Various Artists Fire & Skill: The Songs of the Jam (Ignition/Epic Records) This probably seemed like a good idea back in the old days, when the world gave a steaming crap about Oasis: Bros Noel and Liam Gallagher would assemble and bookend a tribute to their rave fave that isn’t…
Dance-club DJs ply their craft obscured by clouds of billowing fog and flashing lights, hidden behind banks of equipment. It’s no surprise, then, that the rest of us have no clue what all the mysterious knob-twiddling is about. Truth is, DJs do a lot more behind the turntables than put…
Jay-Z Life & Times of S. Carter, Vol. 3 (Roc-a-fella/Def Jam) Essential listening for anyone curious about the evolution of rap, Jay-Z’s 1998 hit, “Hard Knock Life,” was the last great hip-hop single of the ’90s. With its kids-choir choruses — sampled from the soundtrack to the Broadway musical Annie…
Guns N’ Roses Live Era ’87-’93 (Geffen) Ten years ago, Guns N’ Roses was the biggest rock band on earth, a can-do-no-wrong quintet that made mincemeat out of every tressed and spandex-clad nightmare act on the Sunset Strip. And they didn’t even seem to be trying. Although it would be…
Tommy Womack Stubborn (Sideburn Records) Tommy Womack is Steve Earle with a sense of humor. To those (like me) who regard Earle with the awe generally accorded religious martyrs, this is no small claim. But after listening to his breathtaking sophomore solo platter about 12,000 times, there can be no…
It’s a humid Thursday night in Miami, and half the members of the alternative pop project the New Graduates are lounging at the patio bar of Tobacco Road. Singer Todd Oenbrink, age 25, looking like a stick drawing personified (round head perched atop a tall, slender body; long limbs), sits…
DMX … And Then There Was X (Def Jam) You’d be hard-pressed to find a hip-hop artist as formidable as DMX. Blessed with a raspy pit bull voice, he delivers his rapid-fire rhymes, which ricochet from the car speakers like a hail of errant bullets. But masterful delivery only partially…
Robbie Fulks The Very Best of Robbie Fulks (Bloodshot) Robbie Fulks is that rarest of pop commodities: a wiseass singer-songwriter who’s actually funny. Over the course of four longplayers, Fulks has brought some much-needed comedic vibrancy to the boot-gazing domain of alternacountry, skewering Nashville’s country-music mainstream (“Fuck This Town”) and…
Chappaquiddick Skyline Chappaquiddick Skyline (Sub Pop) As Joe Pernice moves in time and style further away from the body of work he helped create as a member of the Scud Mountain Boys, he moves closer to a brilliant evocation of his pop influences. With the Scuds, Pernice presented a glimpse…
He waxed rhapsodic about the joys and mysteries of romance. He essayed with passion on the despair of heartbreak and loss. His songs surveyed the devastation of inner-city poverty and called for social change and racial equality, providing the sonic backdrop for the civil rights movement. He crafted what might…
The Busy Signals Baby’s First Beats (Sugar Free) Analog keyboard, guitar, and drum machine: $400. Bedroom recording gear: $2000. Recording your debut album all by yourself: not quite as priceless as you think. Onetime Babes in Toyland roadie Howard W. Hamilton III is the Busy Signals. Other than backup vocals…
Inside his small, two-story Hialeah townhouse, DC Astro sits in his gray-walled recording studio with bandmate Martha Arce. The duo, two thirds of the goth rock band Deep Red, are dressed in all black. Astro dons a T-shirt, jeans, and thick-soled shoes. Arce wears a small tank top and velvet…
Various Artists Magnolia (Reprise) Down through the ages, one art form has always had the potential to inspire another, and rock ‘n’ roll is no exception. Patti Smith’s obsession with Rimbaud, Bill Nelson’s fascination for Cocteau, Tom Waits’ idol-worship of Jack Kerouac — all of these musical talents have found…
Everyone save for the most tolerant readers has probably had his or her fill of millennium lists. There isn’t anyone who hasn’t been assaulted by them: most influential figures in history, best books, best American movies, most important historical events. No area has been dogged by Listomania more than pop…
Kelis Kaleidoscope (Virgin) In a genre that relies on sonic and visual conformity, blond-and-pink-haired singer Kelis sticks out like Dennis Rodman — brash, independent, and alien but too talented to ignore. Her debut album opens, as so many hip-hop and R&B albums do, with an “intro.” Kelis interrupts her sci-fi…
Christmas is always crunch time at the North Pole: a season of harried elves, rushed production schedules, and last-minute route changes. In other words, one big nightmare for the big man. But Santa isn’t the only one pulling off a miraculous delivery this year. He’s joined by local musical hero…
Monty Alexander Stir It Up — The Music of Bob Marley (Telarc Jazz) For those jazz fans familiar with Monty Alexander but vague on just who Bob Marley is and for those reggae fans who worship Marley but have no idea who Monty Alexander is, this is the ideal disc…
“Man, this is some disco-sounding shit,” a guy complains to his buddy as they leave the second-floor men’s room at the Chili Pepper nightclub in Fort Lauderdale on a recent Saturday night. Looking around while standing at a urinal isn’t cool, so it’s hard to say for sure, but the…
Art of Noise The Seduction of Claude Debussy (Zang Tuum Tumb/Universal) British producer Trevor Horn’s avant-garde outfit, Art of Noise, was well ahead of the electronica curve in the early ’80s, using then-new sampling gimmickry to combine found sounds, electronic atmospherics, and synthetic beats to conjure the 1983 break-dance classic…
Dear Santy Claus, This is your old buddy, the Calibrator, writing from sunny South Florida with my annual wish list. As always, I respectfully request you respond to this list promptly and in full. First off, this swamp could stand a few feet of snow, and I ain’t talking about…
Even before its release earlier this year, George Jones’ Cold Hard Truth was already the most hugely hyped album in a recording career that has spanned the last 45 years. Why the hype? Two reasons: An alcohol-induced auto crash in March damn near killed the honky-tonk hero, which would have…
Guy Clark Cold Dog Soup (Sugar Hill) There are songwriters who are respected by fans, and there are songwriters who are respected by other songwriters. Then there’s Guy Clark, who earns professional respect like a banker compounds interest. The Texas-born song stylist has long been revered by his peers and…
