done before. Both are malarkey–but time-tested, effective malarkey–concocted to make record buyers feel better about paying for something their favorite…
“I know what I’m striving for, and it’s never to re-create music from the past,” says saxophone prodigy Joshua Redman. “It’s not a goal of mine to call attention to the lost greatness of the jazz legacy or how the music was so much better before.” Joshua Redman doesn’t fit…
In the late 60s, Loudon Wainwright III was following the club-and-college circuit, plucking at a guitar and warbling his weirdness to tie-dyed crowds of acid victims. There were a lot of white guys folking it up with six-strings back then. And as with a handful of his contemporaries, Wainwright was…
Bill Janovitz vividly remembers the night last summer when his band’s manager called with big news. “He said, ‘I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is you got a five-page spread in Rolling Stone. The bad news is you guys have to do this fashion type of…
Matthew Sweet is chuckling. At times, he’s even laughing. Sprinkle in some giggles, a chortle and an occasional “tee-hee,” and you pretty much get the picture: Matthew Sweet, one of the darkest songwriters in pop, is, in person, about as glum and gloomy as a high school cheerleader. “People always…
John Hiatt’s heard it all before. Over 40. Past his prime. Lost his edge. Too old, too tired and, lately, too happy to still be relevant. “Too happy is the one that gets me,” Hiatt growls over the phone from L.A. “Has anyone ever been too happy?” These days, Hiatt…
It took me by surprise. Listening again to “Linger” by the Cranberries, I now heard heretofore undetected bird trills. Actually, this very minor aural revelation wasn’t what startled me. After numerous spins of the disc, I was used to the abrupt emergence of quirky, tantalizing sonics. The band got the…
Rockabilly retrorocket Colin Winski has spent most of his life in a love-hate relationship with the ghost of Elvis. Blessed–or cursed–with a physical resemblance striking enough to trigger an Elvis sighting, Winski has spent 15 years alternately promoting and defending himself against comparisons to the King. Looking like Elvis has…
Without drugs, there’d be no such thing as popular music. Virtually every major form of tonal exploration in this country has gotten a good measure of spunk from a particular drug of choice–bluegrass and corn liquor, folk and caffeine, techno and ecstasy, jazz and heroin, reggae and pot, rock and…
There’s an agonizing scene in Saxophone Colossus, the 1986 documentary film about jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins. The tenor man is playing an outdoor gig in New York in which, in the course of three minutes of unaccompanied soloing, he quotes from “A Tisket, A Tasket,” “Over the Rainbow” and “The…
From the outside, the mobile home where Joe Harless launched his journey to musical fame and fortune looked like just another tin can on another street in Chandler: There was a faded Chevy van with smashed windows and a flat tire, browning palm fronds littered the yard, a cage of…
Arizona’s music scene is in an unusual state these days. Here in the Valley, hip-hop knuckleheads Phunk Junkeez and smooth R&B singer Malaika are blossoming into national acts. And speaking of Blossoms, the smashing success of Tempe’s Gin Blossoms has grown to the point that divine intervention is the only…
Will success spoil Alison Krauss? The pressure is certainly building. On July 3, 21-year-old Krauss became the first bluegrass player in 29 years to be inducted into the Grand Ole Opry. That night, the praise for this extraordinary fiddler and singer was flowing thick and sweet. Vince Gill, renowned for…
“I was stone-cold sober, and I still don’t remember playing that night!” Grant Fitch is straining to recall events from a weekend two years ago when he and his bandmates in Paw were the talk of Austin’s South by Southwest music conference. After the band’s showcase performance, one populated almost…
Every city loves its homegrown musical heroes. Here in the Valley, alternative bands Meat Puppets and, lately, Gin Blossoms have scored huge national successes, and we’ve rightfully cheered them every inch of the way. Now, imagine having played on more than 100 albums, not one of which your old Phoenix…
Local music carries a stigma. “Local” conjures up visions of being trapped without a seat in a crowded bar with pushy waitresses and a bad band. Inevitably, such bands feel compelled to release album-length examples of what they can and, mostly, cannot do. Local-music compilations try to solve that problem…
It’s bad enough that the band calls itself the Posies. It doesn’t help that one of the Posies is named Ken Stringfellow. And it certainly makes for dubious PR when another rock performer, Bob Forrest of Thelonious Monster, refers in song to his ex-girlfriend “walking off with some faggot from…
