RECORDINGS

Morrissey World of Morrissey (Sire/Reprise) Back in the Sixties, patchwork albums like Magic Bus: The Who on Tour or the Rolling Stones’ December’s Children and Flowers were the norm. Part rip-off, these collections of B sides and unreleased-in-the-U.S. tracks were often padded with selections already available on other albums without…

SO MUCH FOR THAT REPLACEMENTS REUNION

It was Billy Joel who wrote the immortal line “Only the good die young,” but I’ll bet even B.J., as wise and talented as he is, would have a hard time fitting Bob Stinson into that equation. Bob, late of the Replacements, late of planet Earth (he died of an…

WITCH WAY OUT?

I hate musicals. And I will continue to feel contempt for the genre until the audience stops clapping after every damned song. It’s an infuriating habit. It means that most of us consider a musical a mere collection of tunes–at best, a happy diversion, a pleasant spectacle. We don’t expect…

RECORDINGS

Throwing Muses University (Sire) Throwing Muses used to be an easy band to loathe. Chief Muse Kristin Hersh wrote wildly inconsistent songs and sang them with the vocal equivalent of buckshot on broken glass. Rock critics from the indie underground drooled ecstatically over the Muses in part because the noise…

LIVE SHOTS

Dag, and Mother May I Neeb Hall, Arizona State University campus, Tempe February 22, 1995 If you ever thought that being signed to a major label was the ticket to Easy Street, you should have made it to this show, a double helping of rising acts recently inked to majors…

RAFFI COME HOME

Now the stage is bare and there’s emptiness all around. Facing his audience after almost seven years in the wilderness, it’s only natural that this beloved performer should be wracked with fear. Will the old magic work again? Will this crowd get fidgety and have to go to the bathroom…

OASIS–BRITAIN’S SAVING FACE OR THE NEXT BIG NOTHING?

For years, the crumbling of the British Empire has been mirrored by the shrinking chart fortunes of British bands in the colonies. Sure, at one time Britain gave us the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, the Kinks, Cream, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, the Sex Pistols, the Police and the Smiths–but…

CREDIT CARDS WHERE CREDIT CARDS AREN’T DUE

God knows what I was thinking. I’m no rap fan, I hate Candlebox, and I hate sports. I know even less about sports than I know about music. Yet for some reason, I allowed myself to be talked into going to that live MTV/All-Star broadcast thing at America West Arena…

ANGELS AND INBREDS

Russell Sepulveda wears a cowboy hat and sings with a twang. His songs leave room for pedal-steel-guitar breaks, and his bands–both of ’em–cover C&W tunes by the likes of Buck Owens and Gram Parsons. Sound like a country boy? Not quite. “Country music today is so far from its roots,”…

AWESOME DAWSON

Many times over the last four decades it seemed like Ronnie Dawson was on his way to being somebody. At the ripe age of 17, he was picking and yelping his go-to-hell rockabilly on American Bandstand. He was part of seminal rock impresario Alan Freed’s stage shows. He played on…

G. LOVE, AMERICAN STYLE

A frog? “Yeah,” confirms Emo, tour manager for G. Love and Special Sauce, “last night they played so long, somebody threw a frog up onstage.” A live frog? “No” he says, voice turning thoughtful over the phone. “They must have brought it from a high school or something. It was…

TAPES IN THE MAIL

The box is full; time once again to throw the tapes in the machine and let the opinions spew out. But first, this: Apologies to Spinning Jenny; the title of the band’s new CD is not Piata Full of Beans (as I wrote last week), but Piata Full of Bees…

TEXAS SCHMEXAS

Of the 43 bands from the Valley that applied for the South by Southwest music conference this year, guess how many were accepted? I’ll give you a hint: No, I won’t. I’ll just tell you. Other than the Refreshments (who are attending under a business arrangement between New Times and…

IT TAKES A WORRIED MAN TO WRITE A WORRIED SONG

Texas singer-songwriter Daniel Johnston’s either a nut or a genius. Singer Kathy McCarty says he’s both, and she should know; McCarty’s seen Johnston battle terrifying cycles of manic depression, replete with periodic stays in mental hospitals. She’s also seen Johnston write and perform some of the most honest and aching…

SUNDAY BORING SUNDAY

You may not believe this, but I went to church on Sunday. The Electric Church, that is, to worship at the altar of Jimi Hendrix. Actually, I was at Tower Records to check out the latest batch of releases from Loompanics Press–slim, fascinating volumes on stuff like lock-picking, surviving in…

A CRAMPED INTERIOR

It’s a Saturday night in 1980 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in Los Angeles. Chelsea, the Dead Kennedys and X have all come and gone, disgorging an awesome load of punk rawk to the dripping crowd that packs the hall. These are three groups at the height of their…

KING DICKDICK DALE, THE INVENTOR OF SURF GUITAR, VENTS

You do not want to be Dick Dale’s guitar. The Undisputed King of Surf Guitar does not merely play his instrument, he punishes it. Forget about the word “nuance.” He breaks heavy-gauge strings like they were bands of saliva, wrenching a nonstop, high-speed onslaught of reverbed, staccato licks that shred…

THEY NEVER PROMISED YOU A ROSE GARDENTHE MEN OF PANSY DIVISION PLAY GAY ROCK WITH BALLS

Just when you thought there was no possible musical configuration left after grunge-goth-speed-death-metal-neo-punk-post-New Wave-bubblegum-pop-etc., along comes homo-core. Specifically, along comes Pansy Division. Jon Ginoli, Chris Freeman and Danny Panic are the self-proclaimed Pansies, three San Franciscans whose music is from the late-Seventies, early-Eighties melodic punk school and whose lyrics celebrate,…

BIG WAX BUILDUP

Remember that TV mail-order albums like Country Gold and The Best of Floyd Cramer were available on almost-obsolete eight-track cartridges well into the Eighties? Now the Nineties has its version of this phenomenon: Recent TV titles like Soft Rock of the ’80s and The Best of John Denver are being…