Brian Wilson Living in Los Angeles came with its share of misery, and, of course, not a few pleasures, the best of which render an intolerable city livable when the mood and music are just right. Every once in a while, the city of magic lives up to its reputation,…
Jeez, not this again Everyone who’s finally ready to open a bar that’s been repeatedly delayed by just about every government entity imaginable take one step forward. Not so fast, Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios. That’s right, Rubber Gloves’ long-rumored bar, tentatively scheduled to open in July, has been kicked in…
Free for y’all Attempting to prove that its technology is indeed here to stay, controversial Napster recently enlisted Limp Bizkit and Cypress Hill to help spread the word via a free-of-charge, Napster-sponsored tour. The tour was originally scheduled to hit the Bronco Bowl on July 22 and 23, but has…
Scene, heard In what has to be one of the stranger anniversaries in recent memory, Sock Monkey will celebrate two years in the gallery bidness with a noon-to-2 a.m. shindig. What’s the big deal? It’s the last event ever at the gallery’s Exposition Park location. No word on where it’s…
Forget about all the other summer tours making their way across the country in convoys of plush buses and overloaded trailers. The real show of the summer is hitting the road in vans a few thousand miles past serviceable, stopping at clubs instead of amphitheaters. In an attempt to use…
Ninety miles or so east of San Francisco, the jarring sight of twin smokestacks erupts from the Northern California scenery, interrupting the placid backdrop of vineyards, blue sky, and the Sierra Nevada mountains. The imposing concrete pillars are remnants of the now-defunct nuclear power plant in Rancho Seco, a man-made…
For years, Russell Simmons has been the King Midas of the hip-hop world: Everything he touches turns to gold…or platinum. While this phenomenon is obviously most lucrative for Simmons himself, his extraordinary talents as a businessman (and, frankly, an architect of culture) have helped elevate an entire community to a…
The news came via e-mail late Friday, just before most people were leaving the office to begin the weekend: Leaning House Records, after five years in existence and twice that many releases, was going out of business. Even though it was the news that people friendly with the label’s owners,…
Slobberbone Everything You Thought Was Right Was Wrong Today (New West Records) The best thing about being a fan from way back is experiencing the delight of listening to a young band become better than you ever imagined. It’s easy, after all, to fall in love at first sound; there’s…
41 Gorgeous Blocks An Emotional Young Person Just Like Yourself (Rogue Elephant) A couple of years ago, Matt Riggle, singer-guitarist for 41 Gorgeous Blocks, seemed to drop out of sight, going from fronting The Fitz at all-ages shows at the Orbit Room to a behind-the-scenes gig recording other bands. While…
Guttermouth Listening to many of Guttermouth’s songs could convince an average listener that singer Mark Adkins is a total asshole. His lyrics bypass normal social mores and can, for instance, extol the virtues and the fun in big-game hunting (“If I can’t shoot them / I’ll start a forest fire…
Pimping ain’t easy Kord Murphy should be enjoying himself right now. Murphy, better known to most rap-metal fans in Dallas-Fort Worth area as Dirty K, should be on the road with his band Pimpadelic, promoting the group’s major-label debut, Southern Devils, which Tommy Boy Records released in April. Murphy and…
Scene, heard A few years ago, guitarist Zach Blair and his bass-playing brother Doni were on the verge of quitting Hagfish and joining Bobgoblin. Now, both are finally getting their chance to work with the band. Well, sort of, since Bobgoblin doesn’t exist anymore. However, the band it morphed into,…
For Mickey Melchiondo and Aaron Freeman–known to their fans as Dean and Gene Ween, respectively–Ween’s new album, White Pepper, was a long time coming. The duo released a double live album, Paintin’ the Town Brown: Ween Live ’90-’98, last year, but it was a quickly assembled archival set; they haven’t…
Robyn Hitchcock and Grant Lee Phillips took different paths to get to the exact same place. For Hitchcock, it began in Cambridge, England, starting the Soft Boys in the late ’70s and getting thrown in with the class-of-’77 punk camp, even though his sensibilities were more closely attuned to early…
It wasn’t until a few years ago that the cerebellum got mixed up with booty music, that furrow-browed folks began to deliberately examine beats intended for the butt and began picking these beats apart. In the process, some ended up deflating the bounce altogether, to the point that all the…
Local schoolteacher-turned-historian Stanley Oberst is on the homestretch of an ambitious project: documenting Elvis Presley’s frequent, though rarely mentioned, Texas appearances in the 1950s. It’s a daunting task, especially considering that Presley played in this state more than anywhere else in the country during the ’50s, and, well, Texas is…
The John Doe Thing Freedom Is.. (spinART Records You wouldn’t think John Doe would know much about freedom, certainly not enough to base an album around the concept. X has always marked his spot, his erstwhile band dooming anything else he’s tried to do, a choke chain keeping him from…
Tastes Like Love Records Summer ’00 Sampler Various Artists (Tastes Like Love Records) OK, so maybe this how-do disc from Lewisville-based Tastes Like Love Records sounds as if it were recorded (and just barely) on a Walkman positioned under a pile of garbage in a trash can across the street…
Metallica Metallica may have been anointed the supreme beings of hard rock after their self-titled (or untitled, actually) 1991 album sold millions and inspired the masses to bang their collective heads, but that dominance has been questioned in recent years by even some of their more zealous fans. All the…
Mötley Crüe In late May, Los Angeles’ Wyndham Bel-Age Hotel (well, room 211 of it, at least) was transformed into a headbanger’s ballroom and tattoo parlor as Mötley Crüe took over the lavish suite to preview their upcoming album, New Tattoo (released July 11 on Motley/Beyond Records), which we’re still…
Scene, heard The X went out of business last week, reducing the number of good record stores in Denton (for new discs, at least) to, uh, zero; CD Warehouse doesn’t really count. No reason was given for the shutdown, though we’d guess the store was hurt by longtime employee John…
