Program Notes

School books are flipped open, homework awaits, the leaves are turning to a loamy rainbow, September’s earthen burden has – whoa. Criminy, we’re starting to sound like Spy magazine. What September is around here is Women in Music Month, Cactus Cantina’s annual salute to distaff songmakers. Apart from the not-minor…

Swelter

Lately, what with one thing or another, we’ve been looking for something different. Something that doesn’t make sense. Something rough. The thirst for the unusual was almost permanently cured by the Saturday night second-anniversary celebration for Warsaw, a hellish, deranged, utterly offensive carnival. Standing on the balcony, looking out over…

Letters

DO WE DETECT A SUBTLE HINT OF ACRONYM-ONIOUSNESS THERE, T.J.? Regarding “Politics and Power”: Besides the lengthy paragraph after paragraph without any reference to who is speaking – how about an occasional “Baldwin said”? – I found a number of things unsettling. This is not a political issue; it is…

Program Notes

One of my favorite mixmasters, Clay D, has had a hand in a vast array of hip-hop projects. You gotta own the Pull It All the Way Down album featuring D and Prince Rahiem, and you might want to check out the Clay-molded LPs You Be You, I Be Me…

Letters

NO POLITICS, NO HERESY In “Politics and Power” (August 14) a reference was made to the Gay and Lesbian Youth Group of South Florida, Inc. in a quote attributed to Greg Baldwin. This quote is in error. As president of the youth group, I wish to make a correction. In…

Swelter

We have wandered, it seems, into a time and space where the parameters of fun in the Nineties – bargain-basement sensation as soulless, senseless, and dumbed-down as a television sitcom – have already been exhausted. Other eras of fun are needed for fuel. The Fifties have been used up as…

Program Notes

As you probably know, the national concert-tour business is in worse shape than my liver. Volume this year is down some 30 percent, which explains all those illogical package tours (Sisters of Mercy on the same bill as Public Enemy?) and other tricks of the trade, such as a Warrant-Trixter-Firehouse…

Program Notes

Graham Drout is a great front man who puts together great bands. That said, it seems like every time I mention his Iko-Iko – which is not often enough – it’s to announce ye olde personnel change. Julian Kasper has departed the long-time Tobacco Road houser. He and his wife,…