“There’s no rest at all in freedom,” Natalie Maines sings with heavy-Raitt passion on “Let Him Fly,” the Patty Griffin-penned closer to the new Dixie Chicks album Fly. Indeed, the Chicks seem to take that line to heart because — even after selling seven million copies of their Nashville debut…
Early in 1965, Cannibal and the Headhunters, a Chicano vocal quartet out of East Los Angeles, took “Land of a Thousand Dances” to No. 30 on the pop charts, shutting down a version by their archrivals Thee Midniters (which reached No. 67) in the process. It was the third national…
A beautiful summer day in Brooklyn, and the barking dog and the voice of a female companion in the background suggest Blondie guitarist Chris Stein is taking a stroll while talking on a cell phone. “This is good,” he exclaims. “Wow!” Stein isn’t excited to be talking to a reporter…
David Deweese makes sure the coast is clear before he tells a secret about Jerry James, his musical partner in The Foxymorons, even though it’s not really necessary. James is, after all, halfway across the country — in Mesquite. But Deweese, on the phone from his home in Nashville, lowers…
Mandy Barnett’s Sire Records biography is the damnedest thing I have ever read from a record company. In spots, the thing looks more like a business plan than a young woman’s history; never have I seen a label bio that contains the actual amount of money a company spent trying…
When the book on ’90s rock is finally written, a handful of names are going to come up over and over as the inspiration for all sorts of sensitive, SG-wielding members of Chain Wallet America: Slint, Bikini Kill, Nation of Ulysses, Jesus Lizard, Rodan, Fugazi, Hoover, Drive Like Jehu, Unwound…
Groucho Marx once said that aging gracefully is the grandest oxymoron of all — the big lie. After all, to age is to wrinkle, to wither, to shrink, to vanish. To do so gracefully means only to admit defeat. Grace has nothing to do with it; what’s so graceful about…
Take a message to Murry As they continue to recuperate from a hectic recent touring schedule, Rhett Miller and Murry Hammond of The Old 97’s — also known as The Ranchero Brothers — will perform at Sons of Hermann Hall on August 18. The all-ages show was announced by Hammond…
Scene, heard Post From Vermont has called it quits, breaking up soon after returning home from a short tour through the Midwest. The band said in a brief statement posted to its Web site that the split “came down to the fact that our music didn’t live up to what…
Prince The Vault…Old Friends 4 Sale (Warner Bros. Records) Among the unreleased Prince albums sitting in Warner Bros. Records vaults: a note-for-note redo of James Brown’s 1962 Live at the Apollo album, complete with canned applause; a soul-jazz-prog-fusion-polka two-man ballet titled DMSR, 4 Feet; a collaboration with Sly Stone, Bernie…
During a conversation with the Dallas Observer last year about the Bad Livers’ soundtrack for Richard Linklater’s The Newton Boys, which he produced and performed on, Mark Rubin said he and longtime musical partner Danny Barnes were not really a band, but more like banjo-wielding Dust Brothers. Of course, he’s…
There is a strong possibility that all the quotes below are the fabrications of an impostor. The man who answered the phone claimed his name was Moby, but after speaking with him, it’s difficult to believe he was telling the truth. For one thing, he didn’t seem to know much…
Julian Lennon always understood why critics hated him and why, ultimately, his audience abandoned him. But, for God’s sake, it doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out: It’s one thing to do a John Lennon impression from a distance, and something else entirely different — and seedier –…
The Muffs’ singer-guitarist Kim Shattuck is careful not to sound too arrogant when discussing how big a part she’s played in the recording of her band’s four albums, including the recent Alert Today Alive Tomorrow, released in June on Fat Wreck Chords offshot Honest Don’s Recordings. While Alert Today is…
When Matt Barnhart moved back to Denton earlier this year, he found himself facing a big decision, the kind of choice that can change your life no matter what the answer is. It had already been a year filled with tough choices for Barnhart, from deciding to leave St. Louis…
Mötley Crüe Dig out your ripped jeans, tease your hair like Adam Curry, and apply that peroxide: Mötley Crüe is celebrating the fact that, for the 18th straight year, they’ve had no band-member deaths with a show at Starplex Amphitheatre on August 20. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bear…
Country Teasers, Compulsive Gamblers Scotland’s Country Teasers are Shania Twain’s inverse, a hideous aesthetic mirror image, coarse and misanthropic where the former is glossy and chummy. Where Ms. Twain’s slick, Fairlight radio pop retains only the barest frame of Nashville form, the Teasers produce a primitive indie guitar sput unrefined…
Duran Duran Duran Duran used to be the boys that the little girls understood. Only now, those little girls are all grown up, and it’s all they can do not to change the station when flashback radio blares “Hungry Like the Wolf.” Sure, Duran Duran and all its lip-gloss-coated adventure…
Scene, heard The reformed New Bohemians recently performed at a benefit concert in Long Island, appearing on a bill with Lyle Lovett and Paul Simon. (Hmmm, I wonder how they got that gig?) A source close to the band — OK, it was Carol Brandon, prodigal drummer Brandon Aly’s mother…
Tricky with DJ Muggs and Grease Juxtapose (Island Records) Listen once to a Tricky record, and it feels as though there’s nothing there. At first glance, it’s all insinuations and whispers, music built upon the faint boom-boom-boom of a stoned heart barely beating. Turn away, do anything else, and it…
Wilco There are times when you can listen to Wilco’s latest, Summer Teeth, and hear only Jeff Tweedy’s peculiar songwriting genius, the way he can turn a thousand familiar melodies into one perfectly imperfect song that manages to sound like everything and nothing that came before it. It’s a mess…
Once, during the early 1980s, Ray Benson and Asleep at the Wheel tried to escape from the enormous shadow that blanketed the Western swing band since its 1973 debut album, which featured the immortal Bob Wills cut “Take Me Back to Tulsa.” The Austin-based band had run into a brick…
