It was one of those silly moments in musical history, a throwaway novelty song performed by a duo of comedians. It was a joke, son. And yet a few of us still get the shivers just thinking about it. For some of us it wasn’t just a goofy spoof, it…
If you’re expecting subtlety from a comedy troupe named the Ballbusters, you’re in for the rude awakening you deserve. These guys are lewd, crude, and determinedly obnoxious. Their sole joy in life is derived from placing and recording prank telephone calls to unsuspecting victims, taking perverse glee in raising the…
“It’s impossible to be a competent popular music critic,” writes Dave Marsh, generally considered one of the top rock journalists in the land. So Dave, why don’t you get a real job? That’s the problem, Marsh argues in the March issue of Rock & Rap Confidential: Being a competent crit…
Near the end of his December concert at the Musicians Exchange in Fort Lauderdale, keyboardist and vocalist extraordinaire Leon Russell flashed a grin at bass player Jack Wessel, a knowing smile that so much as said Russell owned the audience and knew it. The crowd was rocking with him, oblivious…
Henry Jaglom has got a hell of a racket. He takes a house full of yuppie women, gives them a rough guideline for what he wants them to say, turns on a camera, and whatever comes out he calls a movie. And the damnedest part is it works. In the…
Joaquin Cortes, 24 years old and a dangerously handsome Gypsy trained in classical ballet, is the first flamenco dancer to achieve the popular status of a rock star. In Spain his mix of strong flamenco stomps and lyrical jumps and turns have seduced both jaded postmodern payos (non-Gypsies) and gitano…
From local to national to local again, members of the newly formed alliance Planet Boom have individually tasted morsels of success and swallowed epic helpings of disappointment. From being overshadowed by former bandmates to being orphaned by record labels, the foursome has built up enough animosity and adrenaline to lend…
Various Artists Descarga boricua (Terrazo) The first time this grooved beyond my apartment window, everyone walking by danced all the way to the corner A senior citizens included. Producer FranFerrer has done a prime job packing into this double CD a swinging blend of all that is sonorous about Latin…
Back in the late 1970s, when Walt Austin was a third grader at Gaines Elementary School in Athens, Georgia, he had the mistaken impression that “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” was written by the Bee Gees. After all, it was their version of the classic Beatles tune that was…
Argentina’s Eighties transition from military dictatorship to democracy was sung by an army of balladeer poets, postpunk nihilists, and pop pretty boys. The national-rock scene roared with optimism at government-sponsored festivals, and multinational labels opened subsidiaries to commercialize the abundant local talent. (The newly “discovered” scene had been happening on…
I am not a rock critic. Rock critics are a sorry lot. Too many frustrated musicians who use their platform to snipe at the luckier or more talented souls who have actually made it. Or glorified groupies willing to trade print blowjobs for the opportunity to hang with the band…
Perched on a stool center stage at the Stephen Talkhouse in February, John Hammond was busy conjuring up the ghosts of Robert Johnson and Son House from the hard-strummed strings of his acoustic guitar. And although his brilliant 1992 release Got Love If You Want It had earned the blues…
It was last summer and local band Lavalas was playing the Orange Blossom Lounge in Ft. Pierce, another booking in an obscure out-of-town venue they were told attracts a Haitian crowd. In a video of the concert you can see a few disinterested patrons of undetermined nationality standing around what…
When Pearl Jam performed in Miami a few weeks ago, fans had the opportunity to enjoy two spectacles A one outside the Bayfront Park Amphitheater, one inside. With the gates supposed to open at 7:00 p.m., but not opening until about an hour after that, some slight civil unrest was…
If, like his mother said, Kurt Cobain wanted to to join the “club” whose members include Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and other dead rock stars, at least he should have stuck around long enough to make a couple of decent albums. Pardon me if I’m less than impressed…
It is one of those just great time slots clubs bestow upon local bands: Sunday, midnight. It’s the end of the weekend and the rooms are desolate, a couple of disinterested pool players and one bored bartender. A few dedicated fans. And most likely, the band’s cut of the door…
Bean, Ben, and Prez. It’s almost a mantra for anyone who loves tenor sax (that is, tenor sax before ‘Trane, Newk, and ‘Nette bent the horn around new dimensions). Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Lester Young. The tenor trinity’s impact is so deeply felt it’s almost impossible to trace a player…
Ted Hawkins The Next Hundred Years (DGC) Every so often you hear a performer for the first time and the experience actually changes you. Such epiphanies are usually delivered by someone with an intensely personal vision, one that penetrates directly to your core, cuts you open and crawls inside there…
Elvis Costello sang about it. Not that he’s any expert. But hearing the sloppy guitar tangle, the talkin’-to-God vocal intro, the drum blast, and those words spilled out, a mental image grows: “There’s a girl in this address/There’s always a girl in distress/She’s just a shabby doll…she’s just a shabby…
“If there is a sound that says ‘Chicago Blues’ to the world,” Alligator Record’s founder Bruce Iglauer once said, “it’s the sound of a harmonica blown through a hand-held microphone blasting through an amplifier.” Urban, gritty, roaring like the El over Wabash, blues harp is alive and well in the…
Rock and roll is supposed to sound like Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels. Rock and roll was born to be wild, loud, angry, aggressive, cocky, horny, irrepressibly youthful. Listen to the frenetic gospel piano vamp at the beginning of “Jenny Take a Ride!” It sets the tone, building the…
William S. Burroughs, the godfather of slack, said that Truth lies in the number and the number is 23. He was referring, of course, to a system involving the magic of Chaos (five, or two plus three) and the arcana of ace conspiracy theorist Robert Anton Wilson. But he left…
