The news that there’s a new Van Morrison album out should be thrilling. But for some of us there have been so many Morrison discs in the last year alone that it’s a bit anticlimactic. And if anyone mentions that Ronnie Scott or that Georgie Fame is on the album,…
I used to know a girl who swore that the most useful gauge of whether a relationship would work was how you travel: If you and your partner travel well, with only minimal bickering over this or that, your lovers’ fate was as good as sealed; fight like hell and…
If visions of stockings and sugarplums dance in your head; if dreams of silver bells and cockle shells disturb your sleep; if you can no longer tell which is worse, family or fruitcake — well, you need to get out more, my friend. And what better way to warm the…
Hype! The Motion Picture Soundtrack Various Artists (Sub Pop) In 1994 four records by four Seattle bands debuted at number one on the Billboard charts — Soundgarden’s Superunknown, Alice in Chains’ Jar of Flies, Pearl Jam’s Vs., and Nirvana’s Unplugged in New York — and sold a total of 25…
First, Bush’s Gavin Rossdale stole Kurt Cobain’s sound, right down to the last sad but fuzzy guitar chord and strangled vocal growl, and then he and his hired helpers rode it to a quintuple-platinum hit with Sixteen Stone, primarily because modern-rock radio programmers were damned if they were going to…
In 1992 producer Steve Helvey approached filmmaker Doug Pray about documenting the Seattle music scene. Pray thought it was a terrible idea. Anyone who had followed the rumblings in the Pacific Northwest, as Pray had, knew Seattle was over before Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” hit its second chorus. Making…
It could have been any town in America, and it often was: Athens, Chapel Hill, Minneapolis, Austin. Seattle was just another stop on the A&R Express, another destination where the gold-card crowd could run up their expense accounts while they looked for the Next Big Thing. At the end of…
Snoop Doggy Dogg Tha Doggfather (Death Row/Interscope) Various Artists Dr. Dre Presents … The Aftermath (Aftermath/Interscope) Makaveli The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory (Death Row/Interscope) In the wake of Tupac Shakur’s death, these three albums have little chance of being heard objectively. Certainly the conventional wisdom about each lacks…
Intrigue Acoustic Soul (Universal) Tony Toni Tone House of Music (Mercury) Think back to the abyss of early Eighties urban thump-thump music. New technology had yet to be mastered by artists like Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, black pop music was in assembly-line mode, and it seemed that maybe real…
I don’t think of myself as an especially sentimental sort, and Lord knows I’m no Christian, but something about Christmas music makes me all mushy and dopey. Every year for the last decade or so, after the last batch of Thanksgiving chow gets burped into the Tupperware, I drag out…
1) Darlene Love, “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” 2) Elvis Presley, “Santa Claus Is Back in Town” 3) The Drifters, “White Christmas” 4) Otis Redding, “Merry Christmas, Baby” 5) James Brown, “Santa Claus Go Straight to the Ghetto” 6) Huey Piano Smith and the Clowns, “Silent Night” 7) The Moods,…
Talk it up at the debut of Chit Chat on Tuesday, December 17, at Sticky Fingers (3399 Virginia St., Coconut Grove, 461-3313). The brand new restaurant/bar/club opened last week, injecting some new flavor into the we-are-presently-remodeling-and-will-be-done-by-the year-2000 Mayfair Shops. The joint is open seven days a week, serving up finger…
Rock music hasn’t traditionally been the musical genre that best expresses vulnerability. Teenage angst maybe; romantic loss certainly. But that frightening revelation that usually comes well after adolescence — that nudge from the universe that lets you know you won’t live forever and, by the way, you’re on borrowed time…
After a weekend of as much pump and thump at your favorite club as you can cram into a couple of days, gear up for a rock and roll week. It’s live-music heaven on Monday, December 9, when everybody’s favorite boy-next-door band Weezer steps out of the garage and into…
Like anyone who listens to all sorts of music in search of various forms of aural stimuli, certain records hit me in different ways and in different places, while others punch the same buttons even if they exist in practically parallel galaxies. Recent examples? Well, there’s Stillupsteypa’s Car Dirty with…
Robert Bradley’s Blackwater Surprise Robert Bradley’s Blackwater Surprise (RCA Records) The late rock critic Lester Bangs once wrote that he would pay almost any price to hear Aretha Franklin sing; he didn’t especially care what she sang. That’s how it is with certain singers. Marvin Gaye, John Lennon, and Janis…
Full disclosure: Neil Diamond was my first real concert, in my fourth-grade year, the result of Mom’s ardent fandom. Me, Sis, Mom, and Dad at the Houston Summit. What I remember most is this: Someone who couldn’t have been paying much attention tried to pass a joint to me through…
Ed Matus loves spreading discord. As the guitarist, vocalist, and one of the primary lyricists for Subliminal Criminal, Matus injects a reckless kind of humor into the dissonant, aggressively subversive, and, yes, discordant music the Miami band creates. Matus and his cohorts — bassist-vocalist Anthony Ferry-Lucas and drummer Kris King…
How good is the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion? So good that four years after the release of the band’s screeching, wailing debut album from ’92, the Blues Explosion towers over nearly every other punk-blues fusionist shimmying and shrieking on the indie-rock circuit. Over the course of five longplayers and numerous…
Utah Phillips and Ani Difranco The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere (Righteous Babe) On “Bridges,” Utah Phillips intones: “I have a friend, a good folksinger and song collector, who comes and listens to my shows and says, ‘You always sing about the past. You can’t live in the past, you know.’…
Bow your heads, please, and dress yourself in the ebony hues befitting a funeral — the Miami punk-pop collective known as Fay Wray has belly-upped, bitten the dust, gone the way of eight-tracks and Edsels. The crushing news arrived a couple weeks back from the band’s drummer George Graquitena, who…
Is the family driving you crazy? Have you had just about as much as you can take of Aunt Martha’s story about how she met Uncle Don? Lucky for you, clubland offers some interesting options that not only stir the soul, but warm the heart as well. Get into the…
