Since her potent 1995 debut, Songs from the Levee, singer-songwriter Kate Campbell has transcended — or at least lived up to — any and all critical praise heaped upon her. Campbell has embraced the folk ethic while utilizing only the parts of it that she truly needed to cobble together…
It’s not the least bit surprising that the Streetwalkin’ Cheetahs lifted their name from the first line of “Search and Destroy,” one of Iggy Pop’s most incendiary songs; the Cheetahs use the Stooges as one of their sonic reference points. But the number of other ’70s stalwarts that surface in…
When Pere Ubu roared out of Cleveland in the mid-’70s, it was clear that the band came with neither an agenda nor a peer group. Pere Ubu was antipunk, antirock, and antimusic, yet managed to attract a sizable following among fans of punk, rock, and music — an intriguing balancing…
The Van Zant musical family tree has been so thoroughly sanctified by tragedy and time that objectively considering any new release from its members without viewing it through the shattered prism of the family’s Southern gothic drama is difficult. That theory holds especially true for Van Zant, the second teaming…
On the surface the pairing of arch New York rock icon Elliott Murphy and English folk legend Iain Matthews seems slightly incongruous, but closer examination reveals the subtle connections. Murphy is an American expatriate living in Paris, while Matthews has relocated to Austin, Texas. Both were championed by critics and…
At least two distinct John Frusciantes exist, musically speaking. There is the brilliantly talented guitarist whose presence in the Red Hot Chili Peppers (after the death of original guitarist Hillel Slovak) brought the band some of its most potent successes (Mother’s Milk, BloodSugarSexMagik, and Californication). And then there’s the brilliantly…
Cypress Hill has very little left to prove in the genre it helped to shape and revolutionize over the last decade. Among its peers Cypress Hill has seen an amazing amount of success, with all seven of its albums certified gold or better, an incredibly consistent track record considering the…
Tagging Erykah Badu as retro R&B or neosoul is to pigeonhole her and damn her with faint praise simultaneously and unfairly. Although Badu faithfully references any number of like-minded brothers and sisters from the vaunted heyday of ’70s soul, she remains firmly rooted in the now, as contemporary as any…
When Gary Numan discovered synthesizers in the late ’70s and placed them above guitars in his personal pantheon, he likely had very little idea that he was unleashing a wave of electronic influence that would continue to the end of the century. Numan’s clever blending of punk’s energy and bleak…
From fuzzed-out hillbilly drone to mutant surf-pop to greasy-fatback country-soul, the past 15 years have seen an amazing transformation for Southern Culture on the Skids. Some of the changes have been obvious, as when guitarist Rick Miller, bassist Mary Huff, and drummer Dave Hartman added keyboardist Chris Bess two years…
Say what you will about the ’70s, but the decade was a time of almost psychotic diversity. The charts were regularly peppered with every imaginable style of music, from hard rock to light pop to folk to Motown to funk to chemically calibrated amalgams of any or all of the…
When Dirty Walt Kibby helped to assemble the funk/punk/ska unit known as Fishbone back in the mid-’80s, he unleashed a bottled musical genie that has run rampant in the decade and a half since the cork popped. Fishbone has moved through nearly every conceivable contemporary genre with a gritty passion…
With the rise of punk in the early ’80s, one of the most potent scenes for the genre was spawned in the repressive post-Reagan cultural soup of Southern California. Although the area belched out a number of worthy bands, a select few rose above the din of the others to…
Not only was Shel Silverstein a bona fide pop-culture renaissance man, but he operated between enormous extremes while he was doing it. From lascivious Playboy cartoonist to gentle children’s-book author and illustrator, from the sensitive songwriter who created “Sylvia’s Mother” to the raucous provocateur who raised hackles and unit sales…
The marvelously twisted Mael brothers, known in pop circles as Sparks for the past 30 years or so, are living proof of the adage that if you stick around long enough, eventually you’ll be back in style. Sparks began life as a slightly more than standard power-pop band, with Russell…
The kids grow up so fast these days. Back in 1967, those nice Beatle boys had taken five years and about a dozen albums to reach the stage of enlightenment and evolution where they could confidently create their Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. It’s taken Courtney Taylor the same…
The release of a career retrospective is a natural time to reflect on one’s contribution to the musical landscape. On the occasion of Pioneers Who Got Scalped, the audio résumé of Akron, Ohio’s most oddly influential band, Devo bassist Gerald V. Casale ponders the question of the band’s high-water mark…
It’s been three years since Suzzy Roche, the youngest member of the phenomenal folk-pop trio the Roches, took the solo route away from the safety of her sisters and released her first solo album, Holy Smokes. It was a difficult record and period in her life, as it detailed and…
Andy Partridge is a cyclical creature. Anyone who has followed the fortunes and foibles of XTC over the years will tell you that Partridge routinely follows periods of pastoral bliss with energetic rock explorations. So it is with the double-themed sword of Apple Venus (Vol. 1) and Wasp Star (Apple…
To refer to John Convertino and Joey Burns as a rhythm section is tantamount to calling John Lennon and Paul McCartney a couple of songwriters. It’s an accurate depiction but only in the most rudimentary Etch-a-Sketch-y fashion. Of course drummer Convertino and bassist Burns have been the living pulse of…
From the biting electric chords of “Fightin’ Hard,” which launches guitarist Alvin Youngblood Hart’s latest funky epistle, Start With the Soul, it’s clear that the acoustic heart and soul of the Bay Area is up to something new — namely, the wall socket. Hart has long been a champion of…
Any discussion of James Brown’s incredible talent and career will inevitably lead to headshaking disbelief at his longevity and success. But one element that is often overlooked by those who subscribe to the King James version is that JB has always stood in front of the hardest working band in…
