Following an unfortunate turn to homogenized Latin pop with Tito Puente Jr., the Musicians Exchange returns to pristine form this week when it hosts jazz multi-instrumentalist/legend Ira Sullivan. As Chicago became a linchpin in both the jazz and blues scenes in the 1950s, Sullivan emerged as one of the city’s…
If The Willies is any indication, Bill Frisell could probably make “Achy Breaky Heart” sound like a walk in the clouds. Here, the rangy jazz guitarist, banjo player (and Bad Liver) Danny Barnes, and bassist Keith Lowe revisit the terrain Frisell explored on 1995’s Nashville, spinning a handful of folk…
People started talking all kinds of mumbo-jumbo about Bob Marley almost before he was cold in the ground, but before he was a conveniently agreed-upon symbol for vague ideas about good times and world peace, he was an uncommonly sharp writer of deceptively simple pop songs. What was more, he…
“I am not one of these thug-rapper guys,” Cee-Lo Green announces on his solo debut. It’s by proclaiming his difference that this member of the Atlanta-based rap crew Goodie Mob discovers himself. With his Perfect Imperfections, Green stakes out his place in a long line of rock and soul eccentrics…
DJ The Wookee, a.k.a. Angelo Jordan, opens the door of his Fort Lauderdale pad, while holding the collar of his male pit bull Niko, who starts howling and scratching on the door after he puts him in the other room. His living room is consumed by his three turntables, mixer,…
You love cheesy pop songs. Don’t even try to deny it, Mr. and Mrs. Hipster-Doofus. We all know you keep your Supertramp’s Greatest Hits hidden in the Guided By Voices case. You aren’t fooling anyone. Luckily for you, Koufax has made it hip to be square. When the band released…
Once upon a time, there were three cellos who needed three women to play them. Since the age of nine had the girls toiled to hold their fingers against the strings and gracefully stroke the bow across them, back and forth, just so. Nearly two decades later, the three women…
Rob Hutson, singer for Palm Beach County band Black River Circus, died July 19. He apparently suffered a seizure and drowned in a swimming pool. He was 28 years old. “Rob was one of my best friends,” says Ray Carbone, owner of Ray’s Downtown on Clematis Street in West Palm…
If we could, we’d stay right where we are now and live it forever,” Thursday singer Geoff Rickly enthuses over the phone from Billings, Montana. With Thursday’s 2001 breakthrough album, Full Collapse, still moving 5000 copies a week (with more than 130,000 sold at press time) and a current headlining…
Every teenage male I know swears by Led Zep, which makes a certain kind of sense: Theirs was an immortal bombast, a melodic rumble far more riveting than what passes for nü-rawk these days; even loud, especially loud, it never lost its shape, which is far more than you can…
“Think back to what you missed,” commanded Quit on its landmark 1990 album, Earlier Thought. That order has haunted the Miami pop-punk trailblazers since the summer of 1993, when Quit singer/guitarist Addison Burns fell off a rooftop and pulverized his wrist, suspending for two years the career of one of…
Your Friends and Neighbors: It’s hard not to be put off by the substantial pomp emitting from Rise and Shine (TMG Records), the new album from Ed Hale and Transcendence, which arrives with a glossy and expensive sleeve and full-on promotional campaign befitting the next Bono. The Miami band (which…
The Red Hot Chili Peppers are at their best when mining singer Anthony Kiedis’s turbulent past. “Under the Bridge” and “Scar Tissue” are the band’s most satisfying songs because there’s a sense of authenticity behind the aural memoir. And because the frat-boy faux funk the Peppers pioneered in the 1980s…
There’s no question that Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo has become a better, deeper songwriter with each of his band’s four albums: Where he used to use shabby clothes as a clunky metaphor for congenial heartbreak, he now lets all his frayed edges hang out in chronicling his growing alienation from…
Having come together in that infamously infamous Northwest city of killer needles, branded caffeine, illicit greens, spilling suds, carbonated punk, thriving anarchy, and irreverent, irrelevant, or dead rock heroes of yore, PGMG drops a debut stalked by assumptions and hype. Fed by interest in their hometown origins, their ex- or…
Hip-hop has always had a soft spot for outlandish, over-the-top antics. With that in mind, you kinda wonder why more artists don’t take aim at this big fat target. Atlanta’s Ying Yang Twins, on the other hand, have this part of the hip-hop universe in their laser sights, driving that…
Please don’t put your life in the hands of a rock ‘n’ roll band who’ll throw it all away.” Wise words. Noel Gallagher should know, since they’re his words (from “Don’t Look Back in Anger”). He’ll be the first to admit that there have been plenty of times in Oasis’s…
For too many years, the amount of attention lavished upon David Lee Roth has steadily diminished. Amid accusations that he was spending too much time on his own material, among other sins, he deserted or was booted out of Van Halen around 1986 — different parties have different stories. But…
Close your eyes and you can picture the scene. Ominous piano thunder rolls as the musicians approach their instruments, dank amber silhouettes. Electronic sparkles signal the drums and ignite the rhythm. Bright white houselights pop and flood the room, synchronized with the guitar melody. “Words,” the opening track of The…
For all his shuffling about on MTV’s ridiculously successful voyeuristic hit The Osbournes and for all his mumbled stammers of “What the… why does… I don’t… Shaaaaron!,” Ozzy Osbourne exhibits few traces of these frailties on-stage. Sure, he doesn’t leap about like he did in the salad days of Sabbath,…
NINE MILE, ST. ANN’S PARISH, JAMAICA — It’s far easier to procure herbs, yard-style fried chicken, fried fish with okra, or a carved wooden walking stick than it is to find reggae music in Jamaica. You think it’d be filling the air like smoke. But instead, the hotel bar plays…
Jello Biafra’s scathing brand of political commentary won’t pass for comfort food in troubled times: Gooey, patriotic pabulum is best left to star-spangled yokels like Lee Greenwood or Alan Jackson. But the guy takes his anti-punditry as seriously as any free-speech proponent out there. He also has a knack for…
