One of the less-constructive myths to come from our recent Age of Self-Esteem is that anyone anywhere can be a genius, given the appropriate care and feeding of his or her tender muse. Bullshit: As Pixies proves, genius is born like Athena, fully grown from the head of Zeus or,…
At just under an hour, The Osbourne Family Album manages to pay tribute to Ozzy while giving a boost to Jack and Kelly Osbourne’s burgeoning music-biz gigs (dour Dillusion, whom talent-scout Jack has been developing for Epic, appears here for that reason alone, and Kelly previews her forthcoming debut with…
Andrew W.K. is the Tiger Woods of rock’n’ roll. He has no interest in being a worldwide rock star, although that may be the inadvertent result after the release of his debut album, I Get Wet. When he talks about his plans for the album and himself, he speaks honestly…
The last time these boys from Jacksonville were in the area, we interviewed their lead singer and told you all that if you are a fan of blues, country, funk, or any combination thereof, you must see them at the Bamboo Room. For those of you who didn’t listen, shame…
Deep in the uncharted wilderness of the Wild West (we like to call it Davie), in the midst of a cluttered office strewn with concert posters, a T-shirt autographed by Phish guitarist/singer Trey Anastasio, and practically the entire collection of Simpsons action figures, many of them still in their original…
As a founding member of the Coctails and the Sea and Cake — not to mention his amazing body of work as a cartoonist and a painter — Archer Prewitt has proved himself to be one of Chicago’s finest stalwart indie sons. Sparking the retro-lounge revival long before it became…
Mexico City’s Los de Abajo is a good, old-fashioned, ideologically in-your-face punk band. Case in point: “Screw,” in which the downtrodden come with a confrontational politics that exposes the death-squad/drug-dealer thug as the face of the government on the ground. All this is set to a rapid-fire, ska-flavored beat –…
When Fíjate Bien, Juanes’s groundbreaking debut, came out, nobody gave a Colombian rat’s ass. Except, that is, for all the critics, who told the law of karma it was time to change history and give this rockero a chance to go toe-to-toe with pop-trash heavyweights. At last year’s Latin Grammys,…
Arlo is a band of the kind of back-porch rockers who speed through a 30-minute set on One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer night at your local club, so it makes sense that the group is named for its Tuesday-night soundman back in L.A. Arlo’s second LP, Stab the Unstoppable…
Everything you’d ever want to know about Momus — the effeminate, eye-patched, Scottish-born composer, singer, and essayist — is available for your perusal. Through interviews, pop-culture magazine columns, and a voluminous output of smarmy, hermetically sealed, electronic-pop albums (more than 15 since 1982, with more on the way), Momus has…
Twenty-one-year-old South Florida singer/songwriter Isaac Lekach, the one-man band known as Poulain, would seem to be a solitary sort, spending lonely hours composing his delicate, cleverly arranged songs. Yet it’s collaboration with contemporaries around the nation that has breathed life into his stylish tunes (glistening wet with Belle and Sebastian…
There’s something going on in the Rust Belt besides auto-industry layoffs. Along with bands such as the White Stripes and the Greenhornes, the Come Ons are part of a garage-rock revival that has crept slowly across the nation, building speed like an old Camaro. Unlike the more punky Stripes, the…
My landlord once knew a drug dealer. The dealer had a bunch of LSD stashed in his sock on a hot day. His feet got sweaty, and he absorbed most of the acid. A week after being in the emergency room, the guy was still wild-eyed, queasy, and confused –…
It’s just a tiny big town, and when opportunities dry up, summer doldrums set in. Is it the stifling weather that fuels petty tensions and brings out the worst in the music community? Doubtful. More likely, it’s the fear of diminishing resources that has everyone fighting over the last few…
Japanese taiko drumming is an exclamatory art form as visual as it is auditory. Kodo’s army of drummers, sinewy and scantily clad in traditional costume, muscle 900 pounds of drums in choreographed unison while participating in a complex performance-art piece that’s equal parts athletic display and spiritual exercise. Attempting to…
As minitrends go, this nü metal fad’s got legs: Korn’s first album came out in 1994, and it is still rocking adolescent treatment centers across the country. Nü metal is pretty patently the mainstream now; the charts are full of Stainds, Nickelbacks, Disturbeds, and other bands for whom personal torment…
It’s too easy to write him off, though the temptation’s there; has been for damned near two decades, since he asked us to dance and promptly strapped on two left feet. Ah, but what the realist calls “murky ambition” the apologist deems “experimental victory.” So, then, what makes Heathen Bowie’s…
You know how some bands are great live but not so good on record? Well, some bands need a particular kind of live venue for their sound to flourish. For example, if you were to see Jerrods Door playing at a noisy bar — say, Fort Lauderdale’s Poor House –…
Recorded in 1998 and marking the legendary group’s first time together after a four-year hiatus, Shockadoom stands as an amazing document of the sheer creative power that comes about when Freestyle Fellowship’s four emcees are collected in the same room. But given their importance in hip-hop history and their ability…
After Jim Morrison dropped dead in 1971, the remaining Doors issued two more albums before abandoning all hope. But while Robbie Krieger and John Densmore went off to form the Butts Band and go from nice, folksy blues to unadulterated crap in two albums, Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek stuck with…
Sixteen straight days of gray skies and rain. Flooded streets, lightning bolts, thunderclaps menacing enough to send the cats scurrying. The awful, preternaturally darkened mornings and sullen, dreary afternoons — it’s enough to make Bandwidth pray for a respite. By the time we got to Boynton Beach on Tuesday, June…
The 1992 opera for which Alice was originally written has yet to reach our shores, but it’s hard to believe it could fulfill the promise of a playwright marrying a musician better than the album itself does. Kathleen Brennan has influenced Tom Waits’s music ever since they met in 1980,…
