Email Author Jason Heller

2003 Stories by Jason Heller

• Kick Astral

  published June 26, 2003

  Comets on Fire rescramble reality SUN, 6/29 Do you remember that one time Alice Cooper was a guest... More >>

• Space Suite

  published June 19, 2003

  Wayne Shorter didn't start out playing the saxophone -- or even music. His first mode of expression as a teenager was the graphic arts. "Back in... More >>

• Consumer Aborts

  published May 29, 2003

  Open up the May/June 2003 issue of Adbusters and you'll find a cardboard-sleeved CD glued to the inside of one of the pages. Its presence... More >>

• Critic's Choice

  published May 29, 2003

  The phrase "Feel-Good Summer Hit" doesn't make any sense at all. Summer doesn't feel good -- in fact, it's downright shitty, what with all the pit... More >>

• Get in the Vamp

  published May 22, 2003

  I'm not one of those people who wants to hear the same thing over and over again," says alto saxophonist and pioneer of improvised music Wally... More >>

• Watchers

  published May 22, 2003

  Nothing's funnier than watching a room full of carefully uncaring, strategically mussed indie rockers trying to dance at a show. That is, trying... More >>

• Critic's Choice

  published May 22, 2003

  Boredom, poverty, loneliness, suicide and heartbreak. Sounds cheerful, doesn't it? Actually, it is...as long as FM Knives are singing about... More >>

• Johnny Marr and the Healers

  published May 1, 2003

  Whoever voted Johnny Marr one of the "Top Ten Guitar Heroes of All Time" must be a total idiot. Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page...sure,... More >>

• I Can Lick Any Sonofabitch in the House

  published April 24, 2003

  Nineteenth-century colonialists spoke patronizingly of the Noble Savage. Today we have the Enlightened Redneck: Mike Damron, singer/ guitarist of... More >>

• Flame On

  published April 17, 2003

  He bleats at you with foghorn-like forlornness, a bedwetter yelping in his sleep while dreaming about tsunamis. In a downpour of snot and spit,... More >>

• Critic's Choice

  published April 17, 2003

  So many daring jazz musicians who hit the scene in the late '60s wound up pissing away their talent throughout the following decades -- either... More >>

• Space Is the Place

  published April 10, 2003

  There are a lot of things you want to ask the members of a band called Thank God for Astronauts. What they think of the Space Shuttle blowing up.... More >>

• Reverend DeadEye

  published March 20, 2003

  "The Bible Thump! The Bible Thump! Everybody do the Bible Thump!!!" Along with his dead eye, the good Reverend might just have a couple screws... More >>

• Critic's Choice

  published March 20, 2003

  With the recent semi-notoriety of Har Mar Superstar and MC Paul Barman, there seems to be a newfound market for self-consciously geeky Jewish... More >>

• Critic's Choice

  published March 13, 2003

  The secret to writing a perfect pop song? Learn everything -- then forget it. Just look at Supergrass. This English group, playing Monday,... More >>

• Critic's Choice

  published March 6, 2003

  Drawing a line around The Sea and Cake isn't easy. Over the past eight years, the Chicago quartet, appearing Friday, March 7, at the Gothic... More >>

• Avant Garage

  published February 27, 2003

  Lighting should be theatrical rather than rockist. We are interested in atmosphere, mood, drama, energy, subtlety, imagination -- not rock... More >>

• Five Day Messiah

  published February 20, 2003

  New Rock Regime opens with a sloppy, R2D2-sampling piss-take of a techno song; thirteen tracks later, it closes with a cover of CCR's... More >>

• Critic's Choice

  published February 20, 2003

  In a weird twist of semantics, the word "authentic" has almost come to mean its exact opposite: fake. In this sense, 20 Miles, playing... More >>

• Heavy Soul

  published February 6, 2003

  Your leader and our lapdog" is how Paul Weller describes President George W. Bush and British prime minister Tony Blair. Blair is the youthful... More >>

• Hit Pick

  published February 6, 2003

  With much of the world dangling over an abyss of terror and war, now may be the most tense time in recent history to be alive. As if in... More >>

• Hit Pick

  published January 16, 2003

  Skaters in the '80s thrashed to Jodie Foster's Army; today, they have Scott Baio Army. This punk foursome is splitting an album with fellow... More >>

• High and Mighty

  published January 9, 2003

  Over the phone lines between Denver and Nashville, a distinct buzz can be heard -- and it's got nothing to do with faulty fiber optics. "I'm... More >>