Adam Panic found there was a better way to scrounge up lunch money than his boring drug store job. He recorded a full-length album at his home last November, titled it The Vamp, and set out for Chapparal High School in Scottsdale, which he attends. “I’d go to school, and…
Mississippi: The Album contains some of the funniest swearing ever committed to tape on a hip-hop record. When David Banner of the duo Crooked Lettaz cusses on his solo debut, it’s purposeful and ugly. When he says “bitch ass nigga,” a frequent insult, the delivery is so over the top,…
I’ve got absolutely no problem with the Y2K-pop model of producer-as-star: Timbaland; the Neptunes; Jermaine Dupri; shit, Jerry Finn–these folks practically guarantee a good time, with high-level artistry an occasional fringe benefit and brand-name consistency a handy way to organize skipping around the radio dial. But the Matrix, as much…
Brooklyn’s Freddie Foxxx (aka James Campbell, who also performs under the alias Bumpy Knuckles) seems to share a lot with 50 Cent, the rapper who rose from the streets of Jamaica, Queens, to offer the Dr. Dre-produced and Eminem-endorsed multiplatinum-selling album Get Rich or Die Trying. Both rappers look similarly…
“Dear fans, where to start?” Jewel writes in the liner notes for 0304, what she describes as a “lyrically-driven . . . modern interpretation of big band music.” While that sounds as appealing as Morrissey fronting Chicago, it actually resembles a smarter Shakira or a folkier No Doubt. And there’s…
As founding member Chris Dreja tells it, making a new Yardbirds album after 35 years seemed daunting: “That’s a long holiday. We’ve been dormant like some bacteria for all that time. Waiting to unleash itself.” While some might question the worth of a Yardbirds album without Eric Clapton or Jimmy…
To a certain fan of a certain subgenre of rock ‘n’ roll, and certainly to any rock critic, there are few things in life more agreeable than the disagreeably somnambulant snarl of Mr. Lou Reed. There’s just something relaxing about the deep, nasal croak that drones on like a distant…
Undeterred by four years of music business grief and languishing sales, incendiary rockers Supersuckers have named their new record Motherfuckers Be Trippin’. “As if we didn’t have enough hurdles putting this record out on our own. We had to put up this one,” remarks Eddie Spaghetti, the band’s proverbially good-natured…
In 1988, Metallica made an album called … And Justice for All, and it was extraordinary, filled with layered lead-guitar harmonies, whipsaw chord changes, near-orchestral structures and focused ferocity. It was, quite simply, one of the greatest metal albums ever made, despite terribly thin production. The songs, the ambition and…
For an impression of how things change, take a look at the two new Isley Brothers CDs currently on sale at your local Best Buy: Body Kiss, the veteran R&B act’s new DreamWorks album, and Legacy’s reissue of 3+3, the band’s classic 1973 LP. Six impassioned-looking young men stare out…
A tribute album to a critically acclaimed songwriter these days seems inevitable, as is the fact that it would be packed with luminaries. But while John Hiatt’s Southern folk-rock snapshots have been so widely covered as to nearly qualify as modern standards, It’ll Come to You shows them to be…
If you first saw The Song Remains the Same at a midnight showing, like I did, chances are the secondhand pot smoke led you to believe that Led Zeppelin had created the greatest cinematic achievement since the invention of film. Quite a different reaction when you saw the film on…
Cheer up, kiddies, the circus is in town. Art-rock freaks Sleepytime Gorilla Museum are coming, with their “this is what it might sound like to have an enjoyable seizure” sound. Sleepytime must be heard to begin to be truly understood, but here goes a modest attempt: An art supergroup of…
Retro’s been a fad for so long now that it, too, seems almost retro. But cool will always be cool, and Marco Polo Saldana, who sings and plays standup bass for local “psychobilly” band the Curse of the Pink Hearse, knows cool. He carries cool with him in an old…
Bust out the black light and the downers, Dead Meadow is here. An unlikely and largely unsuccessful merging of early Pink Floyd psychedelia and Sabbath’s dark metal, Dead Meadow’s music is mostly a bum trip. The music on Shivering King and Others represents an interesting idea, one even the modern-day,…
The atmosphere at O’Mallys on a late spring Tuesday night is pumped. The west Phoenix nightspot, an odd mix of sports bar, swank lounge and dance club, is an urban hip-hop magnet. Especially this night, when an amateur freestyle rap battle has drawn a triple-digit audience. Up-and-coming rhyming hopefuls throw…
“I wasn’t planning on doing this. It was just something I did out of necessity, and then it just kind of turned into my life.” Larry Elyea, veteran musician and guitarist for the hard-core metal band Gift, is the most sought after hard-rock producer in the Valley. He estimates he…
Radiohead have mastered the prog-rock singer-songwriter album — finally. Hail to the Thief, the British band’s latest, is at once an intense personal statement by bandleader Thom Yorke and a celestial dose of guitar heroics, blips, echoes, rattles, moans and other distortions. But the new album also matches mood with…
Marilyn Manson’s appetite for destruction needs sustenance. After 10 years of singing fight songs in fishnets, Manson has been advocating the end of everything for so long that he’s in danger of negating even himself. The shock-rocker’s last disc, 2000’s half-baked Holy Wood, was dismissed by critics and passed over…
The PC forces may not want to hear this, but the porn industry of the 1970s wasn’t all bad. It created numerous professional opportunities for artists, and I’m not necessarily talking about Bambi Woods and John Holmes. Writers like Nick Tosches and Sam Shepard helped fill up countless pages in…
The success of country singer Kenny Chesney — he of the shiny face and black cowboy hat pulled far below his brow — slyly parallels his hit “Big Star.” The Luttrell, Tennessee, native was playing clubs until songs like the ever-so-romantic “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy” fell into his lap…
Fruit Bats are yet another example of a side project eclipsing a musician’s once main commitment. The Chicago band was first created to give head Fruit Eric Johnson (no, not the Archers of Loaf guy or the rad guitar rocker) an outlet from his main band, the now defunct and…
