Ataris guitarist Kris Roe has lived the pop-punk dream. He escaped his shitburg Indiana hometown by passing along a demo to the Vandals’ Joe Escalante. Offered a record deal over the phone, Roe informed Escalante that he didn’t have a drummer. “No problem, kid; I know lots of drummers,” Joe…
“Boca Raton,” Saturday Night Live comedian Jimmy Fallon mused. “What’s that mean? ‘Rat mouth?’ Oh, that’s nice.” Glancing up at the massive chiffon Styrofoam stucco structure over his head, the Spanish-challenged Fallon (one last time, people: Raton is mouse; rata is rat — my copyeditor’s dictionary says so) acknowledged his…
Ordinarily, albums have choruses, hooks, songs — hey, maybe even a thematic element or two, if the artist feels particularly ambitious. By contrast, Up (ten years in the making and, Lord, don’t it feel like it?) is all about epic psychodramas and operatic motifs. Then again, Peter Gabriel always sought…
Christina Aguilera’s problem has always been overcompensation. On her debut, the young waif was so eager to show off her pipes that she mostly sounded horribly overwrought and warbly, like Mariah Carey hopped up on diet pills. On her sultry new second album, Aguilera is just as eager, only now…
Since her days with Northwest acts Goodness, Hammerbox, and short-lived project the Rockfords, Seattle diva Carrie Akre has built a loyal following with her shrewdly powerful vocals and tough-but-eloquent songwriting. Her solo debut, the two-year-old Home, saw Akre step away from embracing the alt-rock side of her former endeavors to…
Things you will learn from a forthcoming oral history of Saturday Night Live: Dan Aykroyd slept with, among others, Gilda Radner, Laraine Newman, and writer Rosie Shuster, the latter of whom was, at the time, married to the show’s producer and creator, Lorne Michaels. To this day, Chevy Chase regrets…
My heart of hearts shouted Pele, Pele — full of power, with one foot in Africa. How great to be a beautiful people who dance, dance, dance. How great to make music. The power comes from that stone that sings Itapoa; it speaks Tupi, it speaks Yoruba. Caetano Veloso sang…
In case you haven’t noticed, those damn Swedes are everywhere now, running rampant over the musical landscape with ridiculous names like Per and Pelle. And if none of these new arrivals — like the Hives, Division of Laura Lee, Soundtrack of Our Lives, International Noise Conspiracy — are able to…
Uber-remixologist Judge Jules mixes hard — house, dance, trance — putting his own spin on tunes by everyone from Paul Oakenfold to Beat Pusher. He’s also a host on BB’s high-profile Radio One show, where he was responsible for the air-drop debut of house music onto mainstream radio waves. The…
From the Bandwidth Business Desk: In 1995, after he was brought in as a consultant for Ace Music, former Office Depot prez Mark Begelman purchased five Ace stores. For years, Ace had dominated South Florida instrument retailers; when Begelman took over, he retitled the chain MARS Music, and he staffed…
Like most of Westerberg’s post-Replacements work, this pair of discs is most listenable when the artist conveys vulnerability without the sappiness he often mistakes for maturity. The curiously named Stereo, essentially a solo project featuring sparse instrumentation and slower tempos, sports the more effective examples of Westerberg at his post-Winona-dating…
In the liner notes to this retrospective, Brian Transeau (BT) comes off as the Yanni of DJs. Looking like a prettier version of Kato Kaelin, he writes that he was inspired by long walks and the work of Deepak Chopra. Among his influences, he cites Depeche Mode and Debussy. He…
Vincent Gallo once described himself as the kind of guy who’d attend a football game in a visiting uniform and cheer until he got killed. Divisive as a portcullis with the stare of Rasputin, the Buffalo-bred director/actor/composer has certainly garnered his fair share of praise and scorn over the years:…
You’d think a night creature like Geri Soriano-Lightwood would have little time for television. To judge from the suave refinement of Supreme Beings of Leisure, to which her alluring voice adds a sophisticated chanteuseiness, leisure necessitates limousines, haute cuisine, and an endless procession of late-night nightclub action. Ironically, SBL’s seductive…
For such an effective purveyor of paranoia, Your Enemies Friends singer/guitarist Ronnie Washburn is a sunny-side-of-the-street kinda guy. “It’s amazing that we’ve managed to accomplish everything we have on just a six-song EP,” he beams. Sure enough, critics have lauded generous praise upon Your Enemies Friends’ brand of quirky-yet-accessible, muscular-yet-danceable…
This cuddle-worthy, melodica-totin’ Olympia, Washington-based progenitor of Beat Happening, Dub Narcotic Sound System, and K Records oversees a vast dominion of all that’s independently cool in the Pacific Northwest. Johnson just released What Was Me, the first solo effort in his 20-year career, an acoustic outing focusing (exclusively, in some…
This 140-minute deluxe reissue makes a high-priced fetish of aging hipsters’ nostalgia for indie rock’s lo-fi heyday — and why not? After all, Pavement was never innocent about its fetishes, and this 1992 debut is often celebrated as these California boys’ greatest glory, precisely because it was the one time…
The same week the Wilco documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart debuted in area theaters, the band rolled into town for a spectacular, sold-out show Monday, November 4, at the Carefree Theatre. Remember back when the two Uncle Tupelo offshoots, Son Volt and Wilco, would battle for seasonal…
Supergroups usually suck — they’re like new TV shows starring old Seinfeld cast members. Sure, we used to love them, and, yeah, they’ve brought us a lot of joy over the years. But, really, enough already, stop. Why bother trying to recapture the past when it’s already passed you by?…
So Much Shouting, So Much Laughter, Ani DiFranco’s second live double-disc package, makes the Recording Academy of Arts and Sciences look clueless. In 1999, the academy nominated DiFranco for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance but ended up giving the damn Grammy to Sheryl Crow for her cover of a Guns…
Now that there are endless new synth-tech-electro-pop-punk-Clash compilations on the racks every time you enter a record store, it’s become nearly impossible to find much refreshing within the once-underground genre. Many of the key players in the movement have already moved on and are experimenting with the sounds of early…
Tokyo’s Melt-Banana — just two guys and two girls in their late 20s — defy traditional definitions of speedcore, avant-metal terror, or even Japanoise. Naturally, that hasn’t stopped niche-makers from branding the band with such labels over the course of its ten-year life. Though Melt-Banana has achieved much recognition for…
