As a lapsed Catholic and devout agnostic, I have a deep-seated aversion to anything resembling ritual. If I notice a pattern emerging, I try to curb it before it becomes routine. Now the eating, sleeping, breathing thing is inescapable and there are always favorite restaurants to return to. But the…
Having sold more than 16 million CDs within weeks of her second release, Britney Spears is on top of the world right now. Which means chances are you love her or hate her. If you love her, you most likely are part of the nine-to-fourteen-year-old “tween” music market that, coupled…
It’s midmorning and guitarist Charlie Hunter sounds surprised as he picks up the phone and cuts off his answering machine, which beat him to the punch. “I didn’t even hear the phone ring; I’m going to have to fire my phone,” he says with a laugh from his Brooklyn apartment…
In honor of his roots in the Missouri Ozarks, Porter Wagoner is known as the Thin Man from West Plains, but just The Man would be sufficient. Country music simply would not be what it is today if it were not for Porter the TV host, the talent scout (He…
Professional geezer, Woody Guthrie imitator, and cowboy song collector Ramblin’ Jack Elliott celebrates the release of his biopic documentary, The Ballad of Ramblin’ Jack, with an accompanying soundtrack that serves as an adequate career summary for the wandering troubadour. It’s a testament to Elliott’s persistence in plugging away at his…
Much has been made of preacher’s son Michael D’Angelo Archer’s roots in his Richmond, Virginia, Pentecostal church. On his long-awaited sophomore effort, Voodoo, D’Angelo himself makes a great deal of the connections between the charismatics of the church and the ancient channeling arts of West Africa. He even uses this…
I entered the music business when it was much more of a cottage industry and now it is a corporate industry. There are advantages to corporate industry…. That’s just the way it is. It’s not going back.” — Sting, America Online chat, December 7, 1999. Sting has benefited greatly. He…
Throw a stick and you’re apt to hit someone who thinks the current pop scene is the worst ever! And who, other than nine-year-old white girls, could argue with that logic? Britney Spears and Celine Dion, to name just two, seem more like actors portraying musicians than the real thing…
“They are in the public domain,” Dave Alvin writes in the liner notes to his new collection of old folk-song covers. “They belong to nobody. They belong to us all.” This is a pretty sentiment, but it apparently is not one that helps you turn those old folks tunes into…
Ah, pot rock and its attendant, spacy pleasures. Chore of Enchantment has been out for a while but it can still probably be referred to as Giant Sand’s new record, since the last official release by this group was almost six years ago. Pot rock takes its time. Anyway Giant…
There was no more mosh pit. At the Watcha Tour Showcase for the Latin Alternative Music Conference (LAMC) held in New York City August 12 through 14, the entire first floor of Manhattan’s Irving Plaza churned in a tidal wave of human bodies that crashed above the heads of still…
Someone somewhere said something about tragedy being an opportunity,” remarks Ulysses Perez, drummer for Miami trio A Kite Is a Victim. It’s not that the band’s melancholy songs take listeners on a suicidal spiral or that its members lead particularly dismal lives. But the group actually thrives on living on…
Desi Arnaz was a television genius. Fifty years down the road, the antics of the Ricardos and the Mertzes may smell musty until you consider that Arnaz had mastered the sitcom formula well ahead of everyone else. He was the innovator of three-camera simultaneous shooting, still the standard method of…
Give or take an occasional oddity, such as For a Few Dollars More or The Godfather, Part II, sequels seldom work as well as their predecessors. The stories they offer are generally nothing more than mere embellishments of an already established theme; the worst of them are utter travesties conceived…
Once in a great while a concert that you wish everyone could see comes to town. The Florida debut of Totó la Momposina on August 5 was such a concert. Thirty-five years ago the Afro-Colombian singer began a mission to “conquer hearts with music,” introducing the sounds of her native…
The first time I ever heard the Sugar Hill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight,” it was introduced on a Memphis R&B radio station by a disc jockey who clearly had little use for the song but was honoring a call-in request. I can’t remember what he said, but his sneer was audible,…
Anyone who watched MTV back in the Eighties and early Nineties, when Michael Jackson was still commercially and artistically relevant, remembers the almost daily reports of screaming, weeping teens around the globe, reaching supplicant toward their musical messiah. This would eventually translate itself across nations and cultures to occurrences such…
The first thing that must be said about The Final Concert is that it’s not. This live album does capture a 1983 Indianapolis show from Marvin Gaye’s final tour, but there were shows after this one. The second thing to note is that when the its producers warn on the…
Everybody these days seems to be trying their hand at doing the perfect pop record à la Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys. The Flaming Lips tried something like it with last year’s The Soft Bulletin and Wilco came pretty close to pop perfection with its Summer Teeth recording, also…
The sarode isn’t a big name in the United States. You might even accuse the sitar of hogging all the glory when it comes to lead instruments in Indian classical music. Blame it on the Beatles, who first brought the sitar to Top 40 radio with their Rubber Soul LP…
In truly inspiring do-it-yourself fashion, Mr. Quintron, “The Amazing Spellcaster,” has created a minientertainment empire based in New Orleans’s tough Ninth Ward. His music: four albums of organ/theramin/contraption sound, from noise to go-go R&B. Think Korla Pandit in a junkyard, eyes to outer space. His club: the Spellcaster Lodge, host…
I’ve always liked the Doobie Brothers. Not for their music but for the simple fact that they were one of those bands that at their peak had too many members. You’d look at the cover of one of their successful late-Seventies albums and see all these people milling about and…
