Music

Roots Manuva named his first album, 1999’s promising Brand New Second Hand, after a song on Peter Tosh’s landmark effort Legalize It. While Manuva isn’t the first artist to use roots reggae as a hip-hop touchstone, his point of reference is a little left of center, or more accurately a…

The last time we checked in with the lusty psychedelic scene of the Twin Cities, there were such bands as . . . er, uhh . . . well, Prince, and Soul Asylum, and of course those space-rockin’ Replacements . . . whew. In any event, better late than never…

Fitting that consummate Englishman Nick Lowe has signed with Yep Roc Records of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, as The Convincer continues his trend of making Southern-sounding records. Lowe’s material is set against a moving panorama of Dixie styles, from Muscle Shoals soul to gospel to honky-tonk, with perhaps Geraint Watkins’…

Denise Sullivan opens Rip It Up! Rock ‘n’ Roll Rulebreakers with a simple anecdote. When she received her first record player at age 6, she took a copy of the Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow into her bedroom and “closed the door for the next 12 years.” “I only ever remember…

Perhaps no Sub Pop signing in recent years has undergone a diamond-in-the-rough maturation process as memorable and rewarding as Seattle’s Murder City Devils. Over the course of three long-players, the six-piece (originally a quintet) indulged amped-up Stones-styled R&B, classic mid-’70s proto-punk, metallic-fringed biker rock and full-blown horror-shockadelica — frequently, all…

The New Metal ethos is primal scream therapy. That brawny fella in Drowning Pool yowls, “Let the Bodies Hit the Floor!” — he’s the victim of a harrowing, suburban, latchkey childhood. The problem is, you just can’t trust a maniac who brings his shrink along, and no defense lawyer in…

A name like “Boilermaker” prods the mad cows of journalistic comparison (he said, inscrutably); as soon as you’ve registered it, you start flipping through the mental file folder marked “Alcohol, metaphors regarding.” But consider the drink in question, that sickly-shaky shot wrapped in the comforting banality of domestic beer. The…

Michael Azerrad’s new book, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes From the American Indie Underground 1981-1991, will come as a shock to those who believe the terms of VH1’s Bands on the Run are harsh, that its aspiring rock stars are roughing it, that life on the road is…

Great songs: Every record should have one, the kind of anthem that makes you immediately want to roll down the car windows and sing along or jump up and down in your bedroom while riffing madly on your air guitar — or at least cue up again over and over…

Sooner or later, someone’s going to get around to making Mary J. Blige: The Movie. For years, it looked like that film would come from 40 Acres and a Mule — or some other likeminded outfit — any minute, but in recent years, as Blige has gone from the angry…

Dear Eugene Foley, J.D., Ph.D., CEO – Bodyguard Records, Thanks for the free CD. We of the scribbling profession always appreciate good, ill-gotten loot — it certainly takes the edge off the feeling that you should be creating something yourself rather than snarkily assessing the fruits of others. Matt Cheplic…

A restless, fastidious reporter who writes so vividly he might veer into glossolalia, Nick Tosches is a distinctive explicator of American mongrel music. His goal is complex and philosophical, be the topic Jerry Lee Lewis, Dean Martin, or Emmett Miller, the subject of his latest book, Where Dead Voices Gather…

From the ashes of the Generiks rises the Liars Club, a sparky quartet of still young vets who believe in tri-chord pop churns that uphold the honor of groups like New Found Glory, the Ataris, Buzzcocks and even the Undertones. Though some things are sacred, even loaded with untold possibilities…

Fishbone has never had it easy, and that is one of the understatements of this new century. In the early days of their career, they surely did seem to have the potential to be a world-class band. Ska, funk, soul, metal, punk, pop — hell, even country — these guys…

Today’s musical climate tends to lay the career blueprint right on the table: form band, release indie record, get signed, grab for the brass ring, crash ‘n’ burn, go on VH1 with your recovery tale in time for the reunion tour. What, then, to think of a group willing to…

Most people would agree with the assertion that life is pretty mundane. Lord Byron summed it up perfectly when he said, “When one subtracts from life infancy (which is vegetation), sleep, eating and swilling, buttoning and unbuttoning — how much remains of downright existence? The summer of a dormouse.” We…

Los Angeles’ La Crescenta suburb is hardly known as a hotbed for rock ‘n’ roll, nor is it the place you’d expect to find America’s most prominent dance/rock group. But this far northern enclave in Crescenta Valley, tucked up against the Verdugo Mountains, is what Ken Jordan and Scott Kirkland,…

When Steve Wynn’s grandfather Matthew immigrated to this country from Russia at the dawn of the 20th century, he harbored one great dream: to be a songwriter. Though a promising tunesmith — legend has it that Irving Berlin offered him $50 for one of his songs — the demands of…

In the fall of ’82, I was a schmucky music collector unlucky enough to be working in a record store about to be slammed by the Xmas season juggernaut called Thriller. Then a promo of the first album by the Dream Syndicate — on punk label Slash and hotly tipped…

To begin with scurrilous rumor: The Glands’ first album, 1997’s Double Thriller, was so titled (the story goes) because the console upon which it was mixed was also used for Michael Jackson’s Thriller. How that console was supposed to have gotten into a studio across the street from the 40…

Face it, the National Endowment for the Arts isn’t leaving many jazz and blues guys all that well-endowed, which, if you make a living wailing onstage about the behemoth in your britches, can be a pretty shameful thing. So, how about corralling more government arts bucks by taxing the film…