Jason Pierce doesn’t know how to read. Music, that is.Incredible, then, that Pierce has managed to construct dense, intricately crafted music over a career that’s spanned more than a decade, first as singer/guitarist for ’80s-era British psychedelic-rock icons Spacemen 3 and later as a founding member and the mastermind behind…
Sparing no expense and subjecting himself to an appalling level of moral compromise, Gumbo has secured numerous seedy contacts in the music industry who now supply yours truly with all manner of smut and trash on musicians who play roots music. So you think that National Public Radio interview with…
On the morning of Tuesday, October 30, Robin Nash went to work thinking she’d be unemployed in a couple of days.Nash, long the midday linchpin of alt-rock station KEDJ-FM 106.3 and KDDJ-FM 100.3 (The EDGE), had known since mid-September that her days were numbered on the Valley’s airwaves. That was…
Sometimes it seems the path to teen-pop stardom is traveled by supersonic space rocket. Drawing from our nation’s apparently abundant pool of singing and dancing dream prom queens, new Mandys, Krystals and Christinas are discovered, groomed, prepped and launched into the pop music limelight faster than George Jetson carpooling daughter…
When Stanley Kowalski mumbled, “What are you, a bunch of queens or something?” in A Streetcar Named Desire, he wasn’t fixing to pay his wife and nutty sister-in-law any compliments. But if he or you or anyone else were to burst in on the very sane women of W.O.M.B. with…
A 4-foot-by-6-foot Jolly Roger flaps from a post in my front yard. Gives the dirt plot a bit of shade while providing respite from so much Red, White and Blue. Yet, predictably, not everyone appreciates my goofy little symbol of free speech. The hostility in the air is thick and…
Kimber Lanning likes to keep lists of tasks she has to complete.For Lanning, the owner of Stinkweeds Records and a self-described type-A personality, it’s a way of assuring herself that she’s in control of the numerous roles she juggles on a daily basis: record-store owner, college student (majoring in psychology),…
Like their most obvious model, Blondie (sexy female singer + trend-hopping pop-rock band = airplay), Garbage’s greatest virtues are all on the surface. It wouldn’t be fair to call either of them shallow, exactly, it’s just that they tend to celebrate pop more for its sonic pleasures and attitude poses…
The last five years have been tough on the Butthole Surfers. Their 1996 album Electric Larryland spawned the unlikely hit “Pepper,” an odd blend of rap and grunge that was the first taste of mainstream success for a group better known for scatological imagery and hair-raising orgies of psychedelic noise…
Being of original Southern heritage sometimes leads one into misguided reactionary territory, especially when you’re talking Southern Rock. There’s not a punk fan alive from south of the Mason-Dixon line, for example, who didn’t at one point disavow ever liking Lynyrd Skynyrd. Although I had a good excuse when, on…
Does one take seriously a guy in his 60s who claims, “Gonna do it to you baby ’til ya yell for more”? You do when he’s standing on his head and wrenching masterful machine-gun solos from his Strat.Maybe the only person ever to have appeared on The Gong Show who…
After New Times ran a feature last year focusing on four of the biggest-drawing tribute bands in the Valley, their audiences grew. Even naysayers who pooh-poohed the idea of tributes (read: other musicians) found themselves wanting to form a cover band for any number of bad reasons. But there was…
Selling out hasn’t been as simple as Tricky imagined. The former Adrian Thaws made reviewers swoon with 1995’s Maxinquaye, a moody, atmospheric tour de force that helped establish the trip-hop genre worldwide. But although he clearly felt worthy of the praise he received (his ego is as juicy and robust…
The first thing you don’t need to know about The Strokes is that they are handsome. All five of them — singer Julian Casablancas, guitarists Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr., drummer Fabrizio Moretti and bassist Nikolai Fraiture. We’re talking Gap-ad good-looking, with the right haircuts and the right wardrobe…
Just as in World War II, France has spent much of the rock era standing on the sidelines. While England and America carved up most of the Western pop empire between themselves, France was a musical irrelevancy: a land of accordions, Maurice Chevalier, rich cuisine and Jerry Lewis fanatics. But…
Canadians with a badass rep for onstage professional and personal pyrotechnics, Tricky Woo recently slimmed down from a quartet to a trio. But don’t let that lull you into thinking they’ve simmered down; TW still plows forth as manfully as any big-name stoner-rock outfit. It’s just that on their fourth…
Through a sparse guitar line and viola-and-drum interlude breaks a world-weary voice that intones, “I can’t go back to my favorite bar, ’cause now I’m sure that there’s some lessons that I’m never gonna learn.” In “Back to School,” the second song on Thalia Zedek’s debut solo album, Been Here…
I don’t know if the Butchies have seen the rock-crit glorification flick Almost Famous, but it’s pretty obvious that they don’t share director Cameron Crowe’s misty-eyed nostalgia for the rock-star excesses of the early ’70s. With the song, “Anything Anthology,” the opening track of their new record, 3, the lesbian-punk…
Sculpting one’s masterpiece has got to be an awfully self-conscious process, but Tucson-based Valley fave Rich Hopkins strikes the perfect balance on My Lucky Stars, kneading and rubbing contrasts together like a master. It’s musically expansive while devastatingly downcast, lyric-wise; the arrangements are tightly wound like a suspension coil, yet…
Run-D.M.C. created the perfect dramatization of what can happen when rap and heavy metal collide in their landmark 1986 video for “Walk This Way.” The now-classic image of Aerosmith’s Steve Tyler and Joe Perry crashing through the wall of D.M.C.’s rehearsal studio to discover a parallel universe of tough attitude…
The Amor Belhom Duo is the kind of group that people need to see about three times before they’re fully converted.The first time, audiences simply try to find an applicable category for music that wanders from ambient, somnambulant instrumentals to seductive French-pop balladry to noisy avant-punk to hints of Dick…
No one was very surprised when Tenacious D — the duo composed of vocalist/guitarist Jack Black and guitarist/backing vocalist Kyle Gass — finally made it big. It was clear early on that the D had something special, even if the meager audiences that showed up for weekly open-mike appearances at…
