It’s an unusual story. A reputable hard-core label signs a pop band recommended by another band. The pop band tours, releases a shittily produced LP and becomes the darling of the American indie scene. So the band goes to a better studio with a better producer. The label releases the…
The Beach Boys The Pet Sounds Sessions (Capitol Records) A few weeks ago, VH1 aired a documentary on the making of some Fleetwood Mac record–it was either Tusk or Rumours; it hardly matters which. Lindsey Buckingham sat behind the console, fiddling with knobs and dials until he managed to separate…
Portishead Portishead (Go! Beat/London Records) Portishead’s 1994 single “Sour Times” was one of those rare tracks so arresting and so original that it makes other musicians slam on the brakes and rethink what they’re doing. While nothing else on Portishead’s debut album Dummy scaled those steep heights, the album sustained…
It’s safe to say that Pat Flannery, lead singer for the heavy-rock group St. Madness (formerly known as Crown of Thorns), has an enormous chip on his shoulder. “I’m angry, I like angry and I want to stay angry,” grouses the lanky purveyor of doom and gloom who sings “I’m…
Time to get ill? Nah–time to get sik, on location in the Sik Bay, creative den of R.C. Lair, underground DJ and premier graphic artist for the Valley’s dance-club and rave scenes. R.C. (the initials stand for Ryan Christopher) is a bit nocturnal. Sik Bay–actually one room in the Tempe…
It was a Friday night, and Glen Buxton was jumping up and down with excitement as he watched boxing on TV. The only indication that anything was wrong was a pain in his side, which he mentioned to his younger sister Janice Davison over the phone that night. He thought…
I have come not only to mourn John Denver’s passing but to castigate his stinkin’ rotten legion of desertin’ fans. A few years back, Goldmine Magazine did a listing of albums most likely to turn up at Salvation Army or Goodwill stores. Amazingly, that listing just about holds true today…
Love fades, but with me it is always wrenched away like a rotten tooth. My expertise at self-sabotage and being continually defeated, drained and drunk guarantee this. Sometimes it’s like being tied to a post opposite a firing squad, the squad members pulling their triggers while I stand there watching…
Anybody can be dumb. Stupidity requires vision. In rock ‘n’ roll, the distinction means everything. Journey was just plain dumb, but the Ramones were gloriously stoopid. Today, as always, we’re overrun by dumb bands that think they’re smart, earthbound in their attempts to prove their seriousness, their literary weight and…
Christine Zahn is excited. Because of circumstances no one could foresee, this 47-year-old owner of Tempe Bowl and admitted musical neophyte has become a player in the local rock scene. There’s only one point that she’s kind of sensitive about. After enduring my numerous references to her “bowling alley,” she…
The atmosphere in Mind’s Eye Digital Recording is jammed with sound waves, the kind of badass, bottom-loaded frequencies that blow woofers and mess with eardrums. Bionic Jive, a Tempe sextet, is rehearsing songs from its forthcoming Six Million Dollar Band CD, a psycho-delic joy ride that makes groups like Prodigy…
All Mick Fleetwood wanted was a guitarist. Fleetwood Mac’s drummer was checking out the studio of engineer Keith Olsen when he heard a track from an obscure California duo named Buckingham Nicks. Looking for someone to replace departed guitarist Bob Welch, he sought out the nimble-fingered Lindsey Buckingham. Perhaps it…
Bjork Homogenic (Elektra Records) The very idea of Bjork is so appealing that you can feel like Ebenezer Scrooge for even hinting that her music is somehow deficient. In an industry never short of calculating frauds, Bjork is a force of nature and an absolute original: someone who can intuitively…
Fairness and legality. They are two separate concepts. Though they stop to chat from time to time, they don’t always hang out together. Consider an example: If a cop picks you out of a bunch of speeding cars and nails you for driving 37 in a 35 mph zone, his…
Although they’ve never really gone away, the Rolling Stones have had more “comebacks” than Richard Nixon. Every time they emerge from their cocoon of luxury for a new album, Rolling Stone magazine assures us that they’re back, that previous Stones recordings may have been subpar, but this new one is…
It’s three in the afternoon, and Mark Zubia has a sore head. The Pistoleros guitarist staggers into the band’s roomy Tempe rehearsal room a few minutes late for an interview, flops down on a corner chair and swears off any questions for a while, explaining that he’s been downing rum…
The Wilsons The Wilsons (Mercury Records) With the wretched Wilson Phillips, Carnie and Wendy Wilson–along with childhood chum Chynna Phillips–cashed in on a fleeting pop moment. At the dawn of this decade, progeny rock managed to unite proud baby boomers (who vicariously felt that they had raised these pampered superstar…
Given our now fixed image of the press as ruthless invaders of privacy who hounded Princess Di into a premature grave, it hardly seems possible that once upon a time journalists and photographers actually worked in tandem to keep a celebrity’s Satyricon private life out of their pages. And no…
The history of pop is actually the story of great rivalries, real or imagined: Elvis vs. Jerry Lee, the Beatles vs. the Stones, mods vs. rockers, Bowie vs. Ferry, Nirvana vs. Pearl Jam. And, by the way, whose side were you on during the fabled Tiffany-Debbie Gibson wars of 1987?…
Hip-hop has many enemies. It must constantly defend itself against misguided censors disguised as social crusaders, timid record companies and toothless radio programmers. After nearly two decades, it continues to fight old-guard music purists who refuse to consider hip-hop valid music and wish that it would just go away. In…
Chapel Hill, North Carolina’s Superchunk is a band inextricably linked to “indie rock,” the ill-defined genre sitting somewhere close to “punk” but gainfully lacking punk’s aversion to maturation. The association is probably because Superchunk has been playing and putting out consistently brilliant albums since 1988, and vocalist/guitarist Mac MacCaughan and…
When is an icehouse really a sauna? When it’s mid-June in downtown Phoenix and a newly installed air-conditioning system breaks down on a Friday afternoon. That’s exactly what happened at the Icehouse Recording Studio last year right smack in the middle of a Trunk Federation session. Though the Trunksters were…
