In the beginning (in Houston, Texas, as far back as a 28-year-old music reviewer can remember) there was Fleshmop, a righteously wicked go-nowhere rock band that, like all of Houston’s go-nowhere bands, good and bad, crumpled like a sheet in […]
It’s a recurring dream, one you’ve had so many times that you no longer think of it as a dream; when it plays in your head, you feel like you’re watching a favorite old movie. It’s a movie of you […]
“I’ve been playing music for seven years, which isn’t that long, really,” says Kevin Johnson, who clearly carries no chip on his shoulder about dues-paying. “Come on, the Smithereens were at it for fourteen years before their first record came […]
“You know, it’s about Knoxville, Iowa.” That’s what one of my musician friends told me. Well, not quite. But it’s not about Knoxville, Tennessee, either, even though that’s the common misconception. A haunting, tragic folk song about a man who […]
Across the evening sky All the birds are leaving But how can they know It’s time for them to go? Before the winter fire I will still be dreaming I have no thoughts of time For who knows where the […]
Onstage at the Troubadour in West Hollywood, the MacAnanys are locked in like a tap atop a keg of Miller. Fronted by Ryan MacAnany, a deep-voiced, soulful singer and a stunningly fluid, tasteful Telecaster slinger, the three-piece drives home rootsy […]
The Pine Dogs were born 20 years too late. If they were coming around in the mid-1970s, they’d probably be playing hockey arenas and outdoor festivals, hobnobbing with Linda Ronstadt and Peter Frampton. But it’s 1996 and the band has […]
Just put aside all of the superficial cataclysmic spectacle-related bullshit — the uncontrolled onstage fires; the sledgehammered toilet; the raw chicken. The hulking 6-foot-8 freak in full basketball getup (plus gas mask), swinging wildly from the end of a leash. […]
It’s not so much that Pinetop Seven is like nothing you’ve ever heard, although that’s likely true. It’s more that they’re like everything you’ve ever heard all at once: Schoenberg scores honky-tonk on a 12-tone scale; Mingus plays a carousel; […]
According to Billboard magazine, 29,429 albums were released in 1995. Alas, none of them were by Jeffrey Dean Foster’s band, the Pinetops. That also goes for this year, every other year, and every other band Foster has ever been in. […]
