Earlier this year, MCA Records made a big media splash with the “news” that it had knighted itself lord-protector of the hallowed Chess Records catalogue that it owns. The pride of far-sighted Chicagoans Phil and Leonard Chess, the catalogue is the mother lode of rock n’ roll and the blues…
The J. Geils Band Anthology: Houseparty (Rhino) Back in the Seventies, I had a girlfriend who thought the J. Geils Band was the sexiest band alive. She and her normally sensible pals would get together and turn to meringue as they argued over personal minutiae (He looks cute in knee-high…
Half-rotting ghouls dismembering and devouring a pregnant woman. Horned half-man, half-beast creatures having sex with decomposing female corpses. Rivers of blood gushing past while Satan has a good laugh. Welcome to the world of death-metal album covers. Of all the factions that metal music has created–speed metal, punk metal, pop…
Three photos of Kurt Ralske lay across my desk. The one on the left dates from 1988, around the time his one-man-band debut, Ultra Vivid Scene, was released by Britain’s 4AD Records. With an utter lack of guile, his gaze is directed straight at the camera. In his crew-neck sweat…
Joe Louis Walker is not the kind of person to look back in anger. But he admits that sometimes, the endless comparisons to that other Bay Area blues star, Robert Cray, do get on his nerves. “I hear things like if Joe Louis Walker hadn’t played gospel for ten years,…
Attention! The prophet Qa’Sepel is about to speak: “It shocks me when people seriously think I have answers to anything,” says the tongue-in-cheek, self-anointed seer. “No one has all the answers. No one ever reaches their ultimate destination. And in a way, I’m kind of glad of that.” Qa’Sepel, better…
Arizona’s ties with the world of jazz are flimsy. Trumpeter Art Farmer was raised in Phoenix, and sax giant Charlie Parker probably spent the night in cactus country on his way to a lengthy stint in Los Angeles. And, uh, did I mention Art Farmer? At first, another Arizona jazz…
There’s an old deejay friend of mine whose favorite saying is, “If it sells, it smells.” Hypocritical theory or not, I can still appreciate the underlying psychology because everybody digs an underdog, right? We cheer for the struggling artist who has to wait tables and pawn his record collection because…
Bash & Pop Friday Night Is Killing Me (Sire) Chris Mars 75% Less Fat (Smash/Island) How do we miss the Replacements? Let’s count the ways. Not to get gooey, but if you miss the Mats and are tired of playing “Bastards of Young” or “I.O.U.” to death, cheer up. Uncover…
Like most people who’ve spent the past 20 years in show business, Nanci Griffith hates doing telephone interviews. Although Griffith has a well-earned reputation for having a formidable, if cranky, persona, her distaste for interviews is a matter of repetitive-motion sickness. She’s simply answered too many well-meaning but moronic questions…
A few years ago, “grunge” could be defined as a persistent fungus found in shower stalls, or as the flannel coating that forms on the teeth of drunks who collapse without brushing. Today, of course, Seattle artistes and rat-pack journalists have turned “grunge” into a revolution. Soundgarden, Mother Love Bone,…
Various Artists The Genius of Dave Bartholomew (EMI) Smiley Lewis The Best of Smiley Lewis: I Hear You Knocking (EMI) One listen is all it takes to understand why New Orleans music dominated the R&B charts in the mid-Fifties. With its steady backbeat, wailing sax breaks and bluesy vocals, it…
If you think that sex and music began with the cock-in-a-sock antics of the Red Hot Chili Peppers or the funkin’ rhythms of the earthiest hip-hop bands, think again. James Brown and 70s artists like Funkadelic and Rick James blatantly built careers on the theme of “getting in the groove”–hardly…
It is about five minutes into Digable Planets’ brand-new superstardom, and already there’s a small problem. It’s not the group’s backbreaking schedule, full of interviews and coast-to-coast spots on the Arsenio and Letterman shows. Nor is it the cold that Digable Planet Ladybug has developed from shooting the group’s video…
One Foot in the Grave Lookin’ Good! Who’s Your Embalmer? (Triple X) Move over, California, Arizona now has the dubious distinction of being the novelty-rock-act capital of the world. We’ve even got both ends of the age spectrum covered–tots (Litl’ Willie) and the tottering (One Foot in the Grave). In…
One night last year, Def American founder Rick Rubin strolled into L.A.’s King King Club. Onstage that night was a revamped version of longtime L.A. blues band the Red Devils. Having proved his “Midas touch” on rap, metal, tasteless comedy, grunge and alternative, it suddenly occurred to the recording industry’s…
There’s not much one can say anymore to raise the hackles of Average White Band members, including co-founder and leader Alan Gorrie. Since the band was founded, in 1972, it’s suffered a heaping helping of caustic criticisms, a long series of major-label woes and one profound tragedy. It’s been more…
Just when you thought it was safe to go near the water . . . there’s a slimy new connection between aquatic life and party rock. It began with Jimmy Buffett’s “Parrotheads”–scrambled adults who suck down margaritas and totter into Buffett gigs with large, plastic shark fins strapped atop their…
To guitarist Dave Alvin, the Pleasure Barons mean a brush with a deadly, communicable disease. “During the first Pleasure Barons tour in 1989, I drank out of somebody else’s beer bottle at an after party,” Alvin says from Village Recorders, where he is working on his next solo recording. “Next…
Strict ethnomusicologists say that the first great musical innovation came from prehistoric men blowing on bugs’ wings. And to the cave men, that probably sounded fine. We know that later in human history, Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley and the rest were fairly inspired when they mated hillbilly music with…
If he had his druthers, singer-songwriter David Wilcox would have music critics, publicists and their ilk stop calling him a “folk singer.” That label, he believes, belongs to the purveyors of the protest and labor anthems of past decades, to those vocal partisans whose causes were large and whose stirring,…
Your name is Freedy Johnston. You’re a singer-songwriter from Hoboken, New Jersey, by way of Kinsley, Kansas (population 2,000). Your first album, 1990’s The Trouble Tree, concerned life and loss and repeated attempts at redemption. You placed these themes in scenarios ranging from a melancholy take on relationships to an…
