Weezer Weezer (DGC) They sound like Nirvana. They sound like Hsker D. They sound like Meat Puppets. Somehow, this is not necessarily a good thing. In fact, it can be downright tedious. — Greg Baker s Luther Allison Soul Fixin’ Man (Alligator) Like many African-American musicians, bluesman Luther Allison found…
No matter what your opinion of Ozzy Osbourne, you have to acknowledge two indisputable facts. First, in popular music’s continuing saga, there exist whole chapters devoted to the demi-godfather of hard rock. Second, at the Oz’s right hand there’s always been a fledgling guitarist whose career was being set in…
It’s a long way from the gothic torture chamber ambience of the defunct and sorely missed Washington Square to the upbeat sports bar decor of Dan Marino’s American Sports Bar & Grill (as opposed to Dan Marino’s Herzegovinian Bar & Grill or Dan Marino’s Mongolian Bar & Grill, I suppose),…
Big Boss Man, can’t you hear me when I call Well, you ain’t so big You just tall, that’s all Prolific blues bard Jimmy Reed wrote those familiar lines a couple of decades before Johnny Paycheck was telling the boss where anatomically to place his job or Dolly Parton was…
Magda Hiller …nothing but (independent cassette) She coos. She croons. She cackles. She croaks. She yowls and howls and growls. She’s lilting and lusty and tender and … damn! There went my thesaurus again. Those things are useless — always running out of synonyms when you need them most. The…
So often it begins on a whim: As an antidote to otherwise soporific college life in Gainesville, For Squirrels bassist Bill White recalls, he and fellow UF student Travis Tooke bought guitars at a pawnshop and taught themselves to play. Less than two years later, hard work and good luck…
In Tempe, Arizona, across the street from a golf course with winter-brown grass, behind a white wall that probably keeps in more than it keeps out, sits the low-slung, spacious home of Curt Kirkwood. That’s Curt Kirkwood — father of twins, fearless interviewee, marijuana enthusiast, Meat Puppet. A pit bull…
The rumblings of a revolution can be felt in the music industry air. The record companies are testing the waters of technology, though you’ll probably never hear about it, much less actually hear it. What they’re trying to do is move us print-press dinosaurs into the modern age by linking…
You’ve done your homework on Guy Clark. You’ve studied the press clippings (“Better than a good Texas brisket!” enthuses Vince Gill. “In my wildest dreams I look like Michelle Pfeiffer and write like Guy Clark,” bubbles Pam Tillis. “He may be the Thirteenth Apostle,” raves Leroy Parnell. “A genius for…
Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde was a man who loved other men. It was perhaps this aspect of his life that inspired him to write, nearly 100 years ago, that “the only sin is stupidity.” He also wrote “It is through art, and through art only, that we can realize…
Ted Nugent has problems. He might be the happiest rock and roll animal in the jungle, but sometimes you wonder if he’s just one synapse away from Koreshville. Believe him A if Janet Reno and the government ever send the badged boys out to his place, they’re going to get…
For some strange reason (the media), Margie Adam, the purest pop singer this side of Judy Collins, seems to be better known for the several years she spent not making music. A decade ago, Adam quit the music biz at the apex of her career. Now she’s back. And there…
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…
