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DANNY CLICK INTERVIEWED (2004): Jimi beating up Buck
Singer-guitarist Danny Click, from Austin, the capital of live music in America, laughs about a description he heard of his playing style: "I'm not really country and I'm not really total blues - and I'm definitely not hardcore thrash rock'n'roll. In Austin all the minor sub-categories are mixed up but I don't fit any of them sometimes. "Someone once described my sound as... more >>
Added: 19 Apr 09
PHIL SPECTOR'S RISE AND FALL . . . AND FALL AGAIN (2003): The high and low life
So Phil Spector has been charged with murder, huh? Well, no surprises there then - because Spector has been one of the more disturbed individuals in rock, right up there with the eccentric and once reclusive Beach Boy Brian Wilson, the Pink Floyd founder Floyd Syd Barrett, and the just plain weird Michael Jackson. When it came to crazy behaviour and reclusiveness, however, producer/songwriter... more >>
Added: 16 Apr 09
THE TEMPTATIONS: Creating Heaven for Motown right here on Earth
The ever-changing line-up of the legendary Motown soul group the Temptations (only two original members of the '61 founding group by the mid-Nineties when the five-disc retrospective Emperors of Soul was released) made their career a little difficult to follow. But they were one of the cornerstone acts on Motown. Even their most ardent fans might have thought the Emperors of Soul... more >>
Added: 16 Apr 09
LIVING COLOUR: VERNON REID INTERVIEWED (1993): Black, white and everything in between
It’s an old line but no less true for all that...and when you put it to Vernon Reid of Living Colour, he knows exactly what it means: “Everyone sees the world from their own disadvantage point.” It’s late at night in New York City and Reid is at home and obviously tired. But he still gets a laugh out of the quip. He knows what it means because he sees it all the... more >>
Added: 12 Apr 09 
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STEVE COOGAN INTERVIEWED (2004): Ah-haa!
We cringed when British actor Steve Coogan was appalling television, then radio, host Alan Partridge in the British television series Knowing Me, Knowing You and I'm Alan Partridge. There were few more uncomfortable television characters than this gauche, insecure and obnoxious British television talk show host whose Abba-themed show offered appalling puns, maltreatment of guests,... more >>
Added: 6 Apr 09
THE MC5, WAYNE KRAMER INTERVIEWED AND CONCERT REVIEW (2004): The politics of rock
It's fair to think most people only know the noise of the MC5 through their spiritual heirs: the garageband clatter of the Datsuns, D4, Soledad Brothers, the Black Keys and other such rowdies who have an old-school r'n'b heart and amps turned up to 11. Or maybe people know of them through the connection with their old hometown of Detroit: the Stooges, White Stripes, Dirtbombs, Eminem and... more >>
Added: 5 Apr 09
AN EMERALD CITY INTERVIEWED (2009): The sky-high vision
To hear guitarist/keyboard player Sam Handley tell it, there was a magical moment when they knew: “That first hit on the drum, it just sounded 10 times bigger than normal”. In this suburban villa in Kingsland, Auckland there are nods of recognition from the assembled members of An Emerald City. They are talking about setting up their gear in a cave at Whatipu in January... more >>
Added: 5 Apr 09
PETE SEEGER PROFILED: The conscience of America
When I was growing up and the sound of the Beatles and the Stones was the soundtrack to my life, the folk movement out of the US just seemed quaint and grounded in another era. While artists such as Joan Baez and the young Bob Dylan made an impact, a bunch of buttoned-down college boys in sweaters singing "hang down your head Tom Dooley" or women in chunky-knits whining "we... more >>
Added: 5 Apr 09
DAMIAN MARLEY INTERVIEWED (2006): Maintaining the family standard
The most common complaint from those who have stardom thrust upon them -- the tabloid coverage and paparazzi, the private chef serving you rather than some kid on minimum wage -- is that nothing prepares you for this life. Okay, it’s tough at the top -- it’s not that easy at the bottom however -- and no, you can’t go to school to learn how to be famous. But there is... more >>
Added: 29 Mar 09
TOUGHER THAN TOUGH: The 1994 box set of Jamaican music considered
One of the most exciting things about popular music is that you can never anticipate where the next wave will come from. Could you have predicted Chicago in Forties, Memphis in the Fifties, Hamburg and Liverpool clubs in the Sixties, Berlin or the Bronx in the Seventies and early Eighties? Or Seattle, Havana, the deserts of the sub-Sahara . . . You could have? Great, a couple of... more >>
Added: 16 Mar 09 1 Comment
JANIS JOPLIN: Singing out the painful sparks within
Of all those admitted to that illustrious pantheon of Dead Sixties Rock Stars, Janis Joplin has been the one least well served. Jimi is revered and regularly remarketed; and Jim has his reissued albums, Oliver Stone bio-pix, a new headstone in Pere La Chaise and people still seem to refer to him as “a poet”. And Janis? Like Otis, she is pretty much forgotten other than by a... more >>
Added: 16 Mar 09 4 Comments
QUINCY JONES INTERVIEWED (1990): The Dude, back on the block
Quincy Jones doesn’t quite put it this way, but he knows that with great power comes great responsibility. And Jones has great power because of a financial empire founded on an extraordinary career in music which spans from bebop to hip-hop. This is the man who hung out with jazz artists like Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker in the early 50s, counts his Grammy nominations in the... more >>
Added: 12 Mar 09
TY INTERVIEWED (2004): British hip-hop to the people
From this distance, British hip-hop comes down to a few big names: the Streets, Dizzee Rascal and Skinnyman. It takes keen interest -- or a look at the nominees for the highly regarded Mercury Prize -- to come across rapper Ty. But he's not a new name. His debut album Awkward appeared three years ago in 2001 and the Mercury-nominated Upwards came out in 2003. He's had a run of successful... more >>
Added: 10 Mar 09
SLIM JIM PHANTOM OF THE STRAY CATS INTERVIEWED, AND CONCERT REVIEW. (2009) Still strutting
In these days when people are losing their jobs, Stray Cats’ drummer Slim Jim Phantom seems to have more than his share: he co-owns the successful Cat Club on Sunset Strip where he usually plays Thursday nights with celebrity guests; is in The Head Cat with Lemmy from Motorhead; this year is getting together the Forgotten Saints with longtime friend Captain Sensible of the Damned... more >>
Added: 10 Mar 09
GENE CLARK, THE ONCE AGAIN BYRD: A true American dreamer
Former Byrd Gene Clark is so famous he's dead and people write songs about him. Well, Teenage Fanclub did on their album Thirteen album and that's a pretty creditable homage. After all, the Fanclub previously modelled themselves on Alex Chilton's cult-hero band Big Star. Gene, you wanna talk muso-cred? You got it, man. You're another dead cult figure. So wave hello and say goodbye.... more >>
Added: 1 Mar 09 1 Comment
MARY WILSON OF THE SUPREMES INTERVIEWED (2009): The Dreamgirl goes on
There are many things that stars of stage and screen these days seem very happy to talk about: their former or current addictions, the assault case, the booze-fuelled nights, that bitch/bastard of an ex, their fall from grace and so on. Then there is the taboo area: money. About 15 minutes in to a wide-ranging conversation with a founding member of the Supremes, Mary Wilson -- who was the... more >>
Added: 1 Mar 09 1 Comment
JOSE GONZALEZ INTERVIEWED (2004): Quiet is the new loud
Jose Gonzalez is an interesting series of contradictions: his family is Argentinean but he was born and grew up in Sweden; he played in hardcore bands but has enjoyed huge success with a quiet folksy album; he makes lo-fi music yet has sprung to fame on the back of a memorable telly-ad for cutting edge technology; and he goes untroubled on the streets of his hometown Gothenburg despite being... more >>
Added: 1 Mar 09
BUDDY HOLLY REMEMBERED 50 YEARS ON: His life, his wife, his legacy
It was 50 years ago, on February 3 1959, that the tail-lights of the red four-seater Beechcraft Bonanza faded into gusty winds over the airport at Mason City in Iowa. Within minutes the single-engine plane had plummeted into the snow-covered cornfields of the thinly-populated countryside. And so it was that America woke up on February 4 to the news that Buddy Holly was dead. He was 22... more >>
Added: 19 Feb 09
IVAN NEVILLE INTERVIEWED (2005): The family that plays together . . .
More than four decades after one of the family first scored a hit, and 25 years from the first Neville Brothers album Fiyo on the Bayou, you could almost forgive the brothers Aaron, Art, Charles and Cyril for slowing down a little. The oldest, keyboardist Art, is 68 and had a close call with death after back surgery in late 2001. And their last album, Valence Street in 1999, despite... more >>
Added: 18 Feb 09
DEREK TRUCKS INTERVIEWED (2009): Allman and Clapton, but his own man
For someone yet to hit 30, the Jacksonville, Florida-based singer-guitarist Derek Trucks has achieved a lot. But then, he was almost born to it. His uncle is drummer Butch Trucks of the Allman Brothers Band; he was named after Eric Clapton’s pseudonym in Derek and the Dominos; and these days he is married to acclaimed blues singer Susan Tedeschi. Those factors alone don’t... more >>
Added: 14 Feb 09 1 Comment
