There’s something downright annoying about two dozen neo-hippies in robes singing “Hail to the sky! The trees wanna grow! Grow! Grow! Grow!” Yet Tim DeLaughter’s eco-minded choir somehow gets away with it. When the former Tripping Daisy frontman isn’t leading his shiny, happy zombies through symphonic ELO-verload, he’s resurrecting the…
Hailing from Birmingham England by way of the West Indies, Steel Pulse is the first reggae band to perform at this (or any) American president’s inaugural celebration. As trivial as Steel Pulse’s rank is among ultra-roots purists who kneel before the holy trinity of Bob Marley, Culture and Burning Spear,…
Christian-irking till its dying breath, Slayer has been the face of thrash music for over twenty years. In 1986, the band — pioneers of a breakneck, full-throttle sound that combines demented guitar solos, thunderous double-bass drum kicks and toxic bellowing with surgical precision — released Reign in Blood, a work…
Tommy Thomas carries a business card that poses the question, “What can’t the working man do?” Up until the mid-’80s, a total smartass might respond with: “Keep a band together” or “Stay off the sauce and nose candy.” But as the cold sober and respiritualized Thomas already knows, any blues…
Pioneer of the English space-rock underground, Ozric Tentacles has been rearranging brain cells since 1982, when its expansive, instrumental workouts drew comparisons to better-known space cadets like Pink Floyd and Hawkwind. Champions of the pretentious album title (Pungent Effulgent, anyone?), the merry minstrels have nonetheless racked up an impressive back…
After seven grueling years of personnel changes that took the band from a modest trio to a sprawling octet, Askimbo (which takes its name from a nonsense word coined by former guitarist Geoff Orwiler) finally stopped wandering the wilderness and settled on four permanent members: brothers David and John Simpkins,…
In my neighborhood, in the early ’70s, there was always talk of uprising,” John Bigham recalls. “I grew up in the era of the Black Panthers and the Blackstone Rangers in Chicago. And they weren’t gangs in the sense of destroying property and terrorizing people. They were gangs in the…
Jared Southhard’s grandmother had an owl fetish: clocks, salt-and-pepper shakers, you name it. And while such seemingly well-mannered knickknacks often embody the qualities of wisdom and patience, who’s to say they won’t suddenly fly into your windshield late at night and shatter a thoughtful moment? For the bird-watching frontman of…
As a kid, Edward Ka-Spel endured his share of creepy bedtime stories — along with horrible nightmares that hounded him until the age of ten. “They were there, yeah,” the fey frontman for the Legendary Pink Dots recalls with a laugh. “But I’m also English, so just a simple nursery…
Not as flimsy or lightweight as its name might suggest, Plastic Parachute specializes in catchy pop rock with a mainstream sound built for radio. Driven by the girlishly extroverted vocals of frontwoman Deb Hooks and the crunchy guitar of Ricky Brewer (the pair moved to Denver from Nashville, where they…
Born in Germany and raised in St. Louis by way of Mobile, Alabama, the weird and worldly Mr. Quintron has called New Orleans home since 1991. After borrowing a stage name from his father’s electrical company and launching a one-man lounge act, Quintron, a former haunted-house curator, teamed up with…
THURS, 6/10 These days, you’re as likely to come across George Lopez on ABC as you are on HBO or Univision. His smiling face is everywhere: on stages across the country, on his hit weekly sitcom George Lopez, in films, on late-night talk shows, even on Inside the NFL. The…
Taking its name from one of the most stupid bits of slang ever to infest the youth vernacular, Hella (above) hails from the bland, artless sprawl of Sacramento. But the instrumental duo of guitarist Spencer Seim and drummer Zach Hill make some of the most adventurous, challenging noise rock going…
They tend to think I’m some kind of crazy lady,” says Shannon Wright with a laugh. “As far as things I’ve heard through the grapevine, I guess people think I’m angry, or they think the music is depressing.” It’s not hard to see how folks might get the wrong impression…
Whether being banned for life from playing at the Cricket on the Hill is a blessing or a curse, the Otter Pops still found a way to make ends meet on Denver’s punk-rock circuit after being 86’d from the hallowed watering hole. But if they actually did drive a car…
Named by an Indian mystic whom his parents followed in Texas, folk troubadour Devendra Banhart sings quirky, skeletal vignettes with a voice that can change from brittle tenor to quivering falsetto in the blink of an eye. Accompanying himself on a battered acoustic guitar, the 23-year-old lo-fi eccentric was a…
The late Screamin’ Jay Hawkins once declared, “I’d rather sing opera than be a black Vincent Price.” And though he’s better remembered as a novelty performer who rose from a coffin, foisting a skull on the end of a stick, Hawkins possessed an astounding vocal range that would have made…
“That corner was the sorriest-looking mess you’ve ever seen,” Michael Beckley says, referring to a small curbside plot of earth along 11th Avenue between Downing and Corona. So two months ago he cleaned it up, spending roughly thirty bucks and three hours — including a trip to Home Depot –…
Roll call at a Hackensaw Boys family reunion sounds like Cletus on The Simpsons gathering his kinfolk from yonder hollow: Pee Paw! Shiner! Mahlon! Skeeter! Jigsaw! Salvage! Dante J! C.B.! Uncle Blind Bobby! Kooky-Eyed Fox! Add a grizzled hound named Lulu and a few jugs of ‘shine, and the gathering…
SUN, 5/23 “Nobody ruins my birthday except me,” states Leo Kottke via e-mail. The musician, you see, turned 56 on the same day planes crashed into the Twin Towers. And with each anniversary since, Kottke continues to thank his lucky stars. “It’s great to be alive,” he writes. “One year…
Karma involves the cosmic principle of rewards and punishments for acts performed in this life or a previous incarnation (think of Abu Ghraib prison hostess Lynndie England coming back as a rat terrier that gets kicked a lot). Karmageddon 2004, slated for Saturday, May 22, at the Aztlan Theater, will…
Listing all of the side projects associated with Chicago’s Tortoise would take up the lion’s share of this modest blurb, otherwise intended to sing the praises of a high-conceit art band that somehow found a way to make an instrumental stroll sound pretty dang engaging. How is it possible for…
