No one was very surprised when Tenacious D — the duo composed of vocalist/guitarist Jack Black and guitarist/backing vocalist Kyle Gass — finally made it big. It was clear early on that the D had something special, even if the meager audiences who showed up for weekly open-mike appearances at…
Although its members insist otherwise, my guess is that Tha Alkaholiks changed their name to Tha Liks mainly to ensure that their new disc, X.O. Experience, wouldn’t be rejected out of hand by rack jobbers at Targets and Wal-Marts from sea to shining sea. After all, E-Swift, Tash and J-Ro…
Perhaps the best indication that a band is doing something new and genuinely interesting is when music critics thrash around in desperation looking for other bands to compare it to. Season to Risk has been associated most often with Jesus Lizard — probably because of Steve Tulipana’s growling, howling vocals…
When Gillian Welch’s debut album, Revival, appeared in 1996, some music fans questioned the singer’s authenticity. How, they wondered, could someone who was born in New York City and grew up in affluent West Los Angeles have the nerve to write about being “an orphan on God’s highway” or having…
Although Jimmy Eat World — which performs Monday, August 27, at the 15th Street Tavern with Reuben’s Accomplice — toured last fall, the Mesa, Arizona, band has kept a low profile over the last several months. That’s all come to a screaming halt, as the band has gathered itself, settled…
Honesty in music seems to be a lost quality in an age when pre-fab acts are packaged, programmed and presented by labels that are more marketers than musicians. Just how much of a tart is Britney, anyway? Enter Local 33: four blue-collar guys singing the plight of blue-collar life with…
If anyone should understand the pitfalls of being labeled, it’s DJ and producer Roni Size. Back in 1997, upon the release of his innovative platter New Forms, made in conjunction with a crew collectively known as Reprazent, he emerged as the most public face of the dance music style dubbed…
One day after the sad and grisly details of Kurt Cobain’s suicide first spread across the nation like a rolling blackout, Mudhoney — the legendary Seattle-based underground grunge band that gave neighboring Aberdeen’s Nirvana its first opening slot in the soggy Emerald City — found itself in the most unlikely…
If it weren’t for a trio of sibling bubblegum hitmakers from Oklahoma, Jon Paul Johnson would be more comfortable heading up a family-style rock-and-roll band. But since “MMMBop” has changed all that, Johnson needs to make one thing clear. “We’re not Hanson,” he says. Still, there’s no denying the family-tree…
In one of those ironies with which popular culture brims, Marilyn Manson was tarred with the stain of the Columbine shootings even though the perpetrators of that crime had no interest in his music, while Rammstein, whose noise the killers reportedly admired, largely escaped public scrutiny. The main reason, in…
If the number of times that 1) KTCL plays a dusty Sublime track each day and 2) songs from 40 Oz. to Freedom are blasted out of the back of a Jeep are any way to judge such things, there’s a big void that’s gone unfilled since the death of…
Need proof that the tribute-album concept is as played out as Keith Moon’s life span? This collection offers it in spades. Granted, there are a couple of bright spots. Phish’s “5:15,” complete with a live horn section, provides just the right touch of shagginess accompanied by a swagger that’s as…
Dolly Zander recognizes the mailman making the rounds on the 1000 block of Sherman Street, where we sit drinking coffee on a recent morning: He’s so-and-so, the former guitarist for such-and-such, a band that played around town for a while but dropped from sight years ago. In his regulation blues,…
Rave on the Rocks, the multi-act electronic music fest, dances its way through Red Rocks on August 16 and 17, with a host of dance music’s freshest young acts. This year’s lineup features Crystal Method, back from the dead with its sophomore followup to 1997’s underground hit Vegas. Other performers…
Elea Plotkin, Wednesday, August 22, at the Soiled Dove, plucks a piano rather than a guitar as her primary instrument, exchanging the strum-strum sound associated with singer-songwriters for a cleaner, bluesy feel. On Plotkin’s second album, Little Rockets, slated for release this week, she tries her tinkling hand at a…
Country music has had its power couples over the years — married musicians who made music on stage and off. Some had great musical success at the expense of their personal lives (George Jones and Tammy Wynette, for example), while others (Johnny Cash and June Carter, Roy Rogers and Dale…
When Juan Esteban Aristizabal woke up on July 12, he was not a rock star. By the time he went to bed that Tuesday night, he was. “It’s completely absurd,” says the 27-year-old called Juanes as a television camera caresses his face, a newspaper reporter scribbles notes and a photographer…
When Groove Armada signed with Jive Electro (the dance-music arm of Jive, the label that’s home to ‘N Sync and Britney Spears) in 1999, the nu-soul house-music unit was a cool London secret and not much else. Two years later, Andy Cato and Tom Findlay have created a top-of-the-line disco…
Shannon Wright (who also goes by shannonwright) picked up her ball and went home after a label merger at Big Cat in 1998 left the band she originally fronted, Crowsdell, curbside. Gnashing her teeth at the soulless bean counters of the music industry, the Jacksonville native sequestered herself on a…
A master at indulging the exquisite ache of romantic longing, Cousteau comes off like an absinthe-sipping amalgam of del Amitri without the bitterness and Bowie without the coke. A lush, languid bitch-slap in the face of perky teen pop idols everywhere, this CD shimmers most menacingly when the subterranean stylings…
Rarely have songs so down in the dumps sounded so blindingly sunny as those on the Pernice Brothers’ The World Won’t End. Like famous pop depressives such as Brian Wilson and Ian Curtis, frontman Joe Pernice appears to transform all the things that bring him down into pure bah-bah-BUH-bah sing-along…
Somewhere in their office on York Street, the three owners of nobody in particular presents are having to find room for their Herculean huevos. On Monday, nipp’s Jesse Morreale, Doug Kauffman and Chris Swank filed an anti-trust lawsuit against Clear Channel Communications, Inc., the radio/entertainment behemoth that has been swallowing…
