The first thing you hear are the rhythms: bass drums, snare drums, high-hat cymbals, rattles, even stamping feet. Then the guitars begin–intricate melodies, picked instead of strummed, repeated until they become a groove. In the background, a bass guitar rumbles just behind the beat. Finally, a singer begins to sing,…
If you’ve been in line at the grocery store lately, scanning the magazine covers while you wait, you may have noticed a trend. Down below the tabloids screaming, “World’s Fattest Cat Saves Babies From Burning Building” or “Aliens Meet With Ross Perot,” are the serious mags. Almost all of them…
Chuck D said, “Elvis was a hero to most, but he didn’t mean shit to me.” Bruce Springsteen said, “That Elvis, man, he’s all there is. There ain’t no more. Everything starts and ends with him.” Worshiped and despised, Elvis Presley is still, 15 years after his departure, all things…
So Bill Clinton tried to bag votes from corn farmers and middle-class blacks horrified by the South Central L.A. riots by cluck-clucking at Sister Souljah’s musings on killing white people? And pop culture antisnob Dan Quayle got bent out of shape because of Ice-T’s cop-killing wet dreams? It’s always amusing…
Evan Dando, leader of the Lemonheads, is trying to describe a feeling he gets when things aren’t going well. “You know when you’re a kid and you play really hard all day? And then you sit down and everything’s still moving?” he asks. “I still feel that way sometimes. I’ll…
A friend of mine tells a story about his first King Sunny Ade concert. It was the friend’s first date with the woman who would later become his wife. Anticipating the usual droning, chunk-a-chunk-a-chunk reggae show, he had taken care to alter his consciousness before entering the arena. Pleasurable as…
Texas-born singer-songwriter and avid angler James McMurtry refused the bait. No, he said in his soft, deep drawl, he wouldn’t have had all this recent success if it wasn’t for his famous father, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Larry McMurtry, author of Lonesome Dove and The Last Picture Show. “Hey, if it…
One of the most frequently used phrases in the peculiar lexicon of the music business is “touring in support of.” What that deceptively clinical term means is that a record label is forcing a band to sleep in rickety vans, play empty clubs and do long-distance telephone interviews for the…
It’s an unfortunate fact that crooners and saloon singers tend to age into a fine whine. Frank Sinatra has become the grumpy, croaking godfather; Wayne Newton the willing Vegas parody; Andy Williams and Robert Goulet the desperate guests on third-rate daytime talk shows. Only Tony Bennett stands as an undated,…
Ask some slacker from San Francisco what the Phoenix music scene means, and he’d probably say the Meat Puppets or the Gin Blossoms. Call up Rolling Stone with the same question, and they’d rattle off names like Alice Cooper and Stevie Nicks. But chat with a deejay at a London…
Having a pop song with the word “teen” in it can be a scary thing these days. Just ask David Lowery. Last fall the leader of now-extinct pop eccentrics Camper Van Beethoven re-emerged with a new band, Cracker. After the group completed its self-titled debut in September, it had to…
“I must be incredibly lucky to be me. I mean, I might well explode if I exchanged bodies with someone else.” Robyn Hitchcock is doing it again. He’s acting the eccentric. He’s waxing metaphysical. His mind’s getting away from him. Hitchcock, the crazy uncle of postmodern pop, was supposed to…
Have you noticed that the EP, that five-song minialbum once considered a strictly European innovation, has come back into its own after years of disfavor? Why EPs, one of many now-extinct New Wave-inspired phenomena, lost favor in the mid-Eighties remains a mystery. But today they’re back with a vengeance, both…
You see them at work. You see them at school. Loners. Weird guys with strange looks on their faces. Goofy guys with bodies that don’t seem to fit together and minds that don’t seem to work just right. They wear the wrong clothes, they laugh at the wrong times. They’re…
What would it take for you to believe there was a conspiracy against you? One involving the U.S. government? One in which your loved ones had been murdered? Wherever John Trudell’s life leads, he will always be able to close his eyes and return to February 1979. Twelve hours after…
Home in Music City for a rare, brief respite from the road, Delbert McClinton seemed anything but relaxed. Once our attempt at having a telephone conversation–interrupted a near-dozen times by barking dogs, call-waiting beeps and ghostly, third-party voices–was consummated sans interference by switching to a private phone line, there were…
This installment in New Times’ occasional review of local music product could be called “The Young and the Restless.” Along with a couple of debut tapes by young bands, we also take a look at a tape and a single by the recently split Cryptics, led by Valley music veteran…
It was old hat and new house in downtown Phoenix this past Saturday night as neocountry godfather George Strait inaugurated the fresh, flashy digs at the new America West Arena. The young crowd, clad mostly in multigallon brims, achingly tight Wranglers and dead reptile and bird boots, began gathering in…
The concept of a series of pop songs concerning the cancer deaths of two friends is dubious at best–likely to succeed neither as philosophical exploration nor as enduring pop. On his new album, Magic and Loss, however, Lou Reed, still one of rock’s most contradictory figures, comes impressively close to…
Although he’s being diplomatic, Jason Newsted is thinking something a little more pointed about people who say Metallica’s gone soft. Part of his frustration comes from having to answer questions about how big the band has become, how tunes like “Enter Sandman” are pop and why the band that defined…
Scottsdale musician Ray Herndon couldn’t be happier with the success his band, McBride and the Ride, has achieved. Well, actually, he probably could be happier, but Herndon is reluctant to knock a good thing. “Oh, I’m very content,” the tall, longhaired lead guitarist for the harmonic-happy, neo-country trio asserts, leaning…
It seems like only yesterday that the once-rebellious Mick Jagger uttered those portentous words, “I don’t want to be doing this when I’m 40.” Or was it 50? Either way, Jagger was speaking about music, of course, not business. Because when it comes to business, the Stones will never retire…
