“Naomi’s is absolutely my favorite place in the world to play,” says roots-country hotshot Mary Cutrufello about her return to the club December 14–her first visit since June. “The people there are really salt-of-the-earth types, and I’d do anything to help them out.” Cutrufello has a brilliant new album out–Who…
Singing in the rain I’m not sure why Weezer’s music isn’t silly; it certainly sounds like it should be. Their rhythmic, nearly sing-songy tunes communicate a jaunty popular-music temperament, and their topics tend toward banal (if often universal) themes of love and relationships. With such credentials, you might expect Weezer…
There are moments of almost primal resonance that can come upon you at elemental times: when watching moving water–surf or stream–or fire, or the wind play across fields of dense grass. In those moments you can suddenly feel connected to the thousands upon thousands of generations before you who have…
Sometimes we don’t really see ourselves until we glimpse our reflection in someone else’s eyes. Or in their mirrored sunglasses: Noted Scottish author and western swing fan Duncan McLean–in town soon for a series of readings and to host a show featuring some of the surviving greats of western swing–traveled…
Commerce and Christmas have long been linked; heck, at the end of A Christmas Carol Ebenezer Scrooge still had to buy the Cratchits that turkey, and in fact how he handled his money was one of the primary ways in which we could tell the change the spirits had wrought…
A bird in the hand Ah, the ’70s, when the road of excess led not to the palace of wisdom but to the amphitheater of even more excess and the cradle of southern boogie. With 1990’s Shake Your Money Maker the Crowes re-invigorated the genre, pulling it out of the…
Asked if anyone in history has played bass more than himself–in terms of sheer numbers of successful records–Chuck Rainey shrugs. “I don’t think so,” he says. Rainey’s bass work appears on essential albums by Aretha Franklin, Steely Dan, Quincy Jones, King Curtis, the Rascals, the Jackson Five, Marvin Gaye, and…
Across the spectrum A Charmed Life Joe LoCascio Trio Tafford Music Improvisation and innovation in jazz are somewhat akin to a squelch knob on a radio–turn it up high enough and it becomes impossible to listen to. The challenge has always been to stimulate and challenge while at the same…
Jeff “Chate” Liles is one of the few people who appears in Street Beat and has had enough. Exposure, that is–the swimming pools and movie stars of the glamorous music biz. “Oh, man, don’t put that in,” he said when discussing his move out to Los Angeles a few months…
Historia de la musica rock Now I Got Worry, the latest Blues Explosion album, kicks off with Jon Spencer letting out a primal scream that sounds like a young James Brown on amphetamines. Then the album explodes–pun intended–into a frenzy of swaggering riffs, primordial 4/4 beats, and some of the…
A murder of two Recovering the Satellites Counting Crows Geffen Records Sheryl Crow Sheryl Crow A&M Records These two sophomore albums are attempts at redefinition, but the efforts work for one–to a degree–and fail the other. Counting Crows’ debut persona was that of the outsider, and their use of mandolins…
Removable labels Dem’s Good Beeble The Gourds Munich Records Authenticity as a concept has been something of a bugaboo since before Ry Cooder started imitating dust-bowl farmers and African-American Pullman porters. Nowadays–with retro Americana all the rage–its boundaries are even more blurred. But just as a guy in an Armani…
Although the current lounge revival seems to be everywhere–one half-expects to see squirrels wearing tiny smoking jackets and clutching wee martini glasses as they dart about burying their nuts for the winter–keyboardist and Fort Worth native Red Young remembers when popular appreciation for the sophisticated, swing-oriented music of the ’40s…
His upper teeth are nearly gone; they have been replaced by tiny slivers of off-white that peek through rotten gums. His lower teeth, thin and brown, appear ready to fall out if he so much as coughs too hard. His lips are pale and dry, coated with spit so thick…
Blood, sweat, and tears Five years ago Social Distortion joined the Ramones at the old Bronco Bowl for one of rock’s dream double bills–the kind that we don’t get in Dallas that often. The two bands made three simple chords sound like heaven and created one of those nights where…
Mention the term “singer-songwriter” and immediately the image appears: an excessively serious soul–acoustic guitar in hand–singing an excessively serious song. Wally Pleasant may actually be a singer-songwriter, but you won’t hear about Tom Dooley’s long black veil from him: Instead of whining about a world gone to hell, Pleasant uses…
Nothing’s shocking Antichrist Superstar Marilyn Manson Nothing/Interscope Welcome to the “shocking” world of Marilyn Manson–a pop circus where the clowns combine the names of media icons and serial killers (Twiggy Ramirez, Madonna Wayne Gacy) and spew out humorless Four-And-A-Half Inch Nails tunes. Their live shows are supposedly raucous affairs where…
Classic rock Being There Wilco Reprise Records The drum rumble that starts off this two-disc set and soon turns to feedback suggests Wilco certainly isn’t lagging in its quest to remove itself from Uncle Tupelo territory. Being There finds leader Jeff Tweedy combining his love of pop style–still a little…
Grover Wilkins hadn’t intended to make musical history. He was happy with his life: conducting avant-garde 20th-century music in Pittsburgh and in Paris, France, and getting Fulbright scholarships to do research on the group of 20th-century French composers known as Les Six. But a series of events resulted in Wilkins…
There is nothing new under the sun, as God once dictated to somebody; no one knows this better than the hapless members of the Publicist Tribe who must call up those who serve as amanuensis to their respective Local (and even more frighteningly, National) Band Hells and tell them things…
Professionalism never sounded so good Marshall Crenshaw opened last year’s performance in Deep Ellum with the offhand greeting “Hello, we’re professional rock musicians.” He then proved his yeomanlike salutation a massive understatement, revealing himself as a masterful songwriter who could’ve topped the charts three or four decades ago alongside the…
Lauren Agnelli–known to most for her association with neofolkie groundbreakers the Washington Squares–imparts a New Yorker’s sense of forward momentum; one of her favorite words is “apace,” and when she tells you that “when someone makes me feel good, I tell them about it” in her East Coast accent, you…
