“I think I fucked up. Let me just play the groove for a minute.” So says Neil Young at the beginning of “Downtown” before starting, then stopping suddenly, then just as quickly launching head-first into a guitar riff that doesn’t sound too different from a guy in his garage repeating…
Return to roots Polkas for a Gloomy World Brave Combo Rounder Records Brave Combo has, for more than 16 years, been caught in an odd spot (“The Mystery Spot,” perhaps, as sax-etc. player Jeffrey Barnes might call it). When Carl Finch’s band emerged from Denton as straight-faced polka practitioners–doing for…
So here’s where we find out if Island Records’ explanation last year about “artist development” and “organic growth” was a square deal or an excuse for stalling the inevitable disappointment of commercial failure. Island is counting on Tripping Daisy to hit big this time around, confident that I Am an…
As Courtney Love and Woody Allen would attest, the best way to punch your way out of the wet plastic bag of celebrity dishonor is to go with what you know and get back, deeply and completely, into the gift that can’t be touched. Michael Jackson’s salvation has always been…
George Reagan and Tony Barsotti’s Lower Greenville house is a true rock and roll home: slightly decrepit band stickers (Hagfish and Tripping Daisy) stuck to the front door, posters (for Mercury Rev and the Beastie Boys and the like) tacked to walls, a back room filled with Barsotti’s drum kit…
Dirty, nasty, sweaty, sweet The great irony of Juliana Hatfield’s career is that the more confident she grows–as a guitarist, a songwriter, a singer, an adult–the less moving her work becomes. Her debut in 1992, Hey Babe, may have been a work of transition–the band member trying to find her…
Danny Wright, a trim, blond 31-year-old with a killer grin, is giving a reporter a tour of his spacious home in Fort Worth–a California-style, sunlight-saturated minipalace done up in tasteful tones of black and ivory. The color scheme befits a man who, during the past decade, has amassed a small…
Shane, go back The Snake Shane MacGowan and The Popes Warner Bros. Records Pogues, Popes–what’s a few letters among friends? MacGowan picks up where he left off when he parted company with his obscurely famous former band, quenching his bottomless thirst at the pub with “Nancy Whiskey” and slurring words…
Jill by night Jill Sobule’s is a life told in stories–some her own, some borrowed from others, some true, some manufactured and built upon exaggeration, some quite fantastic, and some quite real. They are simple stories–short, to the point, bouncy even when sad, sung in the pretty voice of a…
Four months after the Toadies began their careers as major-label artists, joining a roster that includes such superstars as Nine Inch Nails and Snoop Doggy Dogg and Dr. Dre, the band members found themselves back in town last Christmas contemplating finding day jobs. Their major-label debut, Rubberneck–which was originally scheduled…
An hour before Tripping Daisy is set to take the stage, the line wraps entirely around Trees, spilling into the alley behind the club. The show has long been sold out, and by the time the 11:30 rolls around on this Thursday night, dozens of folks still mill around the…
JoJo the Laughing Boy Those who love Jonathan Richman cite his wide-eyed naivete, his eternal youth, his winsome innocence, his ability to make childlike what is so adult, his talent for finding poetry in the banal and everyday. Appropriately, his detractors cite those same qualities as the reason they don’t…
Simon Le Bon loves to bathe in the limelight. Over the phone from London, Duran Duran’s lead singer–one of the last famous international playboys, to use Morrissey’s lyric–is jovial and seems to relish talking to the press. He doesn’t even hesitate to reveal what kind of music he likes to…
Lost in the bayou Wish You Were Here Right Now Bobby Charles Stony Plain Records Robert Charles Guidry doesn’t show up in the history books, not even as a footnote. Were it not for a couple of hits–for other people, most notably Fats Domino’s “Walking to New Orleans”–he’d have dissipated…
If one were to design an ideal new rock band for the current alternative Zeitgeist, one couldn’t do much better than Austin’s Sincola. This co-ed, multi-ethnic, democratic quintet includes women both gay and straight, and at least one guy (hetero) who’s been known to wear a dress and even drop…
Isaac Hayes answers the door, his bald head down and his eyes sagging. By way of introduction, he yawns and apologizes for being so damned tired, and ushers his guest into the room with a limp raising of his left arm. He wears black pants and a black pullover, and…
On her just-released debut album Relish, singer-songwriter Joan Osborne has included a song so quietly amazing it likely will go unnoticed or just plain ignored. At first, “One of Us” sounds like the ironically quirky, almost naive musings of a Julianna Hatfield or Jill Sobule, a woman asking her funny,…
Wicked shame Forever Blue Chris Isaak Reprise/Warner Bros. Isaak sounds like Roy Orbison, looks like Chet Baker, wants to be Elvis Presley–and, as usual, the equation adds up to gloomy, romantic, somber, moody rockabilly-pop that depends as much on sheer atmosphere as upon the words crooned. And damn it all…
Mention the name Moon Festival to those who know or care about such things, and probably they will half-remember the name, maybe even a song, but little more. If the band ever made an impression to begin with, it has been washed away by tides of new bands and new…
Jam out the kicks From 1968 to 1971, Wayne Kramer and Fred “Sonic” Smith were men who defined and defiled rock and roll from the fringes, creating a music that would provide the howling sound track for a city as it burned. The MC5–among the most-cited and least-heard influences on…
The temple of womb Vibrator Terence Trent D’Arby WORK/Columbia Records He’s full of shit, full of himself, full of genius. D’Arby’s sly pretensions–here, a concept album about spirituality titled Terence Trent D’Arby’s Vibrator; digs at supermodels next to pleas for resurrection; Memphis horns intertwined with metal guitar–have always confounded the…
Splendor in the bluegrass Sometimes, it seems there’s not a Texas band in which Mark Rubin hasn’t played, nor a style of music he has not performed. He was a member of the original incarnation of Killbilly, handling his antique upright bass like Hank Aaron handled a bat; for Rubin,…
