Two years ago, they reunited for the final time, one more time, hauling out Quadrophenia for the arena circuit while digging up Gary Glitter and Billy Idol and Ringo’s son Zak Starkey for a little jaunt down the greenback road. They stood on stage after stage in city after city…
On May 29, Joni Mitchell played a two-hour concert to a tiny audience on a secret soundstage in the heart of the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, California. The show was being filmed to promote her upcoming album Taming the Tiger, named after a saying that compares showbiz to a…
Play, lady, play whitechocolatespaceegg Liz Phair Matador/Capitol Those who spent their time trying to figure out if she was a fuck-and-run cocktease or a punk dilettante missed out on the essential fact: Liz Phair is one hell of a songwriter (she rocks when she wants to, but rarely needs to)…
Haven’t we metal before? Sweettit Stink!#Bug Last Beat Sweettit, Stink!#Bug’s second long-player, is an album made at the crossroads where metal meets everything else (funk, rap, industrial) and leaves with a gig bag full of hyphens. It’s a mishmash of styles that bounces from white thrash to scratch-and-riff metal to…
It’s all been tried and retried and tried all over again. The guitar-bass-drums format has been explored so often, Mapsco sells directions. If it doesn’t have Sonic Youth’s fingerprints on it, it probably has someone else’s. So the worst mistake that Girls Against Boys could make was letting people believe…
Full gallop Hell Among the Yearlings Gillian Welch Almo Sounds In a recent issue of Billboard, the owner of a San Francisco record store claims Gillian Welch’s 1996 debut Revival was one of his chain’s top-10 sellers for six months because Welch is, above all, “authentic.” Spoken like a true…
Even now, all these years later, David Bean still gets letters and phone calls from fans who wonder where he is, what he’s up to, why he disappeared. Perhaps they’ve heard the stories about how he became a recluse after he left the stage, which isn’t true at all. More…
They’re looking for a scapegoat up in Denton right now, someone to blame for the silence you hear creeping up from the stairs connecting the restaurant to the basement at Mr. Gatti’s on the downtown square. Up until July 3, the basement–described in these pages just weeks ago as a…
One size fits all All Time Low Check R.S.R. Records This Denton foursome, made up of former members of Junebug and still kicking three years into its heroically obscure career, doesn’t quite know what it wants to be; Check has all the direction of a blind man on the Tilt-A-Whirl,…
Since the release of 1996’s New Adventures in Hi-Fi, three-quarters of R.E.M.–the band more responsible than any other for bringing so-called alternative rock into the cultural mainstream–has been branching out in non-musical directions. Bassist Mike Mills is something of a regular on the celebrity golf circuit and has even commented…
It began eight years ago as a hobby–no, a passion. It gave a home to bands no one else wanted, or bands who wanted no one else. It was an asylum where art came first, commerce never, and records sold by the dozens to aficionados who wanted their rock and…
“This is how some of us have fun in the ghetto,” Marc Ribot says slyly from the stage of Los Angeles’ cozy Luna Park, a dinner club nestled in West Hollywood. The handsome New Jersey Jew is way out on a limb–a prosthetic limb, at that–and soon the thing is…
Tom’s wild years Beautiful Maladies Tom Waits Island Records There’s a small cadre of cultists who argue over whether Tom Waits’ Elektra/Asylum years or his Island stint best defines him, and theirs is an argument that takes place in a vacuum. Fact is, there’s little difference between Stephen Sondheim croaks…
Everybody’s trying to get a smile out of Brian Wilson. He’s nearing the end of a photo session, sitting on a stool in the spacious, cluttered garage of his Los Angeles home, and his face is like iron. The photographer is running him through a series of poses–arms crossed over…
Rock like a man Love or the Decimal Equivalent Legendary Crystal Chandelier steve It’s tempting to call Peter Schmidt a survivor, if only because he’s been around long enough to have been forgotten by those who never knew any better to begin with. He escaped Three on a Hill, split…
Today’s Specials Life Won’t Wait Rancid Epitaph Records With its fourth album, Rancid has hitched up its bondage pants and recorded a career-making album without changing all that much. It isn’t the double-album answer to London Calling that was promised, but it’s no Cut The Crap either–if anything, it feels…
It’s not how they planned it, bidding farewell in the margin of an advertisement. But there it was last week, buried in the Trees ad found on page 97 in the Dallas Observer. On July 18, reads the ad, Course of Empire will play its “last show ever.” The announcement…
Action packed Live at the Continental Club Ronnie Dawson Continental Records Ronnie Dawson confirms it is indeed possible to age in rock and roll without growing old; even in his 50s, he’s still the action-packed Blond Bomber, capable of tearing up any venue without running out of breath at the…
The history of jazz is the history of reputations. Musicians who impressed critics during their primes, such as John Coltrane, tend to be held in ever higher esteem as the years go past, while artists tarred by negative notices throughout their careers are seldom granted access to the music’s pantheon…
Forget, for a moment, his more famous dead brother. Do not make comparisons, and do not buy into the myth that to celebrate one you must tear down the other. Do not think that just because one brother sold hundreds of thousands of records and the other mere thousands that…
Paul’s Boutique remains their masterpiece, even if its genius is mostly borrowed from old funk vinyl sitting on the Dust Brothers’ shelves. The 1989 album–still their poorest seller, mostly because it didn’t have to fight for its right to party–is the Beastie Boys’ post-hip-hop triumph, a slingshot around the moon…
Cowboys from hell REO Speedealer REO Speedealer Royalty Records There’s never been a question as to whether or not REO Speedealer rocks. Hell, man, that’s all they do. They’re the bastard sons of Lemmy and Jim Heath, abandoned at birth at Carl’s Corner with a stack of nudie mags and…
