Perhaps the event that most influenced Iris DeMent’s professional trajectory occurred before she was born. See, her father had been a fiddler–and a good one, too. Iris, the youngest of 14 children born to Patric and Flora Mae DeMent of the cotton-farming community of Paragould, Arkansas, pestered her siblings to…
Blow Pops American Beauties (Get Hip) There was an old Saturday Night Live joke between Chevy and Gilda that went like this: “Knock knock.” “Who’s there?” “Babs’ uvula.” “Babs’ uvula who?” “I don’t know, Babs . . .” That’s sort of the way I feel about this album. Not because…
If I owned an enormous, influential, major label, a lot of things would be different. For me, anyway; a bigger bank balance, more yes men, the finest aspirin money can buy, and–for the Beat Angels–there’d be a big, fat recording contract. This is one of the few tapes I’ve come…
Shonen Knife The Roxy May 19, 1994 They were cute! They were funny! They were endearing! They rocked! They were Naoko Yamano, Michie Nakatani and Atsuko Yamano–Shonen Knife–in Phoenix for the very first time, all the way from Osaka, Japan. Before we continue, this is what you need to know…
It is dawn, and I am sitting atop Squaw Peak, as is my wont, clad only in black jockstrap and simple yachting cap. The sun hits me and glances upon the crystals at my feet, arranged in a classic tantric form derived from the sacred teachings of Baba Gin Rummy,…
Are you afraid for rock n’ roll? Do you wince at summer tour offerings that seem to consist of the same, tired dinosaur acts that punk rock was supposed to have killed off a decade ago? Are you flabbergasted that people actually wait in line to see simpering trash like…
When Zig Zag Black guitarist Michael Venell died unexpectedly at the age of 23 on April 7, I made a brief mention of it in this column. I didn’t know Venell, but many of you did. Going by the phone calls and letters that I’ve received over the last few…
The record company is “shocked.” Classical-music minds call it “freakish.” Skeptics are crying “fad,” and cynics are thinking “Faust.” The hubbub concerns an inexplicably best-selling CD of Gregorian chant performed by a heretofore little-known group of Benedictine monks in Spain. The CD is titled Chant, and quite simply, it consists…
This is a description of legendary bluesman Howlin’ Wolf, from the masterful work Nothing But the Blues: He “stood six feet three inches and tipped the scales at more than 270 pounds. . . . Big, fearsome, solitary and mysterious, the Wolf was already an imposing figure in the Delta…
Look through the press kit on Vic Chesnutt and you’ll see a lot of impressive things: articles saying he’s part of “the future of country music,” reviews likening his work to that of Charles Bukowski and Leonard Cohen, R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe heralding him as “the best songwriter of our generation.”…
The pantheon of major Texas blues guitarists would have to include the late, flamboyant Stevie Ray Vaughan, the brilliant albino Johnny Winter–and a quiet, 71-year-old jazzman named Herb Ellis. The aging Texan is a major link between the parallel developments of jazz and blues, as well as one of the…
Surely, one of the great tragedies of the last four decades is the demise of dramatic radio. Before television arrived to poison and dull the soul of this great nation, radio presented a thinking person’s medium, a theatre of the imagination. It was the beauty of simple words and sound…
Cannibal Corpse The Bleeding (Metal Blade) In the press release accompanying this unrelenting piece of shit, the group’s “vocalist” Chris Barnes says the titles of his “songs” tell you exactly what each one is about. He’s not kidding; just get a load of these choice cuts: “Force Fed Broken Glass,”…
You’ve waited four long weeks for this, I know you have. Yes, it’s time again for more local reviews, kids. Get em while they’re hot. By the way, I don’t know if we’re running out of bands that actually have tapes or folks just aren’t sending anything in because they’ve…
“The Knack are back and they’re beautiful.” So trumpeted the trade ads for the power-pop group’s second release, . . . But the Little Girls Understand, way back in 1980. Although that album went on to sell two million copies, it was widely viewed as a failure because it yielded…
The most innovative guitarist alive was discovered in 1983 as he played for change on the street corners of Manhattan. Music giants like Frank Zappa and jazzmen Art Blakey and Cecil Taylor were blown away by a 23-year-old Stanley Jordan who radically redefined the potentials of guitar music. Eleven years…
When Johnny Rotten first walked into Malcolm McLaren’s life, Rotten was wearing a torn Pink Floyd tee shirt with the words “I Hate” in magic marker scrawled all over it. Maybe you’re of a similar persuasion these days, even if you own several Floyd albums. Or maybe, like the sleazy…
Chileo Boys The Chileo boys pull their fish by the fins in the dirt and sing about the old times and the women they will know, Mariquita and Caras, the girls in the dreams of–the when they will be men. Fish, they sell what they can, what is caught, what…
What do you want to know about the Beatles? What do you want to know that countless films, documentaries, books, TV shows, plays, albums and articles haven’t already told you? The more accurate question, perhaps, is what is there left to know about the Beatles? When you’ve got a band…
Consider the almost surreal hyperbole the Columbia Records biography spews about New Kids on the Block’s latest album: The group’s members, it reads, “have matured . . . with a razor-sharp musical direction–and a street-savvy edge to their still irresistible sound.” It goes on to say, “NKOTB is into [sic]…
When Alberto Ros received a phone call a few years ago from a songwriter who wanted to set his poetry to music, he tossed it off as another “coffee house guitar sort of thing.” Sure, Ros said, why not? The nationally acclaimed poet, who teaches at Arizona State University, is…
The recently opened Gibson’s in Tempe has a decent sound system, plenty of space and a very bizarre policy at the bar, apparently. Fade to last week: There I was, sitting with a friend at aforementioned establishment, quietly drinking beer and tipping accordingly. We were there to see Dead Hot…
