Soft-speaking, Harley-riding guitarist Johnny A. grew up listening to Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix before cutting his teeth leading a short string of blues-rock bands. But the Bostonian bluesman really came of age in the early ’90s as a member of J. Geils Band front man Peter Wolf’s Houseparty 5…
Let’s say that for the past year you’ve bought MP3s legitimately from sites like iTunes and the relaunched Napster. Then you buy your thousandth song–say, the Black Eyed Peas’ “Let’s Get Retarded”–and moments later the feds burst into your room and cart you away. To jail. For three years. Couldn’t…
Listen up, rockists, mythologists, screenwriters and future biographers: With the Lights Out, the four-disc boxed set that Nirvana fans have been waiting for since April 8, 1994, does not definitively prove that Nirvana was touched by greatness from the flannel-shirted get-go. But that’s what scrap-heap retrospectives are supposed to do,…
It’s Friday night at 9:30, and Erykah Badu has yet to arrive at her own event. By now, Minc is thick with smoke and people; moving through the crowd requires elbows and courage. It’s an eclectic bunch–men in halter tops and fake furs, big women in tiny dresses. If I’m…
Never been much on change. Don’t like it. We’re sentimental types who attach to people and places. And yet, history has proven to us that change is good. Healthy. So it’s with clenched jaw and hopeful sigh that we bring you the news of some major changes in the Dallas…
Things haven’t boded well for Encore, Slim Shady’s first full-length since 2002’s gajillion-selling The Eminem Show. D-12’s genuinely awful summer single “My Band” was eclipsed in wretchedness by Encore’s first offering, “Just Lose It,” a formulaic and unfunny ditty with a video that took aim at the easiest targets in…
Two years ago, you couldn’t turn a corner without running into a garage-rock band. Any group that came close to a “garage” description jumped on the bandwagon, but while those bands fell after the fad bottomed out, Memphis’ Lost Sounds remained hidden, and released three albums of what’s better described…
Blissful amateurism can produce calamity or genius. Quite often, it does both. Kevin House is a British/Canadian songwriter equally adept at carnival freakishness and tender (if morose) acoustic folk. His Gutter Pastoral offers a genuine connection between Nick Drake and Sparklehorse’s Mark Linkous. Weird and unnerving, the 11 cuts are…
Every review of Dogs Die in Hot Cars invariably mentions two things: 1) This Scottish quintet is the worst-named band since Butt Trumpet, and 2) its debut album, Please Describe Yourself, sounds a hell of a lot like a lost XTC record. This second point is particularly vexing–how does lead…
What’s a rapper to do when he opens a hip-hop concert to only eight people? In the case of Crossing Ellum’s King, he offers the small crowd free champagne in Styrofoam cups. Though a kind gesture, it was hardly necessary, as King’s charisma and delivery didn’t require a drop of…
Though I can’t be alone in wishing the Hives had used the mainstream appeal they won with Veni Vidi Vicious to write songs with the Matrix or do a duet with Lindsay Lohan or get Andre 3000 in for a collabo, the Swedish garage-rockers didn’t do any of those things…
Just listing the bands of these two percussionists would run this blurb over its allotted word count. But there’s at least room to mention the time they spent together in Billy Goat and Ten Hands–two of Dallas’ most original funk/rock/jam/whatever bands. Dillon’s also the driving force behind Hairy Apes BMX…
Looking for an awe-inspiring concert but can’t wait for AC/DC to burn through town with a 500-foot-tall inflatable devil? Perhaps a change of gears in the form of Junior Brown will suit your tastes. No, the country legend doesn’t tour with pyrotechnics, but he does play his half guitar, half…
Here’s a creative indie-rock triple bill worth rescheduling an evening dedicated to reading old Pitchfork reviews. Headlining locals the pAper chAse you already know; God Bless Your Black Heart, the Dallas band’s Kill Rock Stars debut, finds front man John Congleton perfecting his Nick Cave-for-the-Dickies-set steez; agitated Slint fans, this…
With the release of 2001’s Survivor, Beyoncé Knowles, Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams proved once and for all that they are the world’s best R&B supergroup, a triumvirate of strength, talent and beauty. Three years and a few solo records later, they return with Destiny Fulfilled, an 11-entry diary about…
On their 1999 debut, So…How’s Your Girl?, the faux-stylish studs in Handsome Boy Modeling School (aka super producers Prince Paul and Dan “the Automator” Nakamura) emptied their imaginations and Rolodexes, creating an alternate musical universe with room for everyone from Mike D to Father Guido Sarducci. Yet while the follow-up,…
Yanni DiFranco, Megaforce Five and the Weapons of Mass Destruction, The Pink Bullets, Wombstone Pizza, The Kim Jong Illness. That’s not a list of code names for the next American military operation, but rather the bands that played the sixth installment of Rock Lottery. Confused? Here’s the summary: Last Saturday,…
With this long-awaited box set of rarities, a ’90s underground rocker who died en route to musical greatness will finally be immortalized. But the similarities between Kurt Cobain and Mark Sandman end there: The Boston indie music legend took his cues not from Mudhoney and The Pixies but from the…
Wet From Birth, the latest album by Nebraskan electro-goth pin-ups the Faint, doesn’t feature the reappropriated ’80s synth-pop melodies 2001’s Danse Macabre did. Instead, it finds the band exploring the endless possibilities of studio texture, which can portend a night of no-fun noodling onstage; luckily the band’s live show remains…
Sondre Lerche has the pop sensibility of someone composing in the 1960s, not a young man who’s been alive barely two decades and admits to an obsession with A-Ha. His songs sound like they come from a musician weaned on Tin Pan Alley and rock and roll, both influences funneled…
Call me a cheap bastard, but I usually have no qualms about illegally padding my music collection by downloading MP3s. Still, I’m not made of stone. When a ragingly good band finds its way into my hard drive, my guilt catches up, and my wallet comes flying out of my…
It’s Friday night in Manhattan, and though the line snaking down Broadway between West 52nd and 53rd might appear to be for tonight’s performance of Bombay Dreams, this crowd isn’t exactly Andrew Lloyd Weber’s demographic. There are a handful of bemused-looking parent types, but they’re wildly outnumbered by young women…
