Looking at classic-rock record covers is like going to a modern art museum. Here, next to the Rothkos, there’s the iconic, prismatic cover for Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, designed by Storm Thorgerson’s Hipgnosis firm. Over there, just beyond the pop art gallery, are Peter Corriston’s Rolling Stones…
The other day I had a vision. I was standing on a vast plain, and the plain was a pale brown that verged on yellow. All of a sudden a huge black block fell out of the sky and clocked me. Down I went. Just before I lost consciousness, I…
In recent weeks these pages have not been kind to classic rock acts. In fact, they’ve been downright hostile. First, Steven Almond charted the creative crash and burn of Paul McCartney (July 24). Then, I went after the Who for selling out (August 14). Almond came roaring back with a…
In writing about the Who, it’s tempting to open with a description of the band’s legendary prowess, both on record and on-stage, and then make a series of snide comments about the profound irony of witnessing the very public dotage of the band that once roared “Hope I die before…
First, get into the pop-music time machine. Sure, it looks like a big cardboard box, maybe a refrigerator box, with crude crayoned dials drawn on its sides. Okay, it is a refrigerator box. But use your imagination, dammit! Set course for 1983. And then go back. Back before Bush. Back…
It’s late February. It’s a Friday night, so you take your wife by the hand, kiss your kids, wave goodbye to the babysitter, and hop in the car. If you don’t have kids, you can bring the babysitter along. Your destination? Coral Gables Congregational Church, where Tigertail Productions presents the…
Steve Forbert’s career as a rock musician could easily be read as a series of cautionary tales about fish and ponds. Big fish in little ponds. Little fish in big ponds. Fish lunging dumbly at the bait. Fish out of water. The simple filament of the rock-star narrative — boy…
The brainchild of Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner, the Rolling Stone Rock & Roll Bowl kicked off its inaugural run last fall with challenge exams at 30 colleges and universities nationwide. Six months later, after increasingly competitive regional and semifinal rounds, two three-person teams duked it out for the big…
Eight months ago no one had heard of the Rolling Stone Rock & Roll Bowl, and I was just an obscure graduate student, a former New Times writer enduring a self-imposed five-year exile in the vast Midwest. Today a few dozen people — perhaps even a few hundred people –…
While Eddy Grant’s endeavor to socafy the world through his Ice label is a fresh twist, he’s hardly the first pop star to turn up his own imprint. Long before he traded in his name for a psychosexual doodle, “retired” from studio recording, and announced his intention to concentrate on…
By now it’s hard to imagine that there are any American men, women, or children who don’t know what an orgasm sounds like. Long a staple of rock and roll (think Plant’s string of carnal diphthongs in “Whole Lotta Love”), the injection of sex into popular music climaxed in the…
When I left the dry comfort of my happy home and ventured into the rain for a special midnight sale of Prince’s The Hits, my intention was simple enough — to find, buy, and review the 56-track retrospective of pop’s premier chameleon. But fate has a funny way of kicking…
Tunefully metallic, eschewing imprecision, the Dallas-based Buck Pets are a silver key crunching in an unfamiliar lock, a small room filled with sharp slant-angles of sunshine. The Pets’s third LP, To the Quick, is their strongest effort to date, and should secure the band’s fame among fans who like their…
If Terence Trent D’Arby’s career offers one lesson, it’s this: record a top-notch album, be hailed as a quickly rising star, feed the press large doses of outlandish self-aggrandizement, fall headlong into the sophomore slump, bruise hard, hole up for four years, and finally re-emerge with another top-notch album. Followed…
Dear Whitney, You’re among the planet’s most celebrated entertainers. You’re a peerless vocalist capable of rattling the rafters with your range and thrilling the very air with your passion. Fulfilled both in your career goals (chart-topping power, Hollywood cachet) and your personal life (superstar spouse, beautiful new baby), you continue…
With all the complaints about bands that are all style and no substance, it’s nice to finally find one that’s all about substance. Even controlled substance. Take Basehead, for instance, the critically acclaimed alternative funk outfit that has hitched its wagon to the warped brain waves of 24-year-old ‘head honcho…
Jimmy Scott Lost and Found (Atlantic/Rhino) They’re a select group, a handful of singers that can pull up emotion and hurt so palpable that it’s almost painful to listen to, but you want to listen anyway: Billie Holiday, Neil Young, Otis Redding, come immediately to mind. Add to their number…
Though the Parliament/Funkadelic empire has been officially silent since 1983’s Trombipulation, true followers of George Clinton’s visionary menagerie haven’t exactly gone dry during the nominal drought. Every year or so, Clinton, first lieutenant Bootsy Collins, and assorted friends drop by at this or that recording session, turning otherwise minor P-flavored…
So this man arrives in heaven, natty in a white suit coat and shoes shined to glare, and the security guard at the pearly gates greets him with a clipboard and a pen. “Name?” “James Brown,” says the man. “Yeah, right, and I’m St. Peter.” “My name,” the man repeats,…
Deep rhythm and blues has always possessed a special relationship with gospel. The two musics are flip sides of the same coin, a coin minted with conviction, integrity, and a powerful spirituality. You can say what you want about eyes, but in R&B, it’s the voice that’s the window to…
Like it or not, as we survey the debris of shattered Dade, we must begin to mythologize the devastation of Hurricane Andrew. In the fledgling years of the next century, our children and grandchildren will clamor for stories of the Great Storm of ’92. And because they’ll be products of…
It’s difficult to write about Tori Amos without acknowledging her prodigious talent, and harder still to sanction that talent without serious reservations. Classically trained from an early age to tickle the ivories, the North Carolina-born Amos struggled for years to find her place in the musical food chain. While still…
