During the past thirty years, everyone from Elvis to the Rolling Stones has acknowledged rock ‘n’ roll’s debt to Willie Dixon, recording his classic tunes and bringing them to mass audiences. But it wasn’t until years later that many in the record industry who’d profited from his songs began to…
No matter what the American Express ads or the Nashville Network might tell you, there isn’t really a person named Randy Travis. Sure, there is something out there called Randy Travis. It’s taking the country by storm, playing rootsy country music and bringing home the kind of figures that make…
Listen to people like Chick Corea or Keith Jarrett long enough and you start thinking avant-garde jazz is either an assortment of outer-space explorations or introspective therapy sessions. Go to extremes like the wigged-out Corea or the self-indulgent Jarrett and you lose the music in a tidal wave of notes…
It was supposed to be a fun postconcert gathering of friends and groupies. Caterwaul had just finished playing two shows to enthusiastic crowds at the Mason Jar last Sunday, and now the Phoenix-turned-L.A. band was surrounded by nothing but faithful fans. Or so it thought. “This guy came to our…
FRANK STALLONE never had a problem with it. “Rocky’s kid brother?” Hey, absolutely. Shaun Cassidy stepped happily into his TV star brother’s spotlight. Kid Partridge? Sure. Hold a seat on that Day-Glo bus. While the latest actor-turned-singer wails the blues (probably off-key) about the problems of being taken seriously in…
Almost three decades ago, Delbert McClinton showed John Lennon the harmonica licks for the No. 1 Beatles hit “Love Me Do.” McClinton was in England to play harp for an obscure figure named Bruce Channel, and the way he tells it in a recent phone interview, the meeting seemed anything…
It’s not your average pop band that writes heartfelt paeans to Karen Carpenter, chronicles the traumas of “Teen-age Dogs in Trouble,” or sings the joys of “Beer Money.” But on the Young Fresh Fellows’ first few albums, the Seattle trash-meisters proved themselves to be anything but average. Maybe early YFF…
Dear Boss, I’ve gone through an awful lot to get this story for New Times, but what happened to me this morning is the last straw. As you recall, you wanted me to write something about State Senator Jan Brewer’s bill forbidding the sale of record albums with dirty lyrics…
Don’t expect to see bleached-blonde bimbos in black-leather microskirts bouncing their curves across the TV screen if Nomeansno ever makes a video. This Vancouver hard-core outfit just may be the world’s first all-male feminist three-piece. For somewhere near seven years, the Wright brothers, drummer Rob and bassist John, along with…
Bluesman James Harman called his latest album Extra Napkins out of his fondness for saucy barbecue. But the title easily might’ve referred to the drooling that must’ve gone on during the production of the record. Consider this: The Harman-ica player says the owner of Rivera Records, Extra Napkins’ label, told…
When the Sugarcubes first splashed onto the music scene back in the summer of 1988, you’d have thought we were witnessing Christ’s Second Coming instead of the debut of a talented-enough pop band. Both record buyers and alternative radio gobbled up the ‘cubes, but the critics were the true proselytes…
If you close your eyes at a Sticky Thang show, it’s not hard to transport yourself back nearly ten years in time to a place called Madison Square Gardens. As the local group jams out a fine-tuned garage sound even grittier than its filthy metropolis-in-a-desert surroundings, you can almost see…
When the Reid bros., William and Jim, started the Jesus and Mary Chain back in 1984, they had a modest little goal in mindnamely to piss off more people than other any band in rock ‘n’ roll history. Within a year they’d gone a long way toward achieving that aim,…
The year was 1967, and the Beatles had just struck it rich with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was an album that pandered mercilessly to a generation of hippies too stoned on acid to realize it was the most globulent, sugar-covered thing the Fabricated Four had ever committed…
On the first Saturday in December, the hip-hop capital of Phoenix–if there is such a thing–turned out to be a hall on a side street near Seventh Avenue and Camelback called Rockin’ Freddy’s. Inside, a deejay spun funk and rap until Shatonya Davis took the stage for a performance that…
Most performers set out on solo tours to indulge mammoth egos or to achieve that elusive goal called “artistic fulfillment.” Black Francis did it for gas money. See, the Pixies singer-guitarist recently became the proud owner of a lemon-meringue-colored 1986 Cadillac, complete with cassette deck and CB radio. He figured…
It seems like the dawn of each decade brings out the pied piper in Todd Rundgren. At the sunup of the Seventies, when Rundgren was beginning to make a name for himself as a recording studio whiz kid and veritable one-man band, the Philadelphia-born rocker often ballyhooed the joys of…
Aside from your multiplatinum Tracy Chapman records, acoustic folk albums aren’t exactly Top 40 fodder in this post-Peter, Paul, and Mary age. The Grapes of Wrath want to change that. The Vancouver quartet follows Chapman’s lead with its new album, Now and Again, which contains several songs that wouldn’t have…
Before Bon Jovi, before Billy Joel, even before glasnost, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown took American music behind the Iron Curtain. But unlike the mega-ego, multimillion-dollar, hype-O-rama rock stars who got their pretty-boy mugs plastered all over TV sets from coast to coast, Brown did not rate evening news coverage. Still, Brown…
Double truck, no jumps You say you don’t know Love and Rockets from Loggins and Messina? Can’t tell the Sugarcubes from Supertramp? Well, maybe in the early Eighties you could get away with feeling inadequate where alternative music was concerned. After all, back then, bands like R.E.M. and the Cure…
In the heavy-metal game these days, it’s hard to tell what’s Spinal Tap and what’s not. When a musician puts a cucumber in his pants, is it hilarious or just painfully true to the genre? And when a group thinks up song titles like “Iron Cock” and “How Delicious She…
It seems like just another fraternity beer party. There’s a band on-stage and cerveza in the keg. Prepped-out college types are toasting the home team’s latest gridiron exploits and boasting over the spoils of a recent panty raid. Everybody’s had some juice, and the crowd is feeling a wee bit…
