Rufus Thomas is not certain of the year–he figures it was 1943, though it might have been 1950–but he recalls the moment with astounding clarity. He was performing in Currie’s Club Tropicana, a nightclub on the north side of Memphis, Tennessee, when a man walked through the door carrying a…
Bitter, Sweet Matthew Sweet may well be an influence on the likes of someone like Freedy Johnston, who began making records six years after Sweet’s debut, but the similarities between the two men extend only to the music–a rich, well-constructed, indestructible sound. With ex-Television guitarist Richard Lloyd and former Lou…
Memphis is a city that has long thrived on tourism. After all, for many of the world’s countless blues enthusiasts who annually plan trips to the United States, Memphis and New Orleans and Chicago are the only cities that matter. Memphis city officials strive so eagerly to please tourists that…
“Does anyone know if I won a Grammy last night?” Dave Abbruzzese wonders. He says this as an afterthought, in the middle of a casual conversation with producer David Castell as the two stand in the messy kitchen area of Castell’s Garland recording studio. The night before, Abbruzzese and the…
Made in USA Sonic Youth Rhino Records Nice Ass Free Kitten Kill Rock Stars In the end, there isn’t much to get with Sonic Youth. It’s noise signifying noise, the songs an almost accidental result of what happens when you put guitars, bass, drums, and vocals in the same studio…
In the grand scheme of things, Negativland exists on the fringes of the fringes, out where the air is thin and the mainstream does not venture. For more than a decade, they have perfected the art of sampling, splicing together any sound they could snatch from the ether–pieces of music…
I have seen the future of local music, and its name is stupid. Slobberbone they call themselves, and it may be the worst name for the best young band to emerge from this town (Denton, actually, but I’ll claim ’em) in a very long time. When they performed at Trees…
Soul power The CD booklet accompanying Digable Planets’ late 1994 release, Blowout Comb, reads almost like a pamphlet you might be handed at a political rally, each page covered in messages and symbols and slogans. A prisoner from the California state penitentiary sends his “message from the belly” (as in,…
There’s a moment on Laurie Anderson’s most recent album, last year’s portentous and unnerving Bright Red, when her velvety sage’s voice breaks out of its cool, ironic mode and challenges the very universe. In “Love Among the Sailors,” a funereal piece about the devastation of AIDS, Anderson declares: “If this…
Flak racket rubberbullet rubberbullet Last Beat Records Once one of my favorite local bands because they were so weird–a rock band that splintered off into oddball free-jazz jam, a hard-core guitar band fronted by Earl Harvin’s funky drumming–they are now one of my favorite local bands because they’ve become so…
Diamond Dave, Shinola Sam Balance Van Halen Warner Bros. Records If the first incarnation of Van Halen made music for the crystal meth generation, then Van Hagar does it for the Crystal Pepsi Generation. With each record since the departure of Diamond David Lee Roth, Eddie’s band has become less…
AUSTIN–The man standing at the counter waiting to order his food is disheveled, slumped, looking slightly deranged. His beard chopped and trimmed in odd proportions, his matted and tangled and unwashed hair sticking up in various spots, his voice an uncomfortably loud squawk, Roky Erickson looks and sounds like any…
Take out the trash, Pantera Almost since its inception, the Basement was known as the home to Pantera: the band members hung out there as though it was a second home, and the hard-rock club was used as a backdrop in three videos. So as the Basement (and On the…
In the end, the members of the Nightcaps weren’t just seeking money when they picked their legal fight with ZZ Top. They wanted some respect, some credit–someone to acknowledge that 20 years ago, ZZ Top stole their one small claim to Texas music fame. But on January 12, the Texas…
Rock-a-silly Without the Cramps, Jim Heath might still be playing in blues bands, and without the Cramps, Ronnie Dawson might still be languishing in unwarranted obscurity. Yes, the Cramps, the band that has managed to exist for more than 16 years on a steady diet of trash, novelty, and rockabilly…
Dreading Rita The Marley Family Album Various artists Heartbeat Records Allegedly a celebration of Bob Marley’s 50th birthday, this immediate and extended-family album does more to reinforce the perception that when Marley died May 11, 1981, so, too, did the music he briefly made internationally popular. Opening with “I Know”…
Since the dawn of time–or at least since Pat Boone took the tutti out of Little Richard’s frutti and went to the top of the pops–white musicians have gotten rich and famous off the innovation of their black counterparts. No startling revelation here: the whiter the musician, the brighter the…
AUSTIN–The Trance Syndicate office–if one can call a tiny room in a wretched little business park no bigger than its neighboring car wash an office–is a wreck. Random sheets of paper, discarded memos, old copies of the Austin Chronicle, publicity photos, and other pieces of errata and dumped trash cover…
When the song comes out of the speakers, for the first time or the 500th, it seems almost too perfect: Johnny Cash, his voice a beautifully rotten croak that falls somewhere between singing and speaking, tells of the monster trapped within him–the monster that makes him who he is, a…
Music does not, of course, mean the same thing to all people. To some, it implies the sweet sounds of acoustic guitars and confessional lyrics or the strains of violins or the foreign rhythms of Africa or the Middle East; to others, the term conjures the blaring catharsis of amplified…
No practice makes perfect As far as big-name lineups go, Buccinator is a little like going to the NBA All-Star Game and finding CBA players on the floor. Drummer Avery Smith doubles as the Beastie Boys’ touring percussionist; Dave Gomez used to play bass in Oiler (with Buccinator “noise guitarist”…
Heavy metal, its proponents and detractors have long maintained, is a music created by and for an audience of disenfranchised young white boys. They are the long-haired, ripped-jean, Ozzy-loving, pot-smoking, Camaro-driving kids who hang out on the smoking porch after lunch; the frustrated 13-year-old who stands in front of his…
