Just a couple of years ago, Stephan Jenkins was living the low-rent lifestyle in San Francisco, cutting lumber on his dad’s land in the nearby forests of Inverness for a few dollars. He wasn’t dreaming about becoming a rock star then. He was planning on it. His band, Third Eye…
Edwyn Collins I’m Not Following You (Epic) As long as we’re being forced to relive the Seventies, why not let Edwyn Collins score the soundtrack? His darkly reedy voice, pop-culture fetishism, and cheesy synthesizers make for an appropriate, end-of-the-millennium update on that never-ending decade. On this, his fourth solo release,…
According to Walter Andrus, Jr., who helped found the Mutual Unidentified Flying Object Network (MUFON) in 1969, there’s simply no way to count the large number of people who are abducted by aliens each year. Andrus can’t even tally the number of reports that come in over the MUFON hot…
Over the course of this weekend, South Floridians will spend three warm evenings with Barry Manilow — the man, the legend. But not the myth. There really isn’t one surrounding Manilow. In fact, though his fans seem to enjoy an intensely personal relationship with him, Manilow appears almost totally devoid…
Chumbawamba Tubthumper (Republic/Universal) Chumbawamba must be as surprised as anyone that they’ve scored a Top 10 single with “Tubthumping,” that irresistible pop ditty with the rousing chorus, “I get knocked down/But I get up again/You’re never gonna keep me down.” Just last week it hit No. 7 on the Billboard…
In “The Jazz Photographs of Milt Hinton” there is a picture of Billie Holiday, reunited with the great Count Basie, rehearsing in a New York City television studio. Basie sits at a piano with Holiday standing behind him. She seems to be giving the pianist a serious chewing-out or at…
The name Duran Duran once conjured up the most glamorous of all possible worlds. Simon Le Bon singing “Rio” while swinging off the mast of a speeding yacht. Nick Rhodes wearing an off-the-shoulder sweater while playing a Roland keyboard. The three Taylor boys — Andy, John, and Roger — preening…
The most fascinating thing about Andy Warhol wasn’t his platinum blond hair, his gaunt face, or his creepy entourage of attention-starved hipsters. Nor was it his artwork. Though Warhol’s contributions to popular art and popular culture are impossible to quantify, his simple soup cans and Day-Glo Marilyns were far less…
This weekend’s Hollywood Jazz Festival is dedicated to the late Jaco Pastorius, the undisputed master of the electric bass guitar. Pastorius actually gave the title to himself back when he was just a South Florida session player who dreamed of becoming a great jazz artist. The story goes that one…
