Some critics feel that open-mindedness is a waste of time. For instance, an ex-colleague at a Westword sister paper once pitched music editors like myself on a review of a Rolling Stones kickoff tour date by guaranteeing to rip the band a new one, despite the fact that the gig…
Back when Mark Linkous, the man behind Sparklehorse, was dirt poor, he would venture into the woods near his Virginia farmhouse and root around for pieces of old rusty tin. “I’d make whirligigs out of them or shoot them up with a shotgun and write ‘This was shot with a…
TLC FanMail (La Face) Production is often used as a coat of paint that’s slapped on to disguise the inferiority of the song beneath it; scrape it off, and what’s left can be mighty frightening. But on other occasions (like this one), unfathomably expensive studio techniques can have a fascination…
Although Sandi Denton, known to members of the hip-hop nation as Pepa, sees no reason why she shouldn’t continue to prosper in the rap game for many years to come, she realizes that her thirteen-year-old group, Salt-N-Pepa, is a bit long in the tooth by the genre’s standards. Which explains,…
Over the past ten years or so, Los Lobos has probably been referred to in print as the best band in America more frequently than any other, but its level of popularity has seldom been commensurate with its formidable reputation. While groups capable of far less pack arenas, the pride…
Ginger Baker is wrapped mighty tight. He’s in the midst of a conversation from his sprawling property near Parker, where he’s lived for just over five years, when the pack of dogs he keeps erupts at the sight of an unexpected visitor. Baker listens to their feverish yapping for a…
For the past year, Susan Tedeschi has been the hottest woman in the blues. Following the release last spring of her debut disc, Just Won’t Burn, she’s earned pages of great press, hosted countless sold-out shows and upheld a touring itinerary that makes her feel practically homeless. Along the way…
Man…or Astroman?, the last attraction I saw at the 1999 edition of Austin’s South by Southwest, the country’s largest music conference, seemed to epitomize its current state. The band, which appeared early March 21 at a venue called La Zona Rosa, cheekily pretends to be futuristic, but almost everything about…
It’s a scenario perfectly suited to Celebrity Deathmatch, MTV’s blood-and-clay tribute to the war between the stars. In one corner would stand the men of REO Speedwagon, an arena-rock act that made the Eighties sound even worse than they would have otherwise with gruesome hits like “Keep on Loving You.”…
MTV Celebrity Deathmatch: Round 1 MTV Celebrity Deathmatch: Round 2 (Sony Music Entertainment) Anyone who believes that MTV’s programming is currently in the crapper will get no argument from me. The network still shows music videos, but generally not at hours when anyone’s conscious–and folks interested in seeing clips starring…
The preface to this week’s column was necessitated by a recent letter e-mailed to me not once, but several times by pissed-off reader John La Briola. In it, he asked, “Just how far do the Apples in Stereo have their fist up your butt? It’s not enough to force-feed us…
Rusted Root’s music may conjure images of twirling, patchouli-packing hippie folk enjoying an eclectic global-village vibe, but the outfit’s origins are pure “Summer of ’69” Americana. Band co-founder Patrick Norman says that he’s no longer motivated by the prospect of jumping groupies–in his words, “That was a product of my…
“I think one of the scariest audiences is four-year-old kids,” says Chuck Cuthill, jug player for the 32-20 Jug Band. He should know. Last fall, Cuthill, guitarist/ kazoo player Dan Kase, washtub bassist Aaron Thomas and multi-instrumentalist John Hickham appeared at the Montessori Institute Children’s House in Denver before a…
According to most music historians, saxophonist Sonny Rollins made his first trip to a studio on January 20, 1949, in support of vocalist Babs Gonzales. He was only eighteen years old at the time, but by all accounts, the talent that made him one of the top instrumentalists in jazz’s…
Like many other rock-oriented acts that embrace the spiritual, San Francisco’s Visual Audio Sensory Theater, better known as VAST, is in danger of being pigeonholed as a “drug band.” But Jon Crosby, a 22-year-old singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who is VAST’s only core member, rejects such psychedelic stereotypes. “I think people…
“We really don’t want people having to take their time figuring out whether they’re going to like us or not,” says Bradly Wayne Shaver, singer and frontman for the Weaklings, from Portland, Oregon. “We don’t want to stand there and look pretty. We want to put on a good fucking…
For many longtime staffers at the Swallow Hill Music Association, what’s perhaps most unexpected about the organization’s twentieth anniversary, which is being commemorated on Friday and Saturday, March 12 and 13, at its new 71 E. Yale headquarters, is the fact that it’s happening at all. “We’re really standing on…
How is Sally Taylor unlike most local musicians? Counting the ways would require a mainframe computer the size of the Astrodome–but here’s a couple of examples. Whereas the average area performer would sell his or her family into slavery to get a contract with a major-record label, Taylor, who lives…
In one episode of Star Trek, Captain Kirk and his cohorts stumble upon a colony of giant, glowing brains encased in glass. The enlarged, crenulated cortexes explain to the crew that they were once part of a species with bodies but add that, over time, evolution favored those gradually dispossessed…
George Martin has never been a technophobe–far from it. During his more than forty years as a producer–most notably with the Beatles–he eagerly embraced advances in recording methodology, and the studios he oversaw were always equipped with the latest gadgets and gewgaws. For these reasons, his decision to conduct interviews…
While awaiting the start of the Lauryn Hill appearance at the Mammoth Events Center on February 27, I couldn’t help but imagine her backstage thinking, “I won five Grammy awards last Tuesday–so what the hell am I doing in this shithole?” Bill Graham Presents/Chuck Morris Presents may have just purchased…
Various Artists Porn to Rock (Callner Music) Sex-O-Rama 2 Classic Adult Film Music (Oglio) Savvy music fans are right to be skeptical of gimmicky projects like Porn to Rock and Sex-O-Rama 2, two new albums that bank heavily on the public’s growing penchant for porn. But in their own way,…
