If you find yourself asking who the Vivian Girls are, prepare to be answered on two fronts. In the literary/esoterica world, the Vivian Girls are heroines who lead a child slave rebellion in a 15,145-page fantasy written by janitor-turned-outsider-artist Henry Darger. In the music world, they’re still heroines, a three-piece…
If you find yourself asking who the Vivian Girls are, prepare to be answered on two fronts. In the literary/esoterica world, the Vivian Girls are heroines who lead a child slave rebellion in a 15,145-page fantasy written by janitor-turned-outsider-artist Henry Darger. In the music world, they’re still heroines, a three-piece…
Living with an addict destroys you. Either you shut down emotionally to weather the shitstorms or you erupt like Vesuvius because someone has relegated you to secondary status, behind the drug of choice. An addict only has to keep falling and the world sympathizes with his co-dependency. But how about…
Living with an addict destroys you. Either you shut down emotionally to weather the shitstorms or you erupt like Vesuvius because someone has relegated you to secondary status, behind the drug of choice. An addict only has to keep falling and the world sympathizes with his co-dependency. But how about…
In his bedroom, Mike Roberts has a mural comprised of old gig fliers posters and ads where someone has egregiously misspelled Smoky Mountain Skullbusters’ name wrong. “This was the flyer to our first show, December 9, 2001 “ he says. “And Smoky is spelled wrong. And look at this—‘Rocky Mountain…
In his bedroom, Mike Roberts has a mural comprising old gig fliers, posters, and ads in which someone has egregiously misspelled Smoky Mountain Skullbusters’ name incorrectly. “This was the flier to our first show, December 9, 2001,” he says. “And Smoky is spelled wrong. And look at this — ‘Rocky…
Most-often-heard gripe in the digital age? That there’s no regionalism in music anymore, that once upon a time, you heard a record and could tell in a second if it was from Philly or Detroit or New Orleans. Often, a record label could even reproduce a map indicating the exact…
Rarely has revenge been served colder than the frozen shit sandwich the record industry has been served. Two decades after forcing the record-buying public into accepting the CD without once lowering its list price, people let it be known via iTunes that they just want the tracks they like, thanks…
Frank Zappa is often credited with saying, “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” If describing music can’t capture the emotions music evokes, then making a movie that talks about writing music must reside somewhere between sculpting an opera and cooking with Frank Lloyd Wright. Yet there’s probably no…
Before tax specialists H&R Block admitted to overstating its earnings for 2003 and 2004 by $91.1 million, founder Henry W. Block used to appear in its TV commercials, itemizing “the 17 reasons why you should let us prepare your income tax.” Taking a subliminal cue from the Block head himself,…
Remember when the big fat Mother Superior in The Sound of Music told Sister Maria that every time the Lord closes a door somewhere, He opens a window? Well, Ryan Breen’s career trajectory has been something like that, except, perhaps, without the divine intervention part. No matter how benevolent a…
Sure, we’ve got Americana up the wazoo in this dry-heated home state, but what about “Britannicana,” Britpop-rooted music made in three-digit temperatures? Could it ever happen here? It has, mate, in the form of Eurovox, a classic mod three-piece band styled after the Jam and the Who but without either…
Perhaps the sagest songwriting advice ever bestowed to a newbie came not from a how-to book or a multi-platinum recording artist but from some anonymous grizzly guy I saw at an open mic night in Greenwich Village eons ago. After playing two great songs, he sat down to his coffee…
If anyone’s compiling a reel of defining Arizona 21st-century rock moments, don’t forget Kirkwood Dellinger’s January 2008 appearance on Good Morning Arizona. Falling squarely, and I do mean squarely, under what Elmo Kirkwood will frequently categorize as “corny crap,” the band briefly played to the commercial break a snippet of…
With all the disparate influences Sonorous has in its lexis, the percentages of what you’re going to get (and when) are always in flux, and this clashing of expectations constitutes the best moments on the group’s second CD, recorded “live” to tape during two successive nights at the Lost Leaf…
Perhaps the sagest songwriting advice ever bestowed to a newbie came not from a how-to book or a multi-platinum recording artist but from some anonymous grizzly guy I saw at an open mic night in Greenwich Village eons ago. After playing two great songs, he sat down to his coffee…
In watching the presidential campaign for what feels like forever, the phrase you keep hearing that’s supposed to define people called to public service is “personal narrative.” Experience, judgment, policies, character, good grooming habits . . . They’re nil if you don’t have a compelling life story that you can…
Ask anyone alive during our country’s 200th birthday in 1976, and they’ll tell you it was still the Me Decade, but filtered through Eisenhower eyes, since America had less past to reprocess. On TV, there was plenty of unapologetic jiggle alongside the Happy Days marathon. In music, the ’70s excesses…
Epic is a word that frequently punctuates Larry Elyea’s conversation. Not enough times to warrant a drinking game — like with Sarah Palin and the word “maverick” — but enough to notice it’s the ultimate compliment he can bestow. Sitting in the dramatic control room of his Mind’s Eye Digital…
MTV has a lot to answer for. Killing the radio star to forcefeed us hair bands in the Eighties. Re-imagining punk and grunge to be all those lousy bands that filled two entire CDs of Buzz Cuts in the Nineties. Inventing the reality show and in reality gutting music from…
MTV has a lot to answer for. Killing the radio star to force-feed us hair bands in the ’80s. Re-imagining punk and grunge to be all those lousy bands that filled two entire CDs of “buzz cuts” in the ’90s. Inventing the reality show and, in reality, gutting music from…
It’s either fortuitous psychic planning or just plain dumb luck that The Green Lady Killers released an EP that opens with a song called “Psycho Ellen” in the same week Ellen DeGeneres cuckooed up the airwaves weeping about a troublesome doggy she couldn’t handle with some kind of Michael Vick…
