Late news this week that Phoenix’s preeminent roots venue, the Rhythm Room, will be closing its doors in the next few months. Promoter/co-owner Bob Corritore says he and fellow Rhythm Room boss Kenny Cahill just received the word from leaseholders that they would have to vacate their central Phoenix digs…
We’re standing around in the airy Tiffany’s Cabaret parking lot, doing very little. Just shooting the shit, really. Johnny Ace’s resident lackey, Eugene Haugen, a bony kid with Social Distortion hair and thick eyeliner, is videotaping the scene with a hand-held. He says he’s making a documentary of his favorite…
Depending on how you count, Rock ‘N’ Roll Singer is the second or third solo outing by Mark Kozelek, the songwriting arm of the Red House Painters. Although the RHP’s Ocean Beach (1995) and Songs for a Blue Guitar (1996) were dominated by him (the latter completely, in fact), this…
It’s comforting to know that it’s always darkest before the dawn. Just when you think you’ve had your fill of all the ridiculous alt-country/roots-shtick outfits — the ones run by loser ex-punks whose options, like their tattoos, are slowly fading so they figure that by subbing twang for fuzztone and…
It’s not that White Pony is a bad album; it might even be a transitional album. Taken by itself, though, there’s just not much on it to distinguish Deftones from a host of other melodic metal bands, both above and below average. And that, especially from a band as inventive…
The first thing you notice talking to Chuck Prophet, naturally, is his voice. Not so much the way it sounds — a raspy, unfettered bark — but the attitude it projects. His is the tone of a polite cynic — filled with gallows humor, self-deprecation and a world-weary indifference. The…
Joseph Arthur is in the middle of a long series of phone interviews from the U.K., where he’s currently recording. Out of hundreds of variations on the same questions, what’s the one thing he doesn’t want to be asked? “Oh. Ahhhh . . . ‘How did Peter Gabriel get your…
When attacking the music business, one need not even break a sweat. After all, how hard is it to land a punch or a thousand upon a bloated carcass that can no longer move? In the not-so-distant future — maybe a decade from now, or a year from now, or…
Scaling cemetery walls and aching beneath dark skies in October rain. And brooding; always brooding. The odor of rotting fruit mingling with sod on moist ground. Celebratory funeral processions. Voices coming only in echoes, pale faces and eyes thick with coal-black eyeliner. Short days, long nights and inward journeys into…
If you sense a theme in this week’s music section, it’s unintentional, though not entirely unexpected. As Robert Wilonsky points out in his piece (“Flanagan’s Wake”), the world of major record labels — the established music industry as a whole — is in a state of flux, even decline. That,…
So the New Times music editor calls up to inform me of a couple tribute bands playing at some horrible yuppie hellhole in Scottsdale. “Tributes” to Van Halen and Mötley Crüe called Atomic Punks and Shout at the Devil, respectively. Like I care. I hate tribute bands on principle. They…
Lord knows they must’ve had fun conceptualizing and executing the artwork for this CD. The fold-out booklet depicts various artifacts (a pistol and a switchblade, syringes, whiskey bottle, etc.) along with a raft of snapshots purportedly taken by a crime-scene examiner showing how each of the six Devils, plus one…
It’s somewhat comforting to know that the remains of the dead can fertilize new life. It’s a concept often found outside the realm of biology and one that can be seen in the genealogy of several of today’s most dynamic indie bands. An obvious example is the Cap’n Jazz dynasty;…
Standing on the stage of New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom, the old man looked broken, beaten down, a scream reduced to a whisper. It had been almost two years since he had last performed in public, after announcing in October 1997 that he was suffering from Shy-Drager Syndrome, a form of…
For the hundreds packed into Nita’s Hideaway on June 27, three hours seemed like a glitch, as time froze and the rest of the world just disappeared. The reason for this ethereal afterglow was the “surprise” appearance of internationally renowned DJ Shadow at Z-Trip’s weekly Funky Cornbread night. Shadow’s set,…
On a crowded bus in Buenos Aires, a gaggle of teenage girls huddle in the back, giggling and gossiping as teenage girls everywhere do. Their exuberant youth was too much for a cynic in his early 20s, who stood clutching a pole in the aisle. He couldn’t resist baiting the…
This summer’s Musicmaker.com-sponsored twin tour — by a Jimmy Page-led Black Crowes and modfathers The Who (hitting Blockbuster Desert Sky on August 13 and 14, respectively) — is for most observers an uneasy mix of nostalgia and commerce. Certainly neither effort can be regarded as much more than a kind…
Members of the Liar’s Club sit and stare plaintively into their drinks. You’d think they were contemplating some recent run of emotional trauma and bad luck, the death of a loved one, the witnessing of a car crash. Or you’d guess, perhaps, that they are stoned. Couldn’t they say something?…
Back in the mid-’80s, when Athens, Georgia was the new Left Bank and all bands Southern were undergoing a great deal of public scrutiny, Drivin’ n’ Cryin’ was supposed to have been “The Next Big Thing.” It never happened, despite the support of friend Peter Buck and a string of…
We’ll dispense with the baseball shtick and just remind you that the band’s name cheekily refers to mediocrity below and barely up to the call of duty à la underachieving ’70s slugger Mario Mendoza. We’ll attempt to ditch the ready-made Yo La Tengo comparisons — although the sweetly seesawing guy-gal…
Common is one ambitious cat — and hip-hop sure as hell needs more of those. But on his previous album, 1997’s One Day It’ll All Make Sense, he was so driven to create a lyrical masterpiece that his music sometimes suffered by comparison. Praise be, then, for his latest, which…
Committed: Music From the Miramax Motion Picture (Chapter III) Ballad of Cable Hogue CD Single) Snapshot from the Lower Sonoran Desert: a steamy Saturday afternoon in July, hurtling across a dusty two-lane blacktop on the edge of Tucson as a local radio station broadcasts a special three-hour program titled Desert…
