It must have felt empowering when the Disco Music Club, the world’s most celebrated DJ organization, asked the San Francisco-based Invisibl Skratch Piklz to refrain from signing up for its annual competition. The reason: Other DJs wouldn’t even bother to enter if the Piklz crew showed up. The contest had…
What’s a rock-and-roll guy to do after the hits have faded and the big major-label record deals are over? Perhaps scale down and sign the band to an indie label. Make a solo record and strike out touring on one’s own. Maybe find a liquor company that wants to target…
Scene, heard Despite recent rumors to the contrary, it doesn’t appear the Old 97’s will be leaving Elektra Records anytime soon, though the recent merger of Time-Warner (Elektra’s parent company) and America Online will no doubt result in the door hitting more than a few bands’ asses on the way…
Oasis Standing on the Shoulder of Giants (Epic Records) It wouldn’t be surprising to learn that Noel Gallagher had originally intended Standing on the Shoulder of Giants to be his solo debut, the disc that proved once and for all he was the one with all of the talent while…
ASKA Avenger (EMA Records) If this record came bearing the name Dooms U.K., odds are this paper would give it the familiar ol’ humjob, something along the lines of: “The Dooms rescue prog-rock from the history books and the dung heaps, proving unflinching ambition tempered with sincere passion results in…
Scene, heard While we can’t say many of the posters on the One Ton Records message board were big fans of our work, we’ll admit we’re more than a little sorry to see it go away. At the end of last week, the usual threads on the board (formerly located…
Maybe the biggest — or only — surprise about the latest disc from Chris Darlington (a.k.a. Christy Brigitte), Steve Visneau, and a bassist to be named later is that the group was still around to record it. Since changing its name from Mess, Darlington has seemed to be perpetually on…
His appearance, his name, his voice — everything about Ira Kaplan seems to belong to a high-school history teacher, or maybe a librarian. Intimidation doesn’t even begin to enter into it; at best, the Yo La Tengo singer-guitarist looks to be capable of sending an unruly student to detention. Maybe…
It would be so easy to dismiss The Cure as a band that has outlived its usefulness, that exists long beyond its expiration date. Its best, or at least best-known, moments live in another time, one long since past — the 1980s, to be precise, back when “Let’s Go to…
Since Luscious Jackson’s third album, Electric Honey, was released last June, singer-bassist Jill Cuniff has spent much of her time traveling around this country and others promoting it — playing shows and doing interviews all in the name of selling more records. Along with her bandmates, drummer Kate Schellenbach and…
After more than a year, as well as numerous pleas by the Dallas Observer and meetings between label and band, the speculation can finally end: Radish’s Sha Sha will not be released. And in the end, it’s not so surprising, but a plot twist everyone saw coming as soon as…
Morphine The Night (Rykodisc/DreamWorks Records) Believe this: The fact that Morphine singer-bassist Mark Sandman suffered a fatal heart attack on stage last summer in Italy is as important to any review of The Night as the 11 songs on the album. You can’t libel the dead, but just try finding…
Korn I made it all the way through Korn’s Issues just once, and even then, I was out of the room for most of it; turns out that’s the best way to listen to Korn, from such a distance that you can’t actually hear it. A few weeks later, I…
Guy Clark As time passes and his peers such as Townes Van Zandt pass away, Guy Clark seems more like a sage than like a poet laureate. His voice is the sound of whiskey mixed with cigarette smoke, a pungent concoction with an afterburn that reminds you how some of…
The Handsome Family Unlike the Ramones or even Darlington, the Handsome Family are actually a family. The husband-and-wife duo of Brett and Rennie Sparks together write sinister, haunting country songs — more Appalachia than Nashville, more Edgar Allan Poe than cheatin’ heart/tears in my beer tales. Though the band is…
Washington, D.C.’s fertile music scene has developed such a reputation for high-quality output (by the likes of Unrest, Fugazi, Lungfish, and Trans Am, to name but a few) that every band from the city benefits from guilt by association. And no band seems to be quite as guilty as the…
Despite recent claims that no one respects us because we print hearsay and gossip, as far as we know the Smashing Pumpkins will indeed be appearing at Tower Records on Saturday to sign a few autographs. It doesn’t look as if Billy Corgan and crew will perform though, and if…
Travis Morrison should be at work right now, drinking bad coffee and building Web sites for the Consumer Electronics Association. But he’s not — he wasn’t there at 2 p.m., and almost an hour later, there still isn’t any sign of him. A few phone calls and a few more…
Unless you’re a local punk enthusiast who perhaps spent some time studying the collective works of Rudolf Rocker and his “anarcho-syndicalism” posse, you most likely have not heard, nor heard of, Chad Ferman. Yet he has done plenty to keep his fragile flame burning around here. Perhaps a handful of…
Yes, Bernard Butler was once the guitarist for Brit-pop phenomenon Suede. But he’s quick to point out that his quantity of post-Suede work is now larger than his output as a member. For Butler it’s an irritating association, like constantly being reminded of who you were in high school. He…
For a moment, it almost seems as though you’ve walked into the CD World location on Greenville Avenue and Mockingbird Lane by mistake. There’s the burly, bearded Chris Penn behind the counter ringing up a customer, and Carlos Jackson, a quiet Elephant 6 collective afficionado, checking the racks. Both were…
Boss Hog White Out (In the Red Records) Mr. and Mrs. Jon Spencer turn in their pop sellout to Geffen, only to find the label merged and their band dropped. So much for getting the corporation to subsidize the transition out of the cult’s comfy basement into the family room…
