Joe Herrera likes to take the attitude that every musical experience has value. For instance, Herrera — a husky 23-year-old trumpeter affectionately referred to by local jazz peers as “Little Joe” — spent two years, off and on, playing Broadway show tunes on cruise ships. Traversing as far north as…
As a worshiper of the mythical Delta bluesman Robert Johnson, Eric Clapton always longed to hear stories about Johnson from musicians who’d actually seen him play. But it took years before Clapton felt comfortable broaching the subject with Johnson’s friend Muddy Waters. Clapton knew that many blues pioneers consider it…
Just west of Manhattan, across the Hudson River, lies the burg of Jersey City, the second most populous township in New Jersey. It’s a city littered with a history of corruption and mob influence, thanks to its Depression-era mayor, “Boss” Frank Hague, an FDR crony, and his successor, John V…
A few weeks ago, Total Request Live (MTV’s neo-American Bandstand) broadcast the “Top 10 Britney Spears Videos of All Time.” Viewers were treated to an hourlong smattering of The Many Faces of Britney, from her humble pigtailed beginnings to the sweaty, balls-out hump fest “I’m a Slave 4 U.” There…
“Slave” may be a first: a Britney Spears song that doesn’t cause all listeners over 14 (years or IQ — you pick) to wonder reflexively if it might be preferable to have hammers smashed against their faces repeatedly. This great miracle, like many other miracles performed for equal or greater…
Nearly half the song titles on Andrew W.K.’s debut record contain the words “party,” “love” or “puke” — a sure sign that this is the best party metal the ’80s never gave us. Formerly a one-man show, W.K. built I Get Wet into a dual-ax, kick-drum assault chock with shout-along…
When Johnny Cash sang “I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die,” he might have been singing about Johnny Paycheck’s life story. And when Paycheck sings “(Pardon Me) I’ve Got Someone to Kill” on this collection of Epic-r eleased tracks, one tends to take him at his…
Old tech and tackheads from back in the all-vinyl day surely recall “drum drops,” those groovy discs of nuthin’ but the drums, cut after cut of basic beat played by pro session stickmen and -women. Used primarily for movie and TV cues, as well as basic, pre-sampling looping, drum drop…
Like George W. Bush, the Los Angeles-by-way-of-San Francisco band Black Rebel Motorcycle Club can’t give it to you straight, but looks perplexed by efforts to be savvy. Named for Marlon Brando’s gang in The Wild One, this trio echoes Dubya’s political protocol that dresses up Reagan and Big Daddy’s ideas…
Fishbone has never had it easy, and that is one of the understatements of this new century. In the early days of its career, it surely did seem to have the potential to be a world-class band. Ska, funk, soul, metal, punk, pop — hell, even country — these guys…
Lucinda Williams needs to change her m.o. She survived the past two decades as the consummate music industry underdog, a favorite among critics but a nobody with the masses. Her songs, marked by a mindset of observation, were covered by fellow musicians — most notably Mary Chapin Carpenter’s hit with…
Long Wong’s is dead, even for a Monday. It’s half past eight and the club’s weekly acoustic showcase has started unusually early, smack in the void between happy hour and late night. While most of the assembled patrons are fixed to TV screens flashing returns from the evening’s college basketball…
The Wu is back. The Wu wishes it didn’t have to remind you. The Wu does, though, and the Wu will. Protect ya neck, kids: The Wu-Tang Clan — a nine-man hip-hop hydra head from the slums of Staten Island — is vying to rule a rap landscape it once…
Love ’em or hate ’em, Victims in Ecstacy looks like a band built for success in the music biz. After all, this is a musical age when subtlety is for losers and permanent cult figures. VIE doesn’t suffer from an excess of subtlety. They’re loud, abrasive and image-conscious. They’re unabashedly…
If university music departments offered a survey course on the history of hip-hop, lazier students would be advised to use the X-ecutioners’ new album, Built From Scratch, as their CliffsNotes. More than a vehicle to showcase the quick hands of X-members Rob Swift, Roc Raida, Mista Sinista and Total Eclipse,…
While this is an essential archive of a key figure in modern rock, what you like of it will depend on how open you are to a woman whose best material — the lyrical “Come Back Little Sheba,” the furious “Pissing in a River” — pushes the rock envelope into…
I can’t remember the last time I’ve had a love/hate relationship as intense as the one I’ve been enjoying/despising with Fermin Muguruza’s Brigadistak Sound System. How could I not love an album with Euskera-language lead vocals, Cuban horns, a reggae dub aesthetic, and a Toots and the Maytals cover? How…
Signing up as a tonosPRO member at Tonos.com — the music biz professional’s hook-up site whose ad banners tease “Got the hit? Tonos has the access!” — is a little like hitmaking as a Blizzard massively multiplayer online game. First, you create your player — in the form of your…
Let’s say you’re a young person, maybe between the ages of 19 and 26, and you’ve finished school and you’ve moved to a new city and you’re happily in the process of finding your way around the world, maybe working a job, maybe not, maybe riding a bike, maybe driving…
Ben Kweller stares at the row of posters taped along a wall inside Fort Worth’s Ridglea Theater, six or seven of the same make and model: an oversize reproduction of the cover of his new album, Sha Sha, a close-up of his face with a red toothbrush jammed in his…
Dan Bryk, a frumpy Canuck who refuses to give his age but looks to be in his 20s, sits on an outdoor patio behind his Yamaha keyboard and sings his ass off, which isn’t such an easy task — the dude’s heavy, literally. It’s 9 p.m. on a Thursday in…
Rob Withem collects song titles. Withem, singer-guitarist for the ’80s-flavored pop group Fine China, spends much of his time conjuring up captivating turns of phrase, storing each new idea in a Word computer file, with the intention of eventually building a song around it. Although it’s a method that John…
