We’re barely into 1998 and, much like the year that preceded it, death has already tainted its arrival, an unfortunate but inevitable continuance of 1997’s massive body count. That year was kicked off by the January 1 death of singer-songwriter and cult icon Townes Van Zandt. By the end of…

Albita Una Mujer Como Yo (Crescent Moon/Epic) Albita Rodriguez used to open her local club shows by joking that she would give a three-part performance: Cuban music, followed by Cuban music, wrapping it up with Cuban music. The singer’s allegiance to the classic Cuban sound made for good shtick, but…

The line that separates evocative rock and roll romanticism from facile pop blatherings is too thin for just anyone to navigate, and it’s one that James Taylor has never treaded with much grace. The possessor of an occasionally affecting voice, and a confessional lyricist who helped popularize the pathos, angst,…

Never Bet the Devil Your Head Subrosa (Sony/550) Never Bet the Devil Your Head is a debut album that will likely be seen as a sophomore effort. The record bears the indelible stamp of the band Subrosa used to be, For Squirrels. As local fans will surely remember, For Squirrels…

Dion The Road I’m On: A Retrospective (Columbia/Legacy) He’s best remembered for the string of brilliant doo-wop hits he had in the Fifties with the Belmonts — swaggering, salacious cuts such as “Runaround Sue” and “The Wanderer” — but Dion DiMucci not only maintained a career throughout the Sixties, he…

This column wasn’t supposed to be an obituary, although it was meant to sound a knell of finality, if not death. This is my last column for New Times; I’ve decided to go back home to Memphis to work on a project that seems too good to pass up. After…

Peter Jefferies/Jono Lonie At Swim 2 Birds (Drunken Fish) Out of print since its 1987 release in New Zealand, an obscurity to even the most fervid Kiwi-noise devotees, At Swim 2 Birds has been the missing link in the long, weird history of Peter Jefferies. Arriving just after the disbanding…

Various Artists Ultra-Lounge: On the Rocks, Parts One and Two (Capitol) I’ve marveled at the sonic gimmickry and the compositional and arranging genius of Juan Esquivel, I’ve basked in the cheesy tropical splendor of Martin Denny, and I’ve been obsessively passionate about Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra since my mid-teens…

Bob Dylan didn’t die. Apparently the state of his condition following his May 25 hospitalization for histoplasmosis was greatly exaggerated by the news media. (“DYLAN COULD BE IN FIGHT FOR LIFE,” wailed the headline from the May 29 edition of the New York Post.) Still, the news of that hospitalization…

The Monks Black Monk Time (Infinite Zero/American) Everything that’s great about the Monks is right there on “Monk Chant,” the lead cut from the group’s 1966 underground classic Black Monk Time, reissued on American’s Infinite Zero imprint after 30 years of obscurity. Over galloping drums, fuzzed-out bass, horror-show organ, trebly…

Despite all the recent press talk about the demise of rock and roll and the glorious advent of electronica, I’ve neither subscribed to the former nor believed for a minute that insipid doodlers like DJ Spooky will become anything close to the Next Big Thing. But then I started thinking:…

A few words on Pete Moss from some people who knew him. Moss, a fixture on the local music scene for more than ten years, died early last week. No cause of death has been announced. Hal “Boise Bob” Spector, musician: “We met while he was playing in Gay Cowboys…

For someone who considers himself an expressionist, Khadir frontman Lino de la Guardia has had a hard time expressing himself — or rather, he’s found it difficult to get the sounds in his head captured on tape. His frustration is evident when the 32-year-old Miami native talks about all the…

Buick MacKane The Pawn Shop Years (Rykodisc) The best way to distinguish the solo work of Austin singer/songwriter Alejandro Escovedo from his side-band excursions with Buick MacKane is to cue up the first cut on The Pawn Shop Years, the MacKane unit’s debut album. Anyone who’s been swimming through Escovedo’s…

It’s not easy selling Miami on avant-garde music. Sometimes you even have to give the stuff away. Gustavo Matamoros knows this. The artistic director of the South Florida Composers Alliance’s annual Subtropics 9 New Music Festival — and a respected avant-garde composer in his own right — has over the…

Jay Farrar writes songs from the tangled backwoods of the soul, in a dimly lit recess where what little light shines only illuminates the despair that dogs him. In the seven years since he introduced the first of those songs as one-third of the seminal neo-country band Uncle Tupelo, Farrar,…

Robert Price is not a happy man. At least not now. It’s the day before his band Kreamy ‘Lectric Santa is set to embark on a monthlong club tour that will take them through the South, across Texas, and up and down the West Coast from Los Angeles to Seattle…

The music of southern Louisiana has been described in many ways, but “progressive” isn’t a word you often see thrown in the direction of the myriad zydeco and Cajun bands that set the region’s culture and mores to music that ranges from reeling to rocking, from swaying to smoldering. Of…

If you will, indulge me in these two recollections: (1) Sometime in the hot summer of 1993, three friends and I were sucking down beers at the local punk club in Memphis, Tennessee, a scummy little stinkpit called the Antenna. Between band sets an acquaintance of ours — a hustler…