Papa Vegas Hello Vertigo (Sid Flips/RCA) The other day I was flying. No, not in an airplane. Really flying. I just flapped my wings and up I went. Anyway while I was up there soaring over the tops of trees and picking dragonflies out of my mouth (you’d be surprised…
Hedwig and the Angry Inch Original Cast Recording (Atlantic Records) Hedwig Schmidt’s ill-fated pecker is the biggest thing off-Broadway in years. Apparently nothing gets the culturati in the seats quicker than rock operas about botched sex changes, especially when the star of the show’s a guy pretending to be a…
Gigolo Aunts Minor Chords and Major Themes (E Pluribus Unum) The Gigolo Aunts — simultaneous lovers and fighters — have the rare ability to pull off blustery rockers and doe-eyed ballads. Five years have passed since their last release, the major-label debut Flippin’ Out. On the Boston quartet’s first record…
Brian Wilson Imagination (Giant) After the 1966 release of the Beach Boys’ seminal Pet Sounds, anxiety and substance abuse contributed to a growing sense of inertia in Brian Wilson’s life. His struggle was further complicated by his relationship with a host of toxic personalities, from his dominant, perfectionist stage father…
Lenny Kravitz 5 (Virgin) Poor, poor, pitiful Lenny Kravitz. He has spent the better part of the past ten years — and five full-length albums — carefully crafting an artistic persona that, upon close examination, amounts essentially to little more than a cartoon character: the supersensitive, superfunky, supersonic, superstudly superstar…
Neil Finn Try Whistling This (Work) New Zealand singer/guitarist Neil Finn has probably forgotten more aching, beautiful melodies and winning musical hooks than most artists will ever write. Through his career as the angry young sparkplug of Split Enz, the gifted, conflicted leader of Crowded House, and the perpetual rival/bandmate…
Tori Amos From the Choirgirl Hotel (Atlantic) Tori Amos has followed her muse to the end of some pretty thin branches, documenting her soul’s perpetual churning. So far fans have happily crawled out there with her. Little Earthquakes (1991), Under The Pink (1994), and Boys for Pele (1996) made a…
Miles Davis/Bill Laswell Panthalassa: The Music of Miles Davis 1969-1974 (Columbia) Listening to Bill Laswell remix, reconstruct, and recycle the work of trumpet legend Miles Davis on Panthalassa brings to mind Natalie Cole dueting with her long-dead father Nat King Cole at the Grammys a few years ago. Dead men,…
Scott Weiland 12 Bar Blues (Atlantic) During Stone Temple Pilots’ short but amazing three-album run, frontman Scott Weiland excelled at fulfilling the expectations of both his fans and his critics. From platinum-selling faux-grunge icon to drug-addled rock star to tortured and rehabbed artiste, Weiland drove public passion and critical opinion…
The Dirty Dozen Ears to the Wall (Mammoth) Back in the late Seventies, when disco ruled, the New Orleans-based Dirty Dozen Brass Band was busy attempting to keep its hometown’s old-fashioned “second line” tradition alive. The band accompanied marching funeral processions, a not uncommon sight throughout the city, and added…
Like a lot of seventeen-year-old boys, Jonny Lang is having trouble waking up. It’s almost one o’clock in the afternoon, but Lang sounds groggy, distracted, still lost in dreams. Unlike most seventeen-year-old boys, Lang has a pretty good excuse: He spent the previous evening opening for the Rolling Stones in…
Labor of love. Labor of love. Labor of love. If I had a nickel — wooden or otherwise — for every time I’ve read (or overheard) someone recycle that soggy cliche, I could quit this writing nonsense tomorrow and pursue my dream of climbing Pamela Lee’s breasts unaided by Sherpas…
It Had to Happen James McMurtry (Sugar Hill Records) In 1995 two songs came out that were sharp expressions of the burden that the freewheeling Sixties left its children: the Charlie Sexton Sextet’s “Plain Bad Luck and Innocent Mistakes” and James McMurtry’s “Fuller Brush Man.” McMurtry continues to wrestle with…
After the Fall Mary Coughlan (Big Cat Records) Ever since the Beatles and Dylan began performing their own songs, critics and fans have placed as high a value on songwriting as performing. Indeed, singers who perform material written by others — Spice Girls, anyone? — are often considered suspect. Mary…
Elegantly Wasted INXS (Mercury) It’s sort of endearing the way Michael Hutchence thinks he’s still sexy, kinda like that fading jock who gets all decked out for a sandlot game and insists on hitting cleanup. The ball may not carry as far as it once did, but the swing’s always…
Big Trouble in the Mystery House of Joy The Fool (The Fool Records) For two years running, this New York quartet has played the H.O.R.D.E. tour, without so much as an indie label deal. Nice trick, huh? Wanna know how they do it? Well, it certainly doesn’t hurt that singer/songwriter…
I’ve never been an especially ardent fan of rock festivals. They strike me as a prolonged pretext for public vomiting, what with all the suds and the sun and the jostling. This, dear reader, is a subject about which I know a fair good bit, having spent the lion’s share…
Straight Outta Boone County Various Artists (Bloodshot Records) Straight Outta Boone County is Bloodshot Records’ fourth anthology of artists playing insurgent country (the label’s own name for a subgenre elsewhere hailed as no depression or alternative country), and it is hands down the label’s best collection yet. The premise this…
thursday august 7 Quartetto Gelato: The Coral Gables Congregational Church (3010 DeSoto Blvd., Coral Gables) continues its summer concert series with some sophisticated eclecticism. Toronto-based classical-crossover group Quartetto Gelato — made up of tenor-violinist-mandolin player Peter De Sotto, oboe and English horn player Cynthia Steljes, violist and accordion player Claudio…
thursday july 24 Arthur Hailey: Author of mega best sellers Hotel (which eventually became a long-running television series starring Barbra Streisand’s current honey-pie James Brolin and Connie Selleca, wife of the musical antichrist, a.k.a. John Tesh) and Airport (turned into a hit movie with a superfluity of screaming), Hailey is…
As it turns out, the nuts were right. Paul is dead. Creatively, at least, the Cute Beatle met his maker in about, oh, December of 1970. And, despite all the corporate pandering and hollow hoopla, Paul’s latest effort, Flaming Pie, is just about what you’d expect from a rock star…
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…
