Milton Mapes’ front man Greg Vanderpool and head Deadman Steven Collins shared band and stage for nearly seven years; they did their time as Plebeians, recording two discs for Carpe Diem, till parting ways three years back…or, around the time they swapped out their U2 collection for a few copies…
Even Todd Deatherage isn’t sure how long it’s been. Two years, maybe three. You don’t keep track of these things when they’re happening to you. Promises and projects come and go like an old man’s memory, and years go by. These things happen, and if you’re smart, you don’t pay…
Were there any justice in pop culture, turn-of-the-century French artists, writers, musicians and poets would be able to return from their graves and proclaim, “Apportez-moi la tête du Baz Luhrmann!” The Australian director’s kitchen-sink musical Moulin Rouge takes more than a little liberty with its subject matter, turning a time…
What happens on December 21, 2012, has–according to the Mayan Calendar–taken a 5,125-year cycle to recur. On that date, a very rare conjunction of the sun with the ecliptic of the Milky Way galaxy happens. (Basically, it’s the coincidence of the winter solstice and the heliacal rising of the galactic…
For a bunch of trash talkers, the five thuggish, ruggish Scotchmen in Mogwai sure do make a heavenly racket. Rock Action, their new album, is the sound of post-rock quietly (and sometimes loudly) exploding, an enormous emerald-green cloud billowing out into the night sky and slowly obscuring everything you can…
That Bill Callahan’s musical pseudonym comes from an opaque cloud of carcinogenic pollution stirred up by the luxuries of modern living tells you what sort of mental state this no-fi nonconformist wallowed in when he started his one-man act back in the late 1980s. Smog’s early cassette releases and Drag…
When New Orleans dirty south B-Boy Mystikal left Master P’s No Limit franchise and returned to Britney and boy-band bopping Jive’s world domination pop machine with 1999’s Ghetto Fabulous, certain critical habitués expressed reservations. Skeptics felt it was the case of a young artist making a play for the show…
Even though the power-tool bludgeoning of Jim G. Thirlwell’s music may have some contemporary cohorts, it’s his peculiar brand of lyrical ranting that sets the now NYC-based Thirlwell (better known as Foetus, and all of its various permutations) in a world entirely his own. Imagine a crack-powered Eric Bogosian gargling…
Guy Berryman has just returned from Thailand, where he’s been on holiday for the past few weeks. That is where you go when you’ve seen almost all there is to see, when you’re in a band that has taken you to Italy, France, Spain, Australia, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Japan, North…
Neil Michael Hagerty has made a long and contentious career out of doing exactly as he pleases. His stint with Pussy Galore opposite Jon Spencer led to some truly chaotic moments both onstage and off, while his long-standing gig with Jennifer Herrema as Royal Trux evolved from a guerrilla noise-pop…
The Alkaline Trio is Blink-182 with the Promise Ring’s guilty conscience, the kind of guys who’ll break your heart before breaking the bottle, the kid next door who leaves flaming shit on your porch but makes mulch in the morning. So perhaps it’s no surprise that From Here to Infirmary,…
Before 1999, the riddle “What is the sound of young punks making new wave?” lay somewhere on the unspeakable scale between “Does anyone really think Julia Roberts can act?” and “Will Nader actually run for president?” The proof proved to be not as insincere as the latter nor as impious…
You ever score a sweet pair of shoes at a garage sale long after you thought everyone had already scored all the stuff worth scoring? Then you know what it’s like to discover Powderfinger and Ours. Both acts are emerging from completely different backgrounds–Powderfinger is Australia’s biggest rock band, finally…
At first, it sounded like one of the worst station promos ever, random snippets of familiar songs spliced together, the kind of thing most radio stations use to give listeners an idea of the kind of music they’ll be hearing if they decide to stick around. Only it sounded as…
Best band ever, if only for turning “…Baby One More Time” into the most poignant ballad of 2000; best band ever, if only for making “Killer Queen” live up to its billing. Yes, Travis is the world’s most astute and least finicky cover band–it renders the faddish timeless, the timeless…
Jonny Greenwood would prefer not to be here, this I know. Talking on an intercontinental phone call to yet another journalist about how great Radiohead, in which he plays guitar, is and how important Amnesiac, its new record, is in the face of the cultural poverty that’s replaced the 21st-century…
When most rock musicians turn 32, they’re usually either trying to think of ways to recapture the excitement of their early records or they’re considering plastic surgery. Not Johnny Dowd. Thirty-two is when the soft-spoken singer-songwriter first picked up a guitar, but even at that advanced age, the silver-haired gothic…
The chitlin circuit still lives on The Other Side of the Tracks–or, as an old friend of mine used to say, where the white man don’t go, that’s where the brothers know. Jimi Hendrix cut his teeth on the circuit before he used them to play the guitar, and it’s…
Los Angeles man about town Jon Brion’s the kind of guy you figure would probably be all right if the world melted while he was asleep and he woke up to find himself the only one left, doomed to an eternity behind the bars of his well-stocked home recording studio…
When is a local band not a local band? No, it’s not a trick question; we had too much to drink last night–by last night, we actually mean the last two to three months–so we’re making it easy on you and us. The answer: A local band is not a…
All right, now, this bullshit has to stop. First Joey Ramone dies. Then comes word from E! Entertainment that Duran Duran is re-forming in its original lineup. And a week after that, New Jersey’s Monmouth University gives Jon Bon Jovi an honorary doctorate of humane letters. (To be honest, I’m…
Usually at this time, people are too drunk to pay attention or too exhausted to care. It’s well after 1 a.m. in Austin, and the annual South by Southwest music festival is staggering to the finish line, limping along with a full belly and glazed, red eyes. Four days of…
