Billy Corgan is trying to stay humble, but it’s getting tough. The mercurial lead singer/songwriter/personality of the Smashing Pumpkins is becoming a rock star. The band’s debut record Gish is doing well, and the group is about to embark on its first national tour. Even critics love the Pumpkins. Actually,…
Pretenders’ front woman Chrissie Hynde was wandering the streets of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, one afternoon about a decade ago when she stumbled upon three young men banging away on acoustic instruments. Hynde was mesmerized by these Midwest geeks and their sloppy, but heartfelt, acoustic punk. She proclaimed them to be the…
Not all is running perfectly at the world’s largest jazz festival. It’s 2:30 a.m. in the Dutch concert hall in which the North Sea Jazz Festival is being held. Trumpeter Lester Bowie sits backstage, waiting to go on with his band Brass Fantasy. The situation threatens disaster for the jazzman…
The shot on the cover of Divinyls has almost eclipsed the single “I Touch Myself” as the biggest reason to buy the record. It has launched a thousand concert tickets, not to mention the band’s career. The shot shows a profile of lead singer Chrissie Amphlett, swathed only in wide-wale…
Could it be that Ray Benson has been at the Wheel long enough? It’s hard to believe that this legendary road warrior would ever actually choo-choo ch-boogie into the sunset, but a major reduction in tour time is a lock, and other changes might be on the horizon as well…
No one would have believed that the summer’s biggest tour would feature seven cult bands that don’t get a stitch of airplay. But a recession that’s turning tours into a rarity and the coming of age of punk have combined to make the twenty-city Lollapalooza spectacular the summer’s main event…
It used to be that albums were named after their hit single. But then rock ‘n’ roll got meaningful, and choosing the title track became an art. Some groups stick with the hit. Others go for the most enigmatic or lyrically potent. Still others choose whatever hits them at 4…
It’s long been argued that Texas boasts more psychos per capita than any other state in the union. A short roll call of Texas rockers goes a long way toward proving that claim. First off, there’s the Sir Douglas Quintet, a partly Hispanic San Antonio act that pretended to be…
Seattle’s Young Fresh Fellows are haunted by a song. It’s a wacky number called “Amy Grant” that follows them wherever they go. Because people often yell for that tune as soon as the foursome hits the stage, Young Fresh Fellows often open with “Amy Grant.” That way they don’t have…
The sweaty club in Tucson was only half full, but everyone inside was happy. Although the take at the door wasn’t overwhelming, the drinks were going down fast, so the club owner was smiling. White men who normally wouldn’t or couldn’t dance were bouncing and giggling and having a hell…
“Who owns the blue van out front?” The big guy with the short, spiky hair in the “Riopelle ’82” tee shirt hasn’t dropped into Cactus Jack’s, the “Cheers” of Ahwatukee, just to clue some hapless double-parker to move it or lose it. He’s looking around at the shoulder-shrugging suburbanites, wondering…
What makes a scene? No one knows for sure. In Austin it’s the mystique. In New York and L.A., it’s the mass of population. In Chicago and New Orleans, it’s the history. In this town, we’re still figuring that equation out. Sometimes it works and sometimes, well . . …
It’s the day after the South African parliament repealed the Population Registration Act, one of the last chains in the lockup of apartheid. Halfway around the planet, South African reggae singer Lucky Dube is just waking up in the Hilton hotel in Halifax, Nova Scotia. When he answers the telephone,…
On its records, Too Much Joy sounds like your average Nineties punk/pop band: jangly guitars, power drumming and lyrics about the painful intricacies of love in the last decade of the century. The group’s history as a live act, however, reads like a police blotter. In 1990 alone, the members…
“When I tell people–men, women, white, black, everybody–that I sing the blues, they squint or take a step back, or I see something move across their face as they think, `Oh, yeah,'” says blues singer Janiva Magness. Blues fans still have a hard time accepting women playing the blues, Magness…
Forget that their debut record sold two million copies. Forget the travesty of Mariah Carey beating them out of the Grammy for Best New Act. Forget even that this band’s “It’s only rock ‘n’ roll” attitude and catchy songwriting make it a meaty musical antidote to the weak, Axl Rose…
“How much are these wine coolers?” the woman asks incredulously. “Three ninety-nine.” “How much?” “Three ninety-nine,” Nathan Williams says, patiently repeating the price. The woman grumbles but change jingles on the counter. “Thank you, Ma’am. Now, where were we?” While we talk, Williams is working at the counter in his…
In 1987 a man stormed a Denver, Colorado, radio station and, at gunpoint, ordered a deejay to play the depressive pop of British band the Smiths for 24 hours–nonstop. This deranged young fan fantasized about the melancholy warbling of Smiths lead singer Morrissey ringing out all over the snowcapped city…
It’s a typical, quiet Sun City street. Obsessively neat, almost-sterile brick homes. Plaster-cast-cherub and Greek-goddess fountains. White walls. Suddenly, the rumble of tortured electric guitars and the monotone wail of a Wendy O. Williams-style voice break the unnatural serenity of Del Webb’s desert-in-bloom dream come true. Can there really be…
A bluesy slide guitar snarls as a Z-car negotiates a winding coast highway. A blues band plays while co-eds in ridiculously tight, body-sock dresses bounce around and make a bubbly show of drinking low-cal brew. A bunch of bluesmen on break sits around and talks about how baaaad a new…
If Webster’s decided to include an entry for “anti-pop” in its next edition, the definition might go something like this: 1. music lacking in pop conventions (i.e., catchy choruses and fat hooks). 2. music with rapid-fire changes in tempo, texture and mood. 3. music rarely featured on “hot hits” stations…
“You can see it in their eyes,” says Jerry Mele. Searing, seething eyes boiling over with carefully contained aggression. Bright Mack truck headlights mounted on an otherwise placid face. Jerry Mele learned how to gauge the danger lurking behind such ominous orbs during a two-year hitch in Vietnam, where the…
