Although some still think of her as the woman who used to wear baggy denim overalls and pluck the fiddle in John Mellencamp’s backing band, Lisa Germano now finds herself in sympathetic artistic company. She’s come into her own as the aesthetic dysfunctional soul-sister to the eels’ E, Michael Penn,…
Hard to fathom that DJ Muggs has already racked up 15 years solid in the game. Kid first appeared back in 1987 on the Colors soundtrack with a Philadelphia-based group named 7A3, then moved forward to build a serious rep for himself as the producer and DJ for L.A.’s stoned…
The four-band tag-team lineup is a full 360 degrees of the overtly fast and furious. This year Glassjaw occupies the headliner’s slot, and will be taking no shorts from frenetic show openers Hot Water Music. Each band represents opposite ends of the cacophony half-pipe, like water for chocolate or a…
1. Christina Aguilera, Stripped (RCA): Last year was Christina Aguilera’s for the taking: Stripped, the long-awaited follow-up to her smash 1999 debut, arrived just as teen-pop took its first steps into a delicate post-pubescence, with artists making bolder creative statements and listeners actually taking them seriously. But instead of delivering…
Top 10 Albums 1. Norah Jones, Come Away With Me (Blue Note) 2. Tom Waits, Blood Money and Alice (ANTI-) 3. Beck, Sea Change (Interscope) 4. Six Feet Under, Music from the HBO Original Series (Universal) 5. N.E.R.D., In Search Of… (Virgin) 6. The White Stripes, White Blood Cells (V2)…
So I was in Tower Records the other day, and I saw that System of a Down has a new CD out called Steal This Album. Since their last one was kind of a letdown, certainly not worth the full $17 list price, I figured, “What the fuck? I’ll crotch…
I hate pretentious album titles that try to sell you Impending Doom. Are these guys fortunetellers? What do they know that we don’t? If we’re all gonna die soon, anyway, why are they even charging money for the CD? Why not just give it away free as a public service?…
The debut record from former Soundgarden front guy Chris Cornell and the three Other Guys from Rage Against the Machine is here, the Rock Franchise finally rollin’ out the new IPO and branding strategy. There was a lot of political music biz dickin’ around while everyone figured out how they…
By the time The Fugs released their self-titled debut album in 1966, lead vocalist and lyricist Ed Sanders had already established Beatnik street cred as the heart and soul of the legendary NYC Peace Eye Bookstore in 1964, and two years earlier as the publisher of a prototypical Lower East…
The roster of reckless rock-and-reefer rollers goes back to the days of cheap schwag and crude pipes made outta tinfoil; from Bloodrock to The Godz to Kyuss and Monster Magnet, tank-topped pothead freaks have operated under the radio radar for years. Queens of the Stone Age seem to have picked…
N.W.A. (or, if you prefer, Niggaz With Attitude) was a group of high school dropouts (save lyricist Ice Cube) who pretended to be racist gangsters, dope dealers, cop killers, rapists and murderous thugs. To the uninitiated first-time listener, their music was a vivid how-to manual for bombings and drive-by shootings…
Your quick Danzig for Dummies: Back when you were in grade school, he was in a band called The Misfits. You went to junior high, he started Samhain. By the time you got your G.E.D., Glenn Danzig had graduated to becoming his own main man. I’m pretty sure that both…
Almost 7,000 people voted in this year’s Dallas Observer Music Awards, and while I have absolutely no numbers to back it up, I’ll go ahead and say I’m fairly certain it’s the highest turnout for this election in quite some time. At least in the five years or so I’ve…
The four members of Los Angeles-based System of a Down are the unlikely architects of a twisted new prog-rock schematic. Their quirky time signatures and complicated instrumental arrangements make their music a little difficult to embrace upon first listen. (Give their audience credit for remembering to take their Ritalin.) Pay…
Slayer isn’t just a band; it’s a precision killing machine. Death is always the hot topic, and they seem to be experts on the subject. Homicide, genocide, suicide. Whatever floats your boat. Slayer kills. Shit is for real. Unless you’re willing to risk life and limb for a rock-and-roll night…
If James Hall ever became immensely popular, we’d have to kill him; for now, he’s still our little secret. Obligatory understatement: Here Comes the Trick, the first album by Hall and his band, Pleasure Club, may be the best rock record we’ve heard in years. The new songs are both…
To those who knew Roxy Gordon, the news of his passing on February 7 may have caught them a little off guard, but the official cause of death didn’t come as much of a surprise: cirrhosis of the liver. The man loved his liquor. Sorry if that sounds blunt, but…
