When the world changed on September 11, so did Boots Riley’s career. About a week after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the leader of the Oakland-based rap group the Coup found himself folded into the news of the day, amid images of debris-covered firefighters and…
Sex and housecleaning aside, electronic dance music is best appreciated in the thick of a sweaty, pulsating, late-night throng with all the usual club-culture accoutrements. And because an essential element of any DJ’s mojo is the symbiotic transfer of energy from the booth to the dance floor and back, the…
First, some background: The Langley Schools Music Project is a relic, a lost recording originally produced sometime in 1976 or 1977. It stars an untrained mass of sixty elementary-school students from the farmland community of Langley, British Columbia, conducted by a guitarist and music teacher named Hans Fenger. In the…
If anyone deserves a tribute album, it’s Hank Williams, who died on January 1, 1953, in the back of his chauffeured Cadillac touring car, on the way to a one-nighter in Canton, Ohio. He was just 29 years old, yet he had created a body of work that set the…
Twenty-two-year-old Bilal’s promising debut bolsters the argument that Philadelphia may once again be the center of soul. With the help of fellow Philly soulquarians ?uestlove from the Roots and producer/musician James Poyser (Common, D’Angelo), Bilal suggests the energy and inspiration of the city’s most exciting musical era — when producers…
All too many performers working under the new-age rubric feel their primary job is to put people to sleep, or at least to relax a listener’s brain until it’s as vital and reactive as a strand of vermicelli. But that doesn’t mean the style lacks possibilities: Not all music needs…
The great dot.com crash proved that the Internet is not the pot of entrepreneurial gold that start-up types had hoped. But for some of us, the evaporation of so many e-commerce sites is a welcome development, as it leaves more time for discovering the Web’s true gems — like biblical…
Paul Burch, Sunday, November 11, at the Gothic Theatre, may not have earned the flood of attention poured over No-Depression sweetheart and headliner Ryan Adams. But Burch has earned much respect among knowing alt-country types for his exceptional back-dated country and Americana. With his band, the WPA Ballclub, he’s released…
School Aid, Sunday, November 11, at the Paramount Theatre, is a charity event organized to raise money for New York City students and teachers affected by the September 11 terrorist attacks. But altruism is not the only incentive here. With performances by Three Degrees of Freedom, Liz Clark, Tinker’s Punishment…
“Why do so many teenage girls love Rufus Wainwright?” This important query is posed by Adrienne, a young woman whose essay appears on “Our Matinee Idol,” a charming Web page at members. tripod.com/~rufuswainwright — and she comes up with more than her fair share of answers to it. Although she…
Jason Pierce doesn’t know how to read. Music, that is. Incredible, then, that he’s been able to build a musical career that’s spanned more than a decade, first as singer/guitarist for ’80s-era psychedelic-rock icons Spacemen 3 and later as a founding member and the mastermind behind Spiritualized, the darlings of…
Like many musicians, Chris Watkins has a tough time putting a label on his sound. “I’m one of those hyphenated people,” says Watkins, who plays under the name Preacher Boy. “You know, folk-blues-roots-jazz-soul-blah-blah-blah. The influences I pull off of are rooted in the folkie, storytelling kind of songwriting thing.” Watkins…
A few weeks ago, Backwash received a press release from Wind-up Records in New York, a label whose most high-profile client is the ubiquitous radio-rock band Creed. “Creed and Wind-up Records will launch the ultimate fan connectivity tool,” began this exciting news flash, “with a free download of a ‘virtual…
One of the downsides of the post-September 11 expansion in American philanthropy — so far, nearly $1 billion has been raised to provide relief to survivors of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks — is the shrinking of donations to traditional charities. An all-star slate of literary superstars hope…
Though Justin Roth is a native of Minnesota, he sounds very much at home in his adopted hometown of Denver. Roth’s simply instrumented but authentically rendered acoustic music recalls the folky tradition that’s so much a part of our state’s musical history. The singer-songwriter, who tours non-stop to support himself…
Warren Zevon once said, in response to an interviewer asking whether he was being ironic or sincere in a particular song: “With all due respect to Alanis Morissette, if you define that you’re being ironic, then you’re automatically not being ironic.” “Irony” is a word you can’t get away from…
If they were to judge him by his back yard, Randy Meyers’s neighbors might think he was a librarian, or maybe a gardener. Packed with small deciduous trees, potted flowers and an unshakable sense of calm, the small, private patch invites visitors into a state of almost meditative repose. But…
One of the enduring myths about the Grateful Dead is that they were better live than in the studio. According to their legion of fans, the cultish Deadheads, the best way to experience the band was in concert, where, depending on the vibe — and the acid — anything might…
Daniel Johnston is feeling better these days. Austin’s most infamous and prodigious bipolar songwriter has got a real band, a larger-than-ever following and — thanks to the wonders of modern psychiatric medicine — a handle on his own mental demons. He’s also got a new album, one that finds him…
Oslin has been around country music long enough to know that the C&W establishment doesn’t often look kindly upon performers who try something different. But she didn’t let that stop her from making Live Close By, Visit Often, a disc that busts through boundaries by refusing to acknowledge that they…
According to this CD’s liner notes, the 55-year-old Iris is “still electrifying audiences today.” If that’s the case, one wonders why this collection was deemed necessary at all. With teenagers’ belly rings and gangbangers’ banter dominating the music market, it’s not like the singer’s legacy screams for a revisiting, much…
The rise of alt-country music in the early ’90s was inextricably linked to the legendary band Uncle Tupelo, which before its demise gave birth to a lineage complicated enough to warrant a Ken Burns documentary. One of the better bands Tupelo inspired was Whiskeytown, whose lead singer Ryan Adams struck…
