Like many other rock-oriented acts that embrace the spiritual, San Francisco’s Visual Audio Sensory Theater, better known as VAST, is in danger of being pigeonholed as a “drug band.” But Jon Crosby, a 22-year-old singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who is VAST’s only core member, rejects such psychedelic stereotypes. “I think people…
“We really don’t want people having to take their time figuring out whether they’re going to like us or not,” says Bradly Wayne Shaver, singer and frontman for the Weaklings, from Portland, Oregon. “We don’t want to stand there and look pretty. We want to put on a good fucking…
For many longtime staffers at the Swallow Hill Music Association, what’s perhaps most unexpected about the organization’s twentieth anniversary, which is being commemorated on Friday and Saturday, March 12 and 13, at its new 71 E. Yale headquarters, is the fact that it’s happening at all. “We’re really standing on…
How is Sally Taylor unlike most local musicians? Counting the ways would require a mainframe computer the size of the Astrodome–but here’s a couple of examples. Whereas the average area performer would sell his or her family into slavery to get a contract with a major-record label, Taylor, who lives…
In one episode of Star Trek, Captain Kirk and his cohorts stumble upon a colony of giant, glowing brains encased in glass. The enlarged, crenulated cortexes explain to the crew that they were once part of a species with bodies but add that, over time, evolution favored those gradually dispossessed…
George Martin has never been a technophobe–far from it. During his more than forty years as a producer–most notably with the Beatles–he eagerly embraced advances in recording methodology, and the studios he oversaw were always equipped with the latest gadgets and gewgaws. For these reasons, his decision to conduct interviews…
While awaiting the start of the Lauryn Hill appearance at the Mammoth Events Center on February 27, I couldn’t help but imagine her backstage thinking, “I won five Grammy awards last Tuesday–so what the hell am I doing in this shithole?” Bill Graham Presents/Chuck Morris Presents may have just purchased…
Various Artists Porn to Rock (Callner Music) Sex-O-Rama 2 Classic Adult Film Music (Oglio) Savvy music fans are right to be skeptical of gimmicky projects like Porn to Rock and Sex-O-Rama 2, two new albums that bank heavily on the public’s growing penchant for porn. But in their own way,…
“It’s really this idea of preserving the music that’s important to me,” says Kaigal-ool Khovalyg of Huun-Huur Tu, a quartet that’s sometimes billed as the Throat Singers of Tuva. “Of doing something that will enable this music to survive and to be passed on to the next generation.” Khovalyg and…
In October 1997, Sista D began making In the Mile High City, a disc that she hoped would become a life preserver for her mother, who’d battled heroin addiction for years. But something happened the following February that nearly derailed the project: Her mom died. “I really had a hard…
From a musical perspective, Vienna, Austria, remains best known as the birthplace of the waltz, a dance that is as beloved today as it was during the nineteenth century, when Viennese composer Johann Strauss Jr. was first recognized as “the waltz king.” But for aficionados of the international club scene,…
Time may have healed most of the wounds opened by the backlash against disco, but not all of them. Although the frequently bashed genre is enjoying a revival of late, thanks in part to the boom in throwback nightspots (such as Polly Esther’s), the popularity of these joints owes more…
I review the songs. The local songs, that is. There’s nothing particularly novel about Keg O’ Dynamite, by Chicago Skinny; the CD employs the styles in which nationally known bluesers such as Little Charlie and the Nightcats and Duke Robillard traffic. But these guys clearly do the same old thing…
New York City-based Paul Miller, aka DJ Spooky, is a name-dropper of a very high-flown sort. He seems congenitally incapable of talking about the influences on his challenging experimental hip-hop without mentioning Immanuel Kant and Georg Hegel, a pair of eighteenth-century German philosophers who weren’t exactly known for their phat…
Until recently, disco entrepreneur Kekoa Franconi was a kindergarten teacher. But these days, the younger brother of internationally known dance maven Keoki (“DJ Keoki, Superstar,” July 18, 1996) is offering a much different form of instruction. With Kidnapped, his mysteriously named partner, he’s created Playscool, an ultra-swanky sixteen-and-over event at…
Most musicians tend to avoid arguments about centuries-old nomenclature such as “chamber music,” but not David Balakrishnan, violinist and composer for Oakland’s Turtle Island String Quartet (TISQ). The Hamburg Concert, the group’s latest CD, supplements classical variations with jazz standards, a globe-trotting hybrid and a funk cover associated with Tower…
The biggest behind-the-scenes news in the music industry these days concerns the recent $10.4 billion merger of two corporate behemoths, Polygram and Universal Music. The Universal Music Group–the handle placed on the enterprises’ joint assets–is now the biggest label on the planet, bar none. But because the overseers of this…
The ties that bind can often strangle. Just ask the members of Skull Flux, who during their six years together have experienced as many setbacks as successes. But after nearly dissolving in 1998, the band–vocalist Conrad Kehn, drummer David Hesker, bassist Steve Millin and guitarist Greg Stretton–appears to be back…
Of all the groups now enjoying success in the Americana format, the Freight Hoppers may be the most backward-looking. Unlike those red-white-and-blue acts that specialize in vintage forms of country, Western swing and bluegrass, the Hoppers focus on a far more dated sound: old-time string-band music circa the 1800s. But…
Denver Concert Wars: The Next Chapter. In early 1998, mere months after Universal Concerts took over the Fey Concerts empire following the semi-retirement of scene king Barry Fey, longtime Fey associate Chuck Morris and Bill Graham Presents, a venerable West Coast firm, joined forces to create Bill Graham Presents/ Chuck…
Performers at concert: The Rolling Stones, with Bryan Adams. Date of concert: February 2, 1999. Location of concert: McNichols Arena, Denver, Colorado. Description of pre-concert hoopla: Less than anticipated. The weeks of relentless hype that usually precede Stones shows is largely drowned out by the weeks of relentless hype that’s…
Busta Rhymes Extinction Level Event: The Final World Front (Elektra) Over the years, Rhymes has transformed himself into a full-fledged cartoon character. Given the Tone-Loc model, that probably means he’ll win a supporting role in a Jim Carrey movie and then disappear from the entertainment firmament until VH1 does a…
