It’s 1990, and John — who just arrived in Budapest — is being offered a job as a columnist for the fictional BudapesToday. “Don’t write screenplays in this building or on my time or on my word processors,” instructs his editor-to-be. Following a litany of equally biting provisos, the editor concludes: “Never forget that would-be Hemingways and Fitzgeralds are being…
Thursday, July 10, 2003 Legions of guys who call themselves “hard-core vanners” converge at the Wyandotte County Fairgrounds (I-435 and I-70 in Kansas City, Kansas) this weekend. They chop up vans, redecorate them, camp out and party. Although redecorating, camping out and partying are all things we understand, the matter of chopping up vans like so many onions is a…
Enemies from the days of Little Big Horn share close quarters this weekend at the Jan Weiner Gallery at Lula Mac. A show called Indians and Cowboys, Cowboys and Indians pairs photographers Andres Serrano and David Levinthal. Both artists twist iconic images such as hooded Klansmen and perversely svelte Barbie dolls. Levinthal contributes photographs of miniature cowboy figurines. He…
Stan Lee, for better or worse the most recognizable face in the history of the comic book, insists he has no love for rehashing his past. He claims to take no great joy from talking about long-ago yesterdays spent in smoky rooms co-creating the likes of the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, X-Men and Dr. Strange—the flawed,…
The idea of combining visual and written art forms is nothing new, yet it remains intriguing. It certainly was for Michele Fricke, who was in charge of selecting shows, booking galleries and installing and taking down at least 6 of the 34 fiber exhibitions held around town in conjunction with the Surface Design Association’s biannual conference in Kansas City…
A fusion of Frank Zappa’s ostentatiously odd arrangements and Slayer’s infernal metallic brutality, System of a Down is one of the few beacons in nü-metal’s sea of crap. So it’s not surprising that a System side project also intrigues. On this eponymous debut album, System vocalist Serj Tankian joins forces with Turkish avant-garde multi-instrumentalist Arto Tuncboyaciyan to form Serart. Tuncboyaciyan,…
In the albums-no-one-asked-for category, former Dokken guitarist George Lynch oversees one of the most puzzling releases of the year. Composed of neither new material nor greatest “hits,” REvolution is a record’s worth of remade Dokken and Lynch Mob tunes. Lynch makes an honest stab at injecting his back catalog with fresh vigor. New versions of “Breaking the Chains” and “Just…
Heavy-metal satanists, gangsta rappers and childhood-damaged aggro-rockers only wish they could create the destructive racket San Diego screamo machine Locust makes on Plague Soundscapes. The quartet speeds through 23 blasts of incoherence — bearing titles such as “Anything Jesus Does, I Can Do Better” and “The Half-Eaten Sausage Would Like to See You in His Office” — in just about…
The Dismemberment Plan, the Dillinger Escape Plan, the Dillinger Four and now … the D4. If underground acts don’t start getting more creative with their monikers, hipsters might get too confused to bother name-checking them. This New Zealand quartet (whose members go by such names as Beaver and Jimmy Christmas) is yet another band that delivers the sort of unpolished,…
I don’t know where my baby is, said Lisa Stansfield in a deep, seductive tone. But I’ll find him someway, somehow. I’ve got to let him know how much I care. I’ll never give up looking for my baby. Thus began “All Around the World,” one of the best singles of the late ’80s and the greatest Barry White song…
In bands such as the Static and Theoretical Girls, Glenn Branca helped to spawn New York City’s evanescent yet seminal No Wave movement. But his most lasting and loudest work occurred in the massive symphonies he recorded under his own name, many of which — along with Rhys Chatham’s similar pieces — laid the foundation for noise rock. Throughout the…
With Silver Lake, Chesnutt strides confidently into the realm of lushness — and for the first time, that’s not an alcohol reference. Because of his partial paralysis, his guitar leans toward spare necessity, and his voice, always a wry, bittersweet instrument, often comes closer to spoken word than to singing. But the production of Silver Lake is a mile deep,…
With emo clones popping off the assembly line as quickly as nü-metal mooks head back to their day jobs at McDonald’s, established pop-punk bands are in danger of getting lost in the shuffle. The Starting Line, however, is taking steps to ensure it won’t slip through the cracks. The Pennsylvania quartet will strip away the patented twin-guitar attack it unleashed…
Brothers only in the sense that “We’re all brothers, man,” the Radar Brothers (guitarist Jim Putnam, bassist Senon Williams and drummer Steve Goodfriend) started playing together almost ten years ago. Those sessions became the trio’s debut EP a year later, and since then the Radar Brothers have continued to refine their epic psychedelic-Americana dirges, culminating in last year’s And the…
Forget that she’s Ravi Shankar’s daughter. Get past the pop-singer-or-jazz-singer debate music critics have been waging for the past year. Ignore the multiplatinum status of her debut release, Come Away With Me. Set aside the next-new-thing hype that served as a yearlong prelude to this past February’s Grammys. Oh, and those eight Grammys? Try not to think about those, either….
This Hastings, England, DJ and producer persuaded his neighbor, trance/progressive-house kahuna John Digweed, to book him in the “experimental” room at his legendary club Bedrock in 1993. The dance world’s equivalent of becoming a made man in the Mafia, the assignment launched Ashley Casselle on his way to further marquee gigs and to recording several songs under his Ashtrax…
Joe Pernice once appeared determined to confuse — and thereby limit — his audience. Since the mid-’90s, singer-songwriter Pernice has recorded as Scud Mountain Boys, Chappaquiddick Skyline, Pernice Brothers and Joe Pernice. Compounding Pernice’s hide-and-seek marketing, each new handle heralded an equally new sound. Now, though, Pernice seems content to release his songs under the Pernice Brothers brand. Thanks to…
Blueprint (not to be confused with the Jay-Z albums) is a triple threat: a producer and MC who knows how to entertain an audience. With his mischievous rhyme style and staunchly fundamentalist approach, Blueprint marinates every phrase in old-school flavor. Having already made a star turn on Aesop Rock’s Daylight, Blueprint became an underground legend after issuing Unlimited, a stunning…
Ziggy Marley is not the most talented of Bob Marley’s offspring (that would be Stephen), nor is he the most attractive (that would be Sharon), but he is the most successful of the late reggae legend’s numerous legitimate — and illegitimate — progeny. Beginning his recording career at age ten, Marley’s eldest son has fought long and hard to earn…
Around this time last year, Conner was taking more shit than most bands could endure. The clamor centered on the Lawrence quartet’s 2002 self-titled demo, which mimicked the Strokes’ garage-fuzz clutter to the letter and earned the group scads of college radio play. Lawrence’s hipster contingent was divided: Some hailed Conner’s undeniable catchiness; others blasted the outfit for riding…
Offstage, or between songs, Will Kimbrough seems like a quiet, reasonable guy, the kind with whom you might wind up sharing an office if you were lucky. Give him a guitar, an idea and a sharp intake of breath, though, and the man inhabits dozens of fascinating characters, then exhales the kind of stories that make listeners feel as if…
Squeaky-clean-sounding albums make listeners wonder if the bands will be able to re-create the energy in a live setting. But on Jumbo’s Killcrane recordings, songs writhe under layers of smothering fuzz, raising questions about whether the band sprays them off before showcasing them. Fear not, sludge lovers: Even in concert, these tunes stumble through their own filth like mammoths stuck…
The local heavy-metal scene has proven it can draw huge crowds, host big-time band battles and produce decent discs. However, it remains a beast that roams a hinterlands habitat, dominating the Northland, Grandview and Independence while making occasional inroads elsewhere. The Westport Meltdown last Wednesday, a three-club crawl that involved the Hurricane, the Beaumont Club and America’s Pub, presented an…
Dave Matthews Band violinist Boyd Tinsley is a man on the move — literally. “I’m in downtown Cincinnati right now,” Tinsley explains hurriedly, the bustle of lunchtime traffic audible in the background. “I’m going to go find somewhere to sit down and have a little conversation.” Although the pace of Tinsley’s twelve-year association with the Dave Matthews Band would be…
