About halfway through Rage To Survive, the new autobiography of Etta James, one thought hits you smack between the eyes: This is not the kind of life story that’s written while the subject is still alive, much less by the subject herself. The book is a harrowing page-turner that chronicles…
Warehouse of wonder Besides Sugar Rykodisc With the band on so-called hiatus–recent word comes from Austin that Bob Mould has actually dissolved Sugar–Ryko cleans out the warehouse of songs and stories for good: 17 tracks of odds and sods, plus a “bonus” live disc for the first 25,000 who show…
Bob Wills Jr. cannot come to the phone. He is too sick to speak, his wife Elizabeth explains, the victim of a recent series of strokes that have left him incapacitated and near death. Through her lawyer, Elizabeth insists she will not leave his bedside–not to speak to a reporter,…
Turner Van Blarcum is perhaps the most easily recognized figure seen stalking Deep Ellum’s streets. With his shaved and mohawked head, he is a lumbering rail of tattoos and energy–a punk-rocker, to be certain, but no punk. When he speaks, his voice rattles around in his throat as if being…
In utero Foo Fighters Foo Fighters Roswell/Capitol Dave Grohl has no illusions: “I was always going to be ‘that guy from Kurt Cobain’s band,’ and I knew it,” he says, and so he and Pat Smears do not go out of their way to sever the ties that bind; rather,…
Love songs are, of course, the heart–or, more accurately, the broken heart–of popular music. Whether they are autobiographical stories or thinly veiled tales or imagined fantasies and failures, songs about love (or the promise of love, or the departure of love) constitute the bulk of the popular song catalog, followed…
“Did anybody tell you you have a voice like Joan Baez?” The crowd in the Dark Room on this Wednesday night after the Fourth of July is atypically small, the sort of intimate setting that engenders banter between audience members and performers. On stage, Meredith Louise Miller and Bruce Dickinson…
Good enough, Wells enough Twenty-three years after its release, Buddy Guy and Junior Wells Play the Blues stands as one of the turning points in the history of modern blues; it’s the crossroads at which the authentic and the commercial meet, a project that began with good intentions (to make…
As Matt Hillyer and Steve Berg welcome their guest into the living room-cum-rehearsal space in which Lone Star Trio and the Collyers practice and hang out, they bring out three cans of Lone Star beer. The gesture could not be more welcome, or appropriate: As two-thirds of Lone Star Trio–Hillyer…
Sing out Given the reluctance of the recording industry’s homosexuals to come out of their respective closets, it’s ironic that Melissa Etheridge’s rising popularity coincided with her proudly proclaiming her same-sex preference. Her timing, during the last presidential campaign, couldn’t have been better: her three albums released till that point…
When Old 97’s frontman Rhett Miller calls from a Chicago recording studio, where the band is recording the follow-up to last year’s Hitchhike to Rhome, he cannot contain his enthusiasm. He speaks quickly and a little breathlessly, bursting with the news that labelmate (on the Chicago-based Bloodshot Records) and Windy…
Red hot and boo hoo Red Hot + Bothered, Vols. 1-2 Various artists Red Hot/Kinetic/Reprise The latest installment in the “Red Hot + …” series stops off in the indie-rock world, with the big names (Guided By Voices, Sebadoh, Breeders, Lois, Spinanes, Lisa Germano, Uncle Tupelo’s Jay Farrar, Grifters) joining…
At the end of a two-hour interview, during which he has amiably recounted a story of a life spent traveling the world only to end up becoming the man who cuts the paychecks for Neil Young and Green Day and Eric Clapton, Reprise Records president Howie Klein suddenly becomes very…
James McMurtry has always returned home, no matter how far he strayed from it. He was born in Fort Worth in 1962, but left the city when he was young after his parents divorced: his mother moved to Richmond, Virginia, to take a job as an English professor, and James…
The band plays in the corner–near the front door, just a few feet away from the bar. Sometimes, when the music is quiet enough, they can hear a patron place a drink order even if it’s whispered to the bartender; the gurgling of the cappucino machine, the plops of ice…
Short-timers It has always been the great irony that of all the Pacific Northwest bands, Mudhoney historically had received the least attention from radio, from record-buyers, from MTV. Of course, the band demanded it be that way, contemptuously keeping major labels away for so long and giving in to Warner…
Who loves ya, baby? Where it Goes Lori Carson Restless Records There is a reason break-up songs are the greatest staple of popular music. They are something to which everyone can relate, tapping into a very universal pain that’s as inescapable as air; no matter how dead a relationship; some…
“I think I fucked up. Let me just play the groove for a minute.” So says Neil Young at the beginning of “Downtown” before starting, then stopping suddenly, then just as quickly launching head-first into a guitar riff that doesn’t sound too different from a guy in his garage repeating…
Return to roots Polkas for a Gloomy World Brave Combo Rounder Records Brave Combo has, for more than 16 years, been caught in an odd spot (“The Mystery Spot,” perhaps, as sax-etc. player Jeffrey Barnes might call it). When Carl Finch’s band emerged from Denton as straight-faced polka practitioners–doing for…
So here’s where we find out if Island Records’ explanation last year about “artist development” and “organic growth” was a square deal or an excuse for stalling the inevitable disappointment of commercial failure. Island is counting on Tripping Daisy to hit big this time around, confident that I Am an…
As Courtney Love and Woody Allen would attest, the best way to punch your way out of the wet plastic bag of celebrity dishonor is to go with what you know and get back, deeply and completely, into the gift that can’t be touched. Michael Jackson’s salvation has always been…
George Reagan and Tony Barsotti’s Lower Greenville house is a true rock and roll home: slightly decrepit band stickers (Hagfish and Tripping Daisy) stuck to the front door, posters (for Mercury Rev and the Beastie Boys and the like) tacked to walls, a back room filled with Barsotti’s drum kit…
