Eat the impeach Yet another of modern-rock radio’s sudden one-hit wonders, the Presidents of the United States rose from obscurity in Seattle to ubiquity on radio and television without a moment’s notice. It’s a funny thing about so-called “alternative radio” and the record industry: One minute a band is slugging…
Boy George has about a half hour to spare on the way back to his New York hotel, but he sounds as though the morning has treated him well. Speaking on a phone from the back of his limousine, he laughs often and speaks bluntly, not hesitating to deflect a…
The so-called punk revolution of the ’70s has given way to the punk ad campaign of the ’90s: Mohawks and green hair and tattoos are back (did they ever really go away?), short and sharp songs are the order of the day, and “anarchy” has become synonymous with multi-platinum fame…
Growing pains Shoegazer Buck Jones Independent release A band that has changed lineups more times than Johnny Oates’ Texas Rangers–they have been, at various times, a four-piece with two female singers, a three-piece with a male and a female singer, and a four-piece with everyone singing–Buck Jones is one of…
“We’re not looking for a shot at the big time. We just want to make great music.” Funland singer-guitarist Peter Schmidt says he likes to do interviews, if only because they force him to think about the things he has often relegated to memory. As he sits on a couch…
Country radio does not exist. It’s a misnomer, a myth, the great lie–Top 40 hiding behind a Resistol hat and a pair of Tony Lamas. Country music itself is an antiquated term, a marketing tool–pop music hiding behind twangs and pedal steel guitars and fiddles. Country radio and country music…
You’re a poet and you know that Heather Nova is a woman of pedigree – claims the Velvet Underground and Neil Young as childhhood heroes, shares bills with Pearl Jam Neil Young and Pavement and Bob Mould, records with sometime-U2 producer Youth. She’s been compared to everyone from Sinead O’Connor…
One year ago, Lisa Loeb became the first musician ever to land a song at the top of the pop charts without a record deal or a manager. She was a freak occurrence in the music business, able to achieve in a split second what most musicians grasp for in…
As a kid, Wayne Hancock moved around so often that now, at the age of 30, he can barely recall most of the places in which he lived. He knows for sure he was born at Baylor Hospital, and he remembers living in Kansas and Idaho when his father, an…
Country oys Wreck Your Life The Old 97’s Bloodshot Records The Chicago-based Bloodshot label has a name for their brand of country music: “Insurgent,” they call it, which is another way of hinting “outlaw” without the baggage applied to that term. It’s also a polite, roundabout way of saying that…
Jeff’s boogie There was a time when only one man in the world generated guitar sounds that millions of musicians now take for granted. Though John Lennon plucked the first note of feedback ever produced on vinyl ( intro to “I Feel Fine” in 1964), Jeff Beck was the first…
Being in a band can be like reliving high school. It’s social hierarchies and gawky self-definition all over again, trying to find one’s own group and struggling to fit in with a particular “scene.” As in adolescence, there are punks, hippies, metalheads, Edge listeners–the outcasts and the in crowd. And…
Suck my suck One Hot Minute Red Hot Chili Peppers Warner Bros. Records Punks who funk but sound like junk, the Chili Peppers never figured out how to become the white Parliament-Funkadelic because they’re too busy evolving into white bread. If such early outings as Freaky Styley and The Uplift…
Big Al Dupree sits alone at a table at Back Country Bar-B-Q, happily finishing off a heaping plate of meat and vegetables. This Greenville Avenue restaurant is, by Big Al’s estimation, the best barbecue eatery in town–“and I’ve tried them all,” brags the man who’s earned the “Big” in front…
This is a call The press biography Capitol Records sent out accompanying the Foo Fighters’ debut two months ago wasn’t a typical band bio – no glib hyperbole (“The greatest album ever”), no gushing praise, no discography; rather, it was a nine page autobiography written by band members Dave Grohl,…
Randy Newman’s publicist is on the phone one more time apologizing for the delay: Randy wants to do the interview, she explains, but he’s locked in a room trying to finish his songs for the upcoming Disney film Toy Story–the first movie done completely with computer animation and featuring the…
Morrissey is murder South Paw Grammar Morrissey Reprise Records In Morrissey’s music, true believers see the light in the dark universe; in his tortured words, truth is revealed and sins are absolved and pain is healed and faith is restored. The acolytes must believe this because otherwise there’s little to…
Joe Ely has left Texas many times, spent many years busking in New York City subway stations and the Paris Metro. He traveled throughout Europe and the United States as a young man, even ran away with the circus for a little while to tend the llamas and a pony…
Dazed and unamused Spirit of ’73 Various artists 550 Music/Epic Records The wonderful thing about post-modernism is the ability to recycle the kitschy and forgotten without irony. In the mid-’90s, all things cliched and ridiculous have become the things of homage and honor, the jokes are now told with straight…
Too often, it seems journalists are more concerned with the celebrity of the artist than the art–fascinated with the private lives of the public person. They could care less about what goes into the creation of the music because they are more concerned with how a musician spends his or…
Rhymes with ‘bored’ Now that Jerry Garcia has switched bands, gone to join that extended jam session in the sky, it looks like the Dead are just that. But what luck: Just as the Grateful have decided to bow out gracefully (for the fall tour, at least, though once the…
Ty Macklin stands in front of his Ensoniq Advanced Sampling Recorder, holding a computer disc that contains samples from six different songs from such artists as Al Green, Dexter Gordon, and Wes Montgomery. He slides the disc into the keyboard and, as he touches the keys, each piece of music…
