Sonic Youth A Thousand Leaves (DGC Records) Like Karl Stockhausen or John Cage, Sonic Youth has always exerted more power as an influence, name-dropped by other musicians, than as an act actively listened to and enjoyed by real people. Perhaps for this reason, the veteran avant-rock foursome has long had…
Corky Siegel tends to choose his words carefully. For instance, when asked for his opinion of other artists, like himself, who’ve made the leap from popular to classical music, the Chicago native judiciously avoids any critiques because he thinks that such talk is detrimental to his own creative flow. And…
Modest Mouse just does not give a fuck. For two weeks, the tape recorder jacked into my telephone has been sitting still, waiting for singer/guitarist Isaac Brock’s voice to come through the line and answer a few simple questions. The Issaquah, Washington, threesome is somewhere on the East Coast, playing…
College towns tend to spawn millions of bands, most of them worth slightly less than shit. Take Tempe, for instance, where I live. A hundred cover bands vying for frat-boy dollars at strip-mall bars, and another hundred grabbing at the coattails of a sound that was curiously successful half a…
Eddie Kelly likes to say that he reacts with extreme emotion to everything. Half an hour into an interview at Chez Nous–where his snaky hair braids, chin piercing, elaborate right bicep tattoo and dark lipstick make him stick out like Trent Reznor at an Up With People show–I’ve seen little…
Twenty years ago, Elvis Costello gleefully sang that he wanted to “bite the hand that feeds me.” Costello’s attack on timid radio programmers was hardly the first or last example of a rocker spewing venom at the industry that provided him with a living. In fact, the music-biz diatribe song…
Jorge Hernandez was an 18-year-old accordionist, a Mexican immigrant, when one night in a Los Angeles club he heard a woman sing a song about two drug smugglers. The song unfolded like a film. It told the story of a man and woman–he an illegal, she a Chicana from Texas–smuggling…
Of all the contributions that the ’60s British Invasion made to rock, maybe the most important was that it shifted the emphasis to bands. Up until that time, almost all the major figures in rock ‘n’ roll–Elvis, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry–had been solo artists. Even the Crickets were…
“We accidentally had some hit records along the way, accidentally got lucky and had some television shows along the way and in the meantime my philosophy still holds: Just get on stage, have fun, create a party and that’s it.” Paul Revere’s pragmatic nature tends to downplay any talk of…
I’ve got a campaign slogan for next year’s New Times Music Showcase. Ready? Here it goes: A Volkswagen in every garage, and a chicken in every Dumpster. Okay, it kinda sucks, but you try coming up with a pithy description of a seven-hour, 13-venue, 52-band showcase without straining your gray…
Fugazi End Hits (Dischord Records) Being punk rock’s king of rhetoric and idealism, it’s often forgotten that Fugazi is also an incredibly talented band. Not many people notice anymore. The band’s name either conjures memories of shows stopped so that front man Ian MacKaye could bitch out overzealous moshers or…
Shirley MacLaine in Irma la Douce. Now there’s a woman, the kind of gal I want: hips, lips, wit and sexual tension. And a whore. Shirley MacLaine. Oh, man. I can spend a whole day thinking about Shirley’s Irma and never bore myself. I wonder if any of those so-called…
On a balmy Thursday evening in Cave Creek, the members of Dislocated Styles, Phoenix’s only seven-piece white hip-hop band, are sharing rounds of pale amber ale and appetizers at the Satisfied Frog. Joe Boogie (his legal name) plucks a deep-fried chili pepper from a platter of veggies and wings, smothers…
Mike Watt says he never had a first name until he played in a punk band. As a child, this son of a Navy enlisted man moved with such frequency from town to town, and base to base, that no one ever got to know him long enough to refer…
A few months ago, Pollen had a dilemma on its hands. The local pop-punk quintet was being actively courted by some heavyweight labels, most prominently Interscope Records. The question was whether to continue with an indie that was beginning to learn the ropes, the New York-based Wind-Up Records, or play…
Bionic Jive Six Million Dollar Band (Rorschach Records) Larry Elyea, guitarist and mastermind behind Bionic Jive, had a flexible but definite concept in mind last year when he put this sextet together. He wanted to do something original, and he didn’t care if it sucked. On first impression, Bionic Jive…
Machines are made by men for man’s benefit and progress, but when man ceases to control the products of his ingenuity and imagination, he risks losing the benefits. –Rod Serling The creator of TV’s The Twilight Zone didn’t live to see the advent of sampling technology, but with typical prescience,…
No question about it. Years from now, people will grill each other about it. “Where were you when you first heard the news?” And the response will go something like this: “Jeez, I was driving around in my car, I turn on the radio and I hear someone on there…
Ronnie Dawson is talking about his dad. The 58-year-old Texas rockabilly legend is explaining the thrill he felt as a youngster whenever he saw his father, Pinky, a Western-swing bandleader in the ’30s and ’40s, kick into a tune. But whenever Dawson describes his dad, he could just as easily…
Let’s say that you’re a regular at Nita’s Hideaway. You leave town for a couple of months, and, upon your return, you decide to step into the club for a Thursday-night drink. As you pass through the doorway, you expect to hear roots-rock or classic soul pumping from the sound…
Being the best that never was can be a drag. Just ask Dead Hot Workshop. They’ve been Tempe’s top alternative band for almost a decade. They’ve wowed critics, won (and lost) record contracts and watched their work championed by “lesser” local bands like the Gin Blossoms–Robin Wilson wore a Dead…
Propellerheads Decksanddrumsandrockandroll (DreamWorks Records) At first glance, the title of the debut album by Propellerheads seems like a self-conscious attempt to coin an unwieldy phrase. Upon repeated listenings, however, this album actually starts to sound like what its name suggests: a multihued, state-of-the-art crash course on every imaginable flavor of…
