Let’s face it–the tuba isn’t exactly a sexy instrument. When one thinks tuba, among the images generated are: polka, old men (detail: old men wearing black knee-high socks and bad plaid shorts), and flabby, elongated cheeks. Just how the New York-based trio Drums & Tuba produce such layered, groove-laden music…
So they’re legal drinking age now, and they look it, too: On the CD sleeve, Donnas A., C., F., and R. dress it up and tone it down till they resemble girls who went from serving cocktails to ordering them without having to flash fake IDs. Gone are the skintight…
It’s easy enough to pinpoint when things started to go wrong in Australia; take one Rollins Band tour, stir in some Sonic Youth fandom, and top off with the Nirvana effect, and pretty soon you’ve got an islandful of former underachievers aiming to make gleefully derivative punk/noize skronk en route…
I never got the third album from San Antonio’s Sons of Hercules, 1999’s Get Lost, but I’ve no doubt it sounds like its two predecessors: 1994’s eponymous debut and 1996’s Hits for the Misses…and, for that matter, the Stooges’ Fun House and the MC5’s Back in the USA and every…
Speaking generally for a sec, I don’t like singers who talk instead of sing. That’s why hip-hop (well, besides Ol’ Dirty Bastard and Biz Markie) took a while for me: no singing, just talking. Or rhyming. Or whatever. (To clear my name, I have of course since seen the light–or…
Life is filled with little ironies, and one of the strangest is that New York City–no one’s idea of a home on the range–is something of a nexus for country music. For more than a decade, on Monday nights, Beat Rodeo has bashed out covers of Buck Owens and Hank…
Five years from now, Twiztid’s second album, the just-released Freek Show, is going to be seen as a masterpiece of post-apocalyptic rap-metal. Its cultural scavenging will be perceived as a sharp and perceptive look at society on the brink of a mass breakdown. And its auteurs, Madrox and Monoxide, will…
For every Chris Mars or Will Johnson and Centro-matic, there’s a Phil Collins. Or Don Henley. Or, God forbid, Tommy Lee and his rapping penis. Guess what we’re saying is when a drummer decides to step up to the mike, the results are, at best, mixed. Former Buck Jones drummer…
What’s the point of a best-of anyway? In Blur’s case, any self-respecting fan already owns the band’s entire catalog, and the casual fans have either downloaded “Song 2” off Napster or bought the latest volume of Jock Jams. The answer, of course, is money. Take some old tunes, add a…
He blames it on the caffeine-free Pepsi, though that probably has nothing to do with it, as vile as a beverage labeled both “caffeine-free” and “Pepsi” might be. Likely, it occurs because although it’s a “lovely, sunny day” in Duluth, Minnesota, he is stuck inside on the phone, talking to…
It all makes sense, really, if you think about it. If you contrast and compare, stick to the facts, add it all up, it’s the only logical conclusion. Really. The only real surprise, looking back, is that it didn’t happen sooner, and actually, looking back, it couldn’t have happened any…
By late afternoon on January 18, the phone calls and e-mails were coming in one after the other. A few people even poked their heads in the door to see what was up. The details changed a little bit each time around, sure, but everyone essentially wanted to know the…
Listening to Shipping News is a bit like getting into a drunken car accident: You’re not entirely sure what just happened, but you’re almost certain you don’t want it to happen again. The band’s songs favor length: Their average duration is about six minutes, during which guitar parts clock in…
I’ve never been to nebraska–I don’t think I have anyway–but the place gives me the creeps. Not, as you may have guessed, because I have a fear of small towns or flat land or multi-grain breads, but because all the bands I know from there scare the shit out of…
Honesty can be a tricky or even dangerous thing to possess and to use in your everyday life, depending on how you choose to use it. For example, look at the protagonist of Albert Camus’ The Stranger. He shoots a man–ostensibly in self-defense–during a scuffle, and has enough witnesses and…
You did not grow up in the world over which the Backstreet Boys now reign: Your treacly pop songs didn’t feature cell phones with batteries cutting out, for example, and your teen idols usually included only one “thanks to the fans” number on their albums, not three. One-hit wonders were…
When Kurt Cobain’s mother, Wendy O’Connor, cried to the Associated Press, “I told him not to join that stupid club,” she wasn’t talking about Columbia House. She was referring to the exclusive rock-stars-dead-at-27 fraternity. But membership has its privileges. If you’re one of those die-young elite who lament over a…
Sometimes she tells herself that no one remembers, convinces herself that everybody has forgotten her songs and her three network television shows and every last one of her 84 Top-40 singles. On those days, she’s certain the era of Vic and Frank and long, luxurious gowns and singing in tune…
Jason Ringenberg’s career path has taken a number of detours, no matter how you simplify it on paper or whose side you take. His longstanding band, Jason & the Scorchers, has been an alt-country favorite since its debut in 1981 and has regularly been picked to be the next Next…
To the chagrin of all immediate family members, we voted for Ralph Nader in last November’s election. If we hadn’t voted for Nader, well, we probably would’ve voted for Al Gore. And after Gore, we’d have written in Martin Sheen or maybe Kevin Kline, possibly Harrison Ford or Michael Douglas…
Let’s set the record straight: Despite rumblings from the underground, this disc is not a worthless, sellout piece of shit, nor does it spell the artistic death of New York hip-hop indie powerhouse Rawkus. Die-hard heads may be disappointed over the change in direction from Vol. 1, which almost exclusively…
It may be true that rock critics are a bunch of failed musicians. I wouldn’t know, because the prospect of career musicianship (turned sour for me around Suzuki Book Four, thanks) seems equally depressing as growing old writing record reviews. There’s a difference between a successful musician and a career…
