Aches and growing pains Vitalogy Pearl Jam Epic Records The Pearl Jam heard on Vitalogy, ultimately, is an above-average rock and roll band–far better than the one heard on Ten, further along than the one on Vs., interesting enough to split camps between those who passionately believe and those who…
The crowd ruined the concert. Had the few hundred invited guests paid attention, had they set down their drinks and shut their mouths, they might have heard the beautiful, poignant words the woman on stage was singing–“Hold me like a mother would,” she beckoned in a voice both tender and…
It has been a year and a half since Marshall Crenshaw has written a song–18 months since the man sat down with his guitar and completed the dozens of unfinished thoughts that rattle around inside his head. He has run smack into writer’s block, that often impenetrable barrier created by…
At about 3:30 p.m. Sunday, Edie Brickell–dressed in a brown leather jacket, a striped T-shirt, black jeans, and old K-Swiss tennis shoes, looking less like the famous wife of a pop-music icon and more like the good ol’ Edie of Prophet Bars and 500 Cafes past–loitered outside Trees, basking in…
Their evil twin In an interview with the Observer a couple of years ago, Frank Black confessed that if he could have been in any band other than his own Pixies, he would have joined They Might Be Giants. Such an admission seemed both odd and appropriate: the Pixies and…
It is hard to keep Jeff Buckley on one subject for very long. He doesn’t dodge questions, but being on the road for the past five months–performing, doing interviews, dealing with record company business–has kept him from his primary love of songwriting. Buckley is dead serious, reflective, and careful when…
Shortly after 10:30 p.m. this past Friday night, when thousands are crammed into a soggy Cotton Bowl to hear the Rolling Stones, Charles Kennedy and 11 others–some wrapped in blankets, some in shorts or bathing suits, a couple completely naked–climb into a sweat lodge and wait for the ceremony to…
Ben Watt, one half of the English music duo Everything But the Girl, is talking about death from his Atlanta hotel room. “I know it sounds glib,” the 31-year-old singer-songwriter-musician says in his high, clear, thoughtful voice, “but everything really is more important now. I find myself wanting to simplify…
American music Country Fair 2000 Phil Alvin Hightone Records The first song is credited to “The Blasters,” though without brother Dave it’s hardly the real thing. But Phil’s always gone for the closest approximation: Country Fair’s trip through the American musical landscape–Next stop, N’awlins ragtime jazz! Comin’ up on dem…
Caveman rock Seeing Dinosaur Jr. live can hardly be described as an exciting experience: after all, what’s so interesting about seeing a guy who moves and looks like Snuffleupagus sling a guitar around? Yet for Generation Alternative Nation, hearing is believing, as it convulses in feverish fits of violent moshing…
One has to wonder what Robbie Robertson thought. Robertson has long stayed away from performing on television, but there he was on David Letterman’s Late Show last Thursday, performing the haunting “Ghost Dance” from his new album Music for “The Native Americans,” backed by a band that featured Rita Coolidge…
Moonlight in Jersey Duets II Frank Sinatra Capitol Records Sending Sinatra into the studio with the embarrassing hacks and modest stars (Frank Jr., Steve and Eydie, Patti LaBelle, Neil Diamond, Lorrie Morgan, Jimmy Buffett) and oddball surprises (no, Frank’s really a big fan of the Pretenders) to recut classic songs…
At the end of an afternoon spent together, John Nitzinger takes his interviewer aside and says, in a rare quiet moment, that “God has wiped the slate clean.” He is standing outside the door of his Fort Worth apartment, looking just slightly older than his 46 years, wearing a black…
Stone alone Keith Richards once said Bobby Keys’ greatest problem in the early ’70s was that, for a while, the Lubbock-born sax player deluded himself into thinking he was a member of the Stones’ inner circle. Richards and Keys were great pals, drug buddies from way back whose passion for…
Fifteen minutes into a thoughtful, often painful discussion of the music of Ween–one that goes into influences and intent, touching on technique and style and the influences of Leonard Cohen and Prince–the man known as Gene Ween lets out a loud sigh. “Hey, you’re sitting here making me analyze Ween,…
Beyond the beach Director Quentin Tarantino explains that he opened his paean-to-afros-and-junkies-and-sodomizers, Pulp Fiction, with Dick Dale’s 1962 surf-rock classic “Miserlou” (derived from a 1940s-era Greek pop hit, actually) because “it sounds like the beginning of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly with those trumpets, that almost Spanish sound…
Four years ago, Madonna sat in her lush Beverly Hills hotel suite holding court with a handful of reporters who drooled into their microphones as they surrounded “the world’s most famous woman,” as one writer said upon introduction. They came to ask her questions about Truth or Dare, the documentary…
Unconscious in heaven Unplugged in New York Nirvana DGC Records It’s a split decision: underneath the noise and distortion and hoarse growl that defined Nirvana lay finely constructed pop songs, catchy melodies that underscored (perhaps even usurped) the intensity of the lyrics Kurt Cobain choked out. But what made Nirvana…
The walls of Tony Zoppi’s North Dallas townhouse apartment keep track of history better than any journal or book of newspaper clippings. It’s as if the past 40 years have been preserved in this place–a shrine to celebrities and presidents and infamous figures who, even in death or old age,…
Ted Hawkins was born in 1936 to a father he never knew and an alcoholic mother in Lakeshore, Mississippi, a speck of a town defined by its desolation and poverty. He spent most of his teens bouncing in and out of reform schools, then jails, and on chain gangs picking…
All is forgiven Return of the Valley of the Go-Go’s The Go-Go’s I.R.S. Records Fourteen songs into this 36-song retrospective, and you’re still not to the first Hit. In fact, maybe five of the selections could have been considered Hit Singles; the rest went largely unheard or unheeded by an…
Over the past four decades, a million rock and roll bands have made a hundred million rock and roll records. Some go on to sell millions of copies; some, a few thousand; most, maybe a few dozen cassettes. If, tomorrow, most of the would-be Neil Youngs and Kurt Cobains and…
