There’s always been an unflinching quality to Jay Farrar’s songs, a refusal to romanticize the facts into an ego-sparing balm or a conscience- calming salve. Not that he isn’t a romantic; like many other great lyricists, he attempts to transcend in song the weight of the everyday. The dignity of…
Mana is indisputably the commercial giant of Latin rock. The first rock en espanol group to score a gold album in the United States, the band’s status is truly — and internationally — gargantuan. Accordingly, it was apropos that, after an arty, soft-core porn video played on two huge screens…
Hole Celebrity Skin (DGC) Courtney Love’s glamorously defiant look on the cover of Celebrity Skin, the latest CD by her band Hole, fits with her penchant for blissful contradiction. Her tousled hair and skimpy see-through T-shirt are as punk and stylish as the burning trees behind her, but the antihero…
In their dreams young musicians bask comfortably and happily in the luxury of immense success. Those REM-induced illusions can be mapped out fairly easily: Critical acclaim and financial reward have settled on them like UV rays on a sunny day, rooms packed with beautiful new friends fall hushed in silent…
The emerging rap star known as Mos Def is a goofball. Usually, interviewing rap stars is an exercise in cliche recitation, with both parties agreeing about the need to take hip-hop to the “next level,” and to “stop the violence.” For a few moments Mos Def and I speak along…
John Hiatt The Best Of John Hiatt (Capitol Records) Few singer-songwriters exude the piss and vinegar of John Hiatt — not to mention a dastardly wit and hearty guffaw. Since the Seventies, while under contract to numerous record labels, this Music City-based songsmith has written and sung about oddball themes…
Marshall Crenshaw The 9 Volt Years: Battery Powered Home Demos & Curios 1970-198?) (Razor & Tie) Marshall Crenshaw is one of rock and roll’s unsung heroes; he first beautified the airwaves in 1982 with his modest hit “Someday Someway.” Amid the postpunk new-wave pop of Joe Jackson and Split Enz,…
Riley “B.B.” King presides so dominantly over the past and present of modern blues that his influence, innovations, and massive talents are easily taken for granted, and at worst overlooked. The most visible and commercially successful blues artist of all time, King has practically always been within earshot and eyesight,…
Pearl Jam’s got it bad. Unquestionably the most interesting of the grunge bands to follow in Nirvana’s wake, Pearl Jam has suffered at the hands of everyone. Even with all manner of concessions to the marketplace — a video, a tour with the help of arch nemesis Ticketmaster, a solid…
In the bowels of Miami Beach’s Marlin Hotel is a small, exotic, denlike space. Narrow and dark, the room is painted a rich wine color. Strips of mirror cover the ceiling and stretch down the walls, alternating with billowing burgundy and navy batik curtains. Banquettes strewn with huge cushions line…
Battering-ram six-string power and inescapable melody have long been the tools of Bob Mould’s trade. Through the hostile punk punches of his HYsker DY days in the Eighties and the sublime soaring of his pop-leaning early-Nineties excursion with Sugar, Mould crafted a body of work that elevates the bone-pounding possibilities…
Bauhaus Crackle (Beggars Banquet) Bauhaus’s revered position in the world of gothic music has an auspicious origin. Their debut single from 1979 was a nine-minute, tongue-in-cheek horror-fest homage to Bela Lugosi, the actor best known for his 1931 portrayal of Count Dracula. Although lead vocalist Peter Murphy has admitted his…
A lot of groups would love to be given credit for having started an entire genre of music, but Bristol, England’s Massive Attack has neither the time nor the inclination to bask in its status as the “Godfathers of Trip-Hop.” As the British and American press heap praise on them,…
Tommy Shaw 7 Deadly Zens (CMC International) Night Ranger Seven (CMC International) Former Styx guitarist/vocalist Tommy Shaw may have been rockin’ the Paradise while Night Ranger was still dreaming of a bar tab and enough gas money to reach their next gig, but the two bands’ careers have become increasingly…
Hialeah is home to many a rickety warehouse. Most of the buildings contain gritty auto- and electronic-repair facilities, small machine shops, and the odd wholesale business. But one particular structure, a flat-roofed row of industrial-use units about two or three potholed and gravelly side streets west of the Palmetto Expressway,…
Raul Midon has some less-than-surprising observations about life as a musician in South Florida and ways to improve that life. “I was going to move to L.A.,” he admits. “I was like, ‘I’ve had it here. I have a good scene here, but I’ve got to get where there’s more…
On her great but not-quite-brilliant 1993 debut Exile in Guyville, Liz Phair sang in “Fuck and Run” of the longing for “the kind of guy who makes love ’cause he’s in it.” A year later, on the good but not-quite-great Whip-Smart, she yearned to “Go West,” hoping to find something…
Various Artists Fat Beats & Bra Straps: Women of Hip-Hop: Classics Fat Beats & Bra Straps: Women of Hip-Hop: Battle Rhymes & Posse Cuts (Rhino) After the Real Roxanne’s three rapid-fire introductions to 1986’s twelve-inch single “Bang Zoom (Let’s Go-Go),” all three sassy, tough, and impressive, a wall of what…
Close your eyes and listen. You could be in any jazz room in New York City. Open your eyes, take a look around, and you may still be fooled, for the venue has the ambiance of a sophisticated Big Apple jazz club. But this isn’t New York, it’s Miami Beach…
The 1992 pairing of “Jim Motherfucker” and “Spine,” the third release by the Columbus, Ohio, punk quartet Gaunt, is one of the best arguments I can think of for the necessity of the seven-inch single in an era of compact-disc convenience. Probably only a few thousand people around the globe…
The Jesus and Mary Chain Munki (Sub Pop) After the listless, largely acoustic misfire Stoned and Dethroned, the Jesus and Mary Chain returns four years later with Munki, a near-perfect mix of Jim and William Reid’s long-standing love of gooey pop melodies, boho-chic cynicism, and shrieking, overdriven guitars. Their first…
Crossover. Record executives dream of it. Most Latin performers covet it. The very thought of it makes Marc Anthony a little sick. “Every time I hear the word ‘crossover’ something goes off in my stomach,” says Anthony, who last year became the first salsa artist to sell out Madison Square…
