One day in college I was sitting with a woman friend talking about sex as the local hits radio station pelted us with slow jams. “I wanna lick you up and down now, baby,” sang Keith Sweat wanna-be B5-492 over Casio drum-machine/keyboard hell. For two indie-rock types like ourselves, the…
Thomas Ades Life Story (EMI Classics) Ever wonder who the next big thing will be in the shrinking world of classical music? Didn’t think so. But there’s an encouraging noise goosing the genre’s increasing irrelevance. It’s the sound that comes from the fingers of Thomas Ades, a 26-year-old British composer…
In 1982, Pete Townshend sat down for one of his many lengthy interviews with Rolling Stone magazine. The primary topic of conversation was Townshend’s prolonged battle with the bottle, which had recently sent him to a clinic for treatment. Along the way, however, the Who’s guitarist got on a rant…
Oasis Be Here Now (Epic Records) A couple of years ago, a British writer suggested to Oasis mastermind Noel Gallagher that his obsession with the Beatles might be getting a little out of hand. “It’s not an obsession,” Gallagher responded. “It’s a way of life.” Years from now, pop historians…
A few hundred feet away from the massive stage at the Electric Highway festival was the B.F. Goodrich tent. Stuck out in the middle of an empty field in Chandler’s Compton Terrace, the tent was connected to an open 10-wheeler truck that housed Goodrich reps. In front of the truck…
Sunday afternoon in the middle of August. I come to, ready for the undertaker. I look up at a picture of Jesus, hanging on the faux paneled wall opposite me. The sweat in my eyes makes Him appear all blurry. I am parched, hung over and stinging of cooked flesh…
To commemorate this week’s 20th anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death, MGM Home Entertainment has just released a video gift set containing all 31 of Elvis’ movies in a guitar case. Maybe it should have packaged them in a coffin, instead, since the balance of the King’s film output has more…
It’s funny how even the most esoteric ideas can reach different people at the same time. Neither the Sex Pistols nor the Clash had heard the Ramones when they launched their own buzz-saw guitar attacks. They just happened to be on the same transatlantic wavelength as the boys from Queens…
Being arrested was humiliating enough. Being hauled off to the police station in full stage attire–which for Eroticide singer Charles Delk means wearing a black leather restraining mask and a latex phallus that would induce penis envy in a snake–was more than he could stomach. “I was dragged off to…
Various artists Beg, Scream and Shout: The Big Ol’ Box of ’60s Soul (Rhino Records) Blame it on The Big Chill. The 1983 celluloid blowjob for the baby-boomer set not only created a mid-’80s explosion of oldies radio (“music for the Big Chill generation,” they called it), it also cemented…
Every music scene is different, but there are some rules that apply wherever you go. Every metroplex worth its salt contains at least one surf band, rockabilly band and ska band. It might not be coincidental that fans of those three genres tend to be among the most hard-core music…
Rainer Ptacek smiles. He remembers the day his doctor gave him the dreaded diagnosis. “You have the best cancer, Rainer. You really have a very good cancer.” The 46-year-old Tucson slide-guitar master seemed to be sailing through life in February 1996. His haunting music–a stark, inimitable kind of postmodern desert…
Super Deluxe via satellite (Revolution Records) Appealing and melodious though it may be, power pop has never been quite strong enough to stand on its own legs. Since it’s essentially always been an attempt to recapture the unpretentious three-minute epiphanies of pre-Sgt. Pepper ’60s guitar bands, its earliest musical joy…
Joan of Arc is not a band. Yeah, it just released an album (A Portable Model of, on Jade Tree Records). Yeah, individually, the members are musicians. They have guitars, bass, drums, etc. But as a unit, Joan of Arc is a sculptor of sonic objets d’art, and cannot be…
Rhett Miller had a habit of forming a new band every month. At least that’s the way it seemed to followers of the Dallas music scene in the early ’90s. One month it would be a breezy folk combo. Before anyone realized it had disbanded, he would launch a British…
Olympia, capital of the state of Washington, is an unlikely candidate for indie-rock capital of the nation. That becomes especially clear when observing it against the backdrop of the annual Olympia Lakefair, a weeklong festival that draws crowds from all over rural Washington to watch the parade and fireworks and…
Fuck Pardon My French (Matador Records) Never has any band been more ill-served by its name than this quartet. Before hearing a note of this album, you naturally assume that you’re dealing with a juvenile gimmick band with so little imagination it couldn’t think of a better moniker than the…
Last week should have been one long highlight reel for Mark Morrell. Morrell’s band, Zig Zag Black, was preparing for the release of its third CD with a couple of special weekend shows and a midweek listening party. It was the culmination of countless hours of studio work and rehearsal…
Wu-Tang Clan Wu-Tang Forever (Loud Records) It’s on. With its new, much-anticipated double-CD Wu-Tang Forever, the Wu-Tang Clan lands the first blow on two unfortunate trends that have saturated hip-hop over the past two years–crass materialism and studio gangsterism. East and West Coast rappers have been more interested in $1,000…
This morning my neighbor across the court accidentally killed her dog. Backed over its head with her Pontiac. My girlfriend used to feed the little brown thing dinner scraps from my kitchen door. I would tell her to quit it. But that was before. I am on the couch, drinking…
It’s 1997, and rock ‘n’ roll is still a dirty phrase. Once merely synonymous with teenage copulation, the term now embraces a wide array of unseemly images. Your parents doing the nasty on a Monsanto carpet. A guy in his late 40s washing his Buick to the strains of Steppenwolf…
Carvin Jones likes Stevie Ray Vaughan. No, you don’t understand. I mean he really, really likes him. You can see it in the Phoenix bluesman’s stage wardrobe, replete with snakeskin boots and wide-brimmed black hat. You can sense it in the Vaughanlike way he hunches his shoulders whenever he digs…
