I think G. Love is high. “What we do is just, like, American music. In this day and age, everything is one, and we just play music, you know what I mean?” Hmm. Correction: I know G. Love is high. “This is what we do, man. We just play this…
When you’re in a young band starting out, trying to get people to buy your debut album and tickets to your shows, this is how it goes: You’re doing an interview with a writer in one of the next tour stops, and the cell phone you’re using won’t cooperate. The…
Four summers ago at Deep Ellum Live, the frustrated disappointment of the scattered fans was a pitch louder than the electronic bird sounds and shimmers coming from Rickie Lee Jones’ accompanists as she spun around onstage amid candles and lamps. She’d pause at the microphone now and again to slur…
Maybe our memory is failing us a little bit, but we’d swear Lift to Experience started working on its debut, The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads, more than three years ago. However many years it took, it was long enough for the band to completely record and scrap one version of Crossroads and…
The second album of R.E.M.’s Third Phase (end of First Phase: Document; end of Second Phase: departure of drummer Bill Berry) is not much different, and certainly no better, than the first, 1999’s Up, which should have been titled Down. It offers more of the same: pet sounds drenched in…
Rivers Cuomo took a chance a few years ago, and from the sound of it, he’ll never take another one, at least not any time soon. On 1996’s Pinkerton, he collected every one of his confused emotions and awkward missteps for public display, tying them to songs that abandoned Ric…
When Billy Joe Shaver gives directions to his modest house on the outskirts of Waco, he says to disregard the handwritten sign on his front door. “Please do not disturb I haven’t slept in two days,” it says. “That’s just so some ol’ drunks don’t come by at 5 in…
First time I saw the Go-Go’s: early 1980s, at a local punk-rock club, probably the Hot Klub. Belinda Carlisle, girl of my teen-cream dreams, was chubby back then–soft and round and pretty. A girl flirting with being a woman, the angles in her face still obscured by baby fat. She…
The funny thing about singer-songwriters is that most of them can neither sing nor write songs. Occasionally a voice will emerge from the coffee-shop circuit, but for every Jeff Buckley, there are innumerable insufferable slam poets with acoustic guitars. New Jersey native Pete Yorn falls somewhere in between. On his…
Joan Jett has worn her rocker uniform and her tough-girl snarl that betters even Elvis’ confident lip curl for so long now that it makes you wonder if the Philly-born, Los Angeles-raised siren ever suffered from the doubt that seems to wiggle its way under the skin of every rock-and-roll…
Unless you’ve ever had your clock cleaned by a drag queen, don’t think for a moment that you know what it’s like to be Handsome Dick Manitoba. The Dictators’ charismatic front man got himself entangled in one of the most celebrated imbroglios of the mid-’70s at proto-punk hole CBGB’s during…
Here’s how good a job Robert Jenkins has done spreading the word about his new record label, Summer Break Records: Even though Summer Break had yet to release anything at the time, the label came within a few nominations of making the 2001 Dallas Observer Music Awards ballot in the…
Almost everyone can name some scene in some movie that left such a profound impression on the mind’s eye that it caused him or her instantly to become aware of the overwhelming power of moviemaking techniques, even if it wasn’t realized as such at the time. It’s especially the case…
Though it’s only about 93 miles as the crow flies from Toronto, Ontario, to Rochester, New York, it’s a straight line that runs primarily through Lake Ontario, requiring a drastic detour if you’re going to travel between the two by automobile. You have to head southwest and wrap around the…
You have to like Chris Mills’ songs. You just have to. If for no other reason, you have to like them because he understands that love and hate aren’t separated by much, that people make bad choices that can’t be easily fixed, that life isn’t a series of happy moments…
Tonight’s the night for you playa-haters who think post-punk equals post-important. The Dismemberment Plan, from Washington, D.C., makes rock and roll rooted in guitars and their traditional baggage, but it deviates from the norm via an ever-expanding vocabulary of tricks learned by paying close attention to the lunatic fringe working…
Wanna start a fight? Walk into any alt-minded, college-radio-friendly, independent record store in America during its peak after-school hours and proudly proclaim, “Rivers Cuomo sucks,” and see what happens. You may not incite the throwing of punches or even the pulling of hair, but you’ll definitely be the recipient of…
When is the Smirnoff Music Centre not the Smirnoff Music Centre? No, not when you’re too ‘faced at Edgefest to remember where you are. The correct answer is July 1, when a tour featuring Aaron Carter, his sister Leslie Carter (both siblings of Backstreet Boy Nick Carter) and the A*Teens…
The answer to the question would be Yo La Tengo bassist James McNew, covering the O.S.M. himself, who proclaimed himself as much on The Black Album back when people actually paid retail for Prince bootlegs. Maybe “covering” is too misleading a word, the same way “fucking awful” can be misleading…
If the thought of keeping up with the latest and greatest in underground rock, combing through second-hand record stores until you develop carpal tunnel syndrome, managing the day-to-day operations of a small label, parenting, producing/recording/writing/composing music, reading, writing, living and breathing makes you want to scream enough is enough is…
I’m about to start seriously player-hating on this fool in front of me. It’s two weeks ago, and we’re standing in a tiny stairwell to the left of the stage at Boston’s Roxy nightclub watching Sonic Youth play a show to a couple of thousand appreciative fans, which is more…
A brief explanation: Scene, Heard is accused of overlooking new bands trying to do new things so often, it might as well be part of the job description. While that still isn’t the case, it is an unavoidable fact, as inescapable as the Slop 40 spilling over the edges of…
