During one unremarkable weeknight in the fall of 1997, a remarkable scenario was unfolding inside Poor David’s Pub. The dank and shabby venue was packed with a bizarre yet communal cross-section of Lower Greenville types: scruffy indie rockers, gimme-capped frat boys, perfumed yuppies, aging cowboys. People were literally crying in…
With a mainstream to rebel against, a deep love of rock’s true golden age of freedom (the mid-’60s), and a grasp on that era’s melodic raucousness, the first punk-rockers probably saved rock and roll from the death it deserved. Early punk discs are timeless in the way The Sun Sessions…
Nothing much has changed for Steven Visneau and Christy Darlington since they began playing together four years ago–first as Mess, then as Darlington, and now, perhaps finally, as The Darlingtons. Well, that’s not exactly correct, it just seems that nothing has changed. Actually, everything has changed, so much so that…
The salvage yard The Cars Deluxe Edition The Cars Rhino/Elektra The Grave Robbers are at it again, digging up the corpses of dead-and-buried demos long ago thought to be reduced to dirt in a hole. The zombies are everywhere, walking the earth in this digital age; there’s no such thing…
When a person thinks of Reno, Nevada, one imagines cheap buffets and sleazy betting joints and petty crime and hotel fires. Or perhaps thoughts turn instead to a man named Johnny Cash, who, according to “Folsom Prison Blues,” once shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. Reno…
What the hell…? Necropolitan Heights The Merlowe Ran’t PepVentura I can no more categorize this music than unscramble Brian Wilson’s mind. Not that the Merlowe Ran’t directly evokes the tangled genius of the Beach Boys’ former frontman, but in its own well-meaning way, it tries to subscribe to it. That,…
We have received a handful of letters from readers insisting they do not want to see another word about Seagrams Company Ltd.’s takeover of the music business. They claim it’s insignificant, it’s all so much meaningless bitching and moaning better left to the business pages. They assert that nobody cares…
With a mainstream to rebel against, a deep love of rock’s true golden age of freedom (the mid-’60s), and a grasp on that era’s melodic raucousness, the first punk-rockers probably saved rock and roll from the death it deserved. Early punk discs are timeless in the way The Sun Sessions…
The song–or whatever it is–doesn’t really begin or end so much as it’s there and then it isn’t, a melody rescued from an aimless groove with little more than raised eyebrows and subtle nods, almost imperceptible cues. A skittish drum beat, marking time and abandoning it, is joined by a…
Head below water Nanci Darvish Hi-Fi Drowning Luminous Records Guilt by association doesn’t always apply to record producers, mainly because they remain anonymous to everyone but the fetishists who pore over the liner notes and memorize every last detail, from the name of the assistant engineer to all of the…
Everything you are about to read is a lie. Well, perhaps that is an exaggeration, much like most of what comes out of Tom Waits’ mouth. It’s not as though he doesn’t know the truth, it’s just less fun to tell it. Every interview, and he has handed out only…
We salute you! Searching for Jimi Hendrix The Right Stuff Where is My Mind? A Tribute to the Pixies Glue Factory Records Burning London The Clash Tribute Epic Records Right now, there’s an Elektra Records exec rounding up the Old 97’s, Styx, and Lou Reed for the Doobie Brothers tribute…
This is no knock on Eric Erlandson–guitarist-songwriter in Hole, co-founding member with Courtney Love, ex-boyfriend of Drew Barrymore, and all-around decent guy, at least during 20 minutes of all-biz chitchat. But when he’s offered up by the Interscope/Geffen publicist in place of Courtney Love, who had scheduled an interview but…
Dick Contino walks onstage at a video-poker bar called the Arroweed Lounge on an Indian reservation in Nevada with a 30-pound accordion strapped to his hairy chest and the aura of 52 years of show business trailing behind him, an aura ignored by those dropping quarters in hopes of jacks…
OK, So We’ll Never do this again. It seemed like a swell idea at first: Do away with the so-called “local music-industry insiders” (i.e., guys who work for Sam Paulos) who have traditionally selected the Dallas Observer Music Awards nominees, and simply let the voters fill in the blanks. That’s…
Worth the Waits Mule Variations Tom Waits Epitaph Mule Variations sounds like it goes on forever, one song leading into the next until the album echoes into tomorrow, then the day after the day after the day after. So much music, so many rickety sounds, so many beautiful notes piled…
At first glance, Erik Thompson is about as clean-cut and familiar as any God-fearing college student. You get the direct gaze, the low, articulate musings of a well-read thinker. He modestly sips his scotch and water; he sits up straight in a starched oxford shirt. On the surface, there’s nothing…
It began in the early ’70s, in a Canadian Dada-Surrealist magazine styled to look like Life. Tucked inside was a flexi-disc sampler of four songs from the Residents’ first album, Meet the Residents–a tongue-in-cheek sendup of Meet the Beatles. Instead of the familiar mugs of John, Paul, George, and Ringo,…
Nestled between the bar and the wall at the Cock & Bull on Gaston Avenue, an overstuffed shoulder bag leaning against his barstool, Jeff Whittington looks no different from any of the young professionals hoisting pints at the end of their workdays in other bars in the neighborhood. He stands…
Hold on, he’s coming Eargasm Johnnie Taylor Columbia Records Ain’t no singer alive with more style and class than Johnnie Taylor. Last time I saw the man, he was sitting in a booth in dusty, now-defunct Naomi’s, wearing a crisp suit and shiny jewels, and it looked as though he…
Branford Marsalis calls exactly at the appointed time, 3 p.m., despite a schedule that should not allow for such promptness. He is on a cellular phone, sitting on the front stoop of his 13-year-old son Reese’s piano school on White Plains Post Road in Eastchester, New York. Branford does not…
Tim DeLaughter, Tripping Daisy frontman and newly anointed father, is one of the most optimistic people ever to have been dropped from a major label. Sure, he’s done his share of bad-mouthing Island Records, the label that signed the local outfit in 1993, promised the moon and stars, then last…
