When his phone rings at the allotted time–precisely at midnight, as per his request–Will Johnson is fast asleep. His voice groggy, his words at first a random mishmash of syllables and hazy thought, Johnson explains he got home from the library earlier than he expected and went right to bed…
Looking back, forward Rollin’ Blues The Hash Brown Band Browntone Records If rock and roll’s stuck in low gear, if jazz is for snobs, if country’s gone pop and pop’s gone south, if R&B’s turned into barber-shop-quartet-soul, then the electric blues is really screwed: This music hasn’t changed in decades,…
Critics like to say the Velvet Underground is the second most influential band of the ’60s behind the Beatles, which is fine enough if you believe the Rolling Stones or the Who or even the Jefferson Airplane didn’t spawn their own evil brood in equal numbers. There’s the old saw…
The artist still known The Gold Experience Prince Warner Bros./NPG Written off as dead or dying by those who proclaimed him a genius just a few years ago, Prince (pronounced “Prince”) is now just another R&B artist who releases albums with prolific regularity; there’s no longer any hype or hoopla…
Aden Holt stretches out his 6-foot-9 frame on the floor, lying on his back with his Subway dinner in his lap and his head propped up on the back of a futon. Underneath shocks of messy blond hair, clad in his homemade “Deep Blow Someone” T-shirt and black jeans, Holt…
Scary Monster The Concept Album is a frightening beast that allows an artist to live out his most self-indulgent tendencies; if the pop-musician writes short and self-contained songs that are meant to tell a story, the creator of the Concept Album considers himself a bona fide artist who resides above…
It was early in January of 1995, and way too early in the morning, when Tenderloin lead singer Ernie Locke received the call. His head groggy with sleep and the irritation that someone would ring him up at 4 a.m., Locke answered the phone to discover a very drunk Patrick…
Sucking in the ’70s Exit the Dragon Urge Overkill Geffen Records If Saturation was the good KISS album Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley never made because they couldn’t, then Exit the Dragon is the bad album KISS made over and over again. “This Is No Place” sounds like an outtake…
Eat the impeach Yet another of modern-rock radio’s sudden one-hit wonders, the Presidents of the United States rose from obscurity in Seattle to ubiquity on radio and television without a moment’s notice. It’s a funny thing about so-called “alternative radio” and the record industry: One minute a band is slugging…
Boy George has about a half hour to spare on the way back to his New York hotel, but he sounds as though the morning has treated him well. Speaking on a phone from the back of his limousine, he laughs often and speaks bluntly, not hesitating to deflect a…
The so-called punk revolution of the ’70s has given way to the punk ad campaign of the ’90s: Mohawks and green hair and tattoos are back (did they ever really go away?), short and sharp songs are the order of the day, and “anarchy” has become synonymous with multi-platinum fame…
Growing pains Shoegazer Buck Jones Independent release A band that has changed lineups more times than Johnny Oates’ Texas Rangers–they have been, at various times, a four-piece with two female singers, a three-piece with a male and a female singer, and a four-piece with everyone singing–Buck Jones is one of…
“We’re not looking for a shot at the big time. We just want to make great music.” Funland singer-guitarist Peter Schmidt says he likes to do interviews, if only because they force him to think about the things he has often relegated to memory. As he sits on a couch…
Country radio does not exist. It’s a misnomer, a myth, the great lie–Top 40 hiding behind a Resistol hat and a pair of Tony Lamas. Country music itself is an antiquated term, a marketing tool–pop music hiding behind twangs and pedal steel guitars and fiddles. Country radio and country music…
You’re a poet and you know that Heather Nova is a woman of pedigree – claims the Velvet Underground and Neil Young as childhhood heroes, shares bills with Pearl Jam Neil Young and Pavement and Bob Mould, records with sometime-U2 producer Youth. She’s been compared to everyone from Sinead O’Connor…
One year ago, Lisa Loeb became the first musician ever to land a song at the top of the pop charts without a record deal or a manager. She was a freak occurrence in the music business, able to achieve in a split second what most musicians grasp for in…
As a kid, Wayne Hancock moved around so often that now, at the age of 30, he can barely recall most of the places in which he lived. He knows for sure he was born at Baylor Hospital, and he remembers living in Kansas and Idaho when his father, an…
Country oys Wreck Your Life The Old 97’s Bloodshot Records The Chicago-based Bloodshot label has a name for their brand of country music: “Insurgent,” they call it, which is another way of hinting “outlaw” without the baggage applied to that term. It’s also a polite, roundabout way of saying that…
Jeff’s boogie There was a time when only one man in the world generated guitar sounds that millions of musicians now take for granted. Though John Lennon plucked the first note of feedback ever produced on vinyl ( intro to “I Feel Fine” in 1964), Jeff Beck was the first…
Being in a band can be like reliving high school. It’s social hierarchies and gawky self-definition all over again, trying to find one’s own group and struggling to fit in with a particular “scene.” As in adolescence, there are punks, hippies, metalheads, Edge listeners–the outcasts and the in crowd. And…
Suck my suck One Hot Minute Red Hot Chili Peppers Warner Bros. Records Punks who funk but sound like junk, the Chili Peppers never figured out how to become the white Parliament-Funkadelic because they’re too busy evolving into white bread. If such early outings as Freaky Styley and The Uplift…
Big Al Dupree sits alone at a table at Back Country Bar-B-Q, happily finishing off a heaping plate of meat and vegetables. This Greenville Avenue restaurant is, by Big Al’s estimation, the best barbecue eatery in town–“and I’ve tried them all,” brags the man who’s earned the “Big” in front…
