Everywhere Jay Farrar goes, his reputation shadows him. People who spend any time with the 30-year-old leader of alt-country heroes Son Volt inevitably wind up shaking their heads and regaling each other with stories. No, these aren’t Hammer of the Gods tales, wherein a debauched rocker with a needle in…
Thirty-six years after the first cascading notes from Dick Dale’s Stratocaster signaled to the landlocked U.S. that something called surf music was happening in California, Dale, now 60, lives in the desert. Long gone from his old haunts around Newport and Balboa, he retreated several years ago to a concrete…
Spanish is the loving tongue. At least that’s what the trite, old ballad says. Of course, Spanish–like any language–can, and does, accommodate feelings like anger and frustration just as easily as romance. But old stereotypes die hard, even when we can no longer feel their pulse. Nowhere is this more…
Only a nascent Valleyite like myself, with a mere two weeks in Arizona under his belt, would be unfamiliar with the impact Dead Hot Workshop has exerted on the local music scene over the past decade. All but the grievously uninitiated–like me–could tell you that this quartet has provided one…
John Hiatt Little Head (Capitol Records) There’s really no precedent for John Hiatt. Try naming another figure in the annals of rock who developed into a more confident, focused and satisfying artist in his 40s than he had been in his 20s or 30s. Little Head is the latest in…
At first glance, “Lilith Fair” may seem to be an unusual name for a music festival showcasing today’s best female singer-songwriters. But considering that Lilith was the world’s first feminist, it all begins to make sense. The story in the Bible goes that Lilith was Adam’s first wife, but she…
“We have three songs about pimps,” says Josh Prior, bassist/vocalist for hot young funksters Yoko Love, as he runs a hand through his spiked, metallic-blond hair. “Every time I hear a really serious, fuckin’ slammin’ funk bass line, I see that pimp from I’m Gonna Git You Sucka with the…
Radiohead OK Computer (Capitol Records) Maybe punk didn’t rescue us completely from prog-rock, but what makes Radiohead think prog-rock is going to save us from anything? Based on OK Computer, this Oxford quintet is convinced that the future lies in the astral hippie past, where six-minute “suites” are twice as…
It was one of those moments that tested the limits of nostalgia. See, last year MTV was hosting its second in a series of “Where are they now?” ’80s retrospectives, this one dedicated to heavy metal. Catching up with war-horses like Kevin Dubrow and Kip Winger was a queasy enough…
Immaculately clothed in thrift-store suits and sporting scuffed wing tips, the members of East Bay foursome the Hi-Fives shimmer with a panache that extends beyond their wardrobe and separates them from their Lookout Records peers. While Lookout mainstays like the Mr. T Experience, the Queers, Squirtgun, etc., define the pop-punk,…
Once upon a time, in a valley hot as hell, two refugees from the Slims wandered a lonely desert path where the coyote’s mocking laughter was the only music for miles. Suddenly, from behind an elderly saguaro, the lanky former bassist of Flying 99 appeared, and the rest is history…
It was due in stores by July, but a lifetime of memories does not come easy to a man whose first hit came 41 years ago, when he was a member of a Sun Records roster that included Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and a boy named Elvis. So the…
You can rest assured that no one in Motley Crue will ever die in a hotel room choking on his own vomit. Sad though it may be, this party animal has matured well beyond the point of recognition. It’s been just five measly years since the Crue gave singer Vince…
David Byrne Feelings (Luaka Bop) A tourist is someone who thinks New York is Lady Liberty and Miss Saigon. Travelers are more sophisticated; they roll into Katmandu and do their best to blend in. Tourists are easy to laugh at, but travelers who pass themselves off as natives are even…
Club-promoting is guerrilla capitalism at its sick best. Just peep the ongoing alley fight between promoters of two new hip-hop nights in Scottsdale–one at the Cage, the other at Club Tribeca. Here’s the thrust-and-parry thus far: Until recently, Phoenix-based superhero DJ Z-Trip and his sidekick Fashen presided over a successful…
Emile Ananian is a gifted DJ, and he’ll be the first to tell you so. Last February at an underground party called Icee, I walked into a trailer to buy water and found Emile, obviously out of his head, ranting to no one and everyone in a line of 25…
John Lydon Psycho’s Path (Virgin) Both as a Sex Pistol and as a solo artist with PiL, John Lydon’s never been very big in America because of that squeaky Cockney voice, which always sounded like a whine even at its most strident. But Psycho’s Path reveals another reason he’ll never…
The battered ’84 Blazer parked in Keith Secola’s driveway looks out of place in his suburban Tempe neighborhood. Yet it’s fitting that the vehicle is there–it could be the model for Secola’s nearly famous song “Indian Cars.” That single song–a fusion of folk-rock, Indian chanting and the heartbeat pulse of…
Something snapped. The wind blew, the dust rose, and inside my trailer, an empty malt-liquor bottle came sailing for my head from the kitchen, which was a good 20 feet away. My excellent reflexes afforded me a timely duck that spared my skull but killed my prized possession–my 12-inch black-and-white…
Suicide Kings Suicide Kings (Rattle Records) Grievous Angels New City of Sin (Bloodshot Records) When Bruce Connole of the Suicide Kings opens his band’s debut CD with lines like “See the race I’ve run and now it’s over,” “I’m the setting sun that’s getting colder” and “Sold my soul for…
The new collection Songs of Janis Joplin: Blues Down Deep is merely the latest in a series of outrages foisted upon a gullible public by the House of Blues, a nightclub chain and music label that seems to think we were all born yesterday; but for sheer chutzpah, it may…
In the middle of answering a question, Mark Eitzel notices a jacket worn by one of the Warner Bros. Records publicists who are hanging around his hotel room. He forgets what he’s saying–something about why he doesn’t really hate people, he just likes when they ain’t around–when he sees the…
