Sign in Become a member

Archive

The Cramps - Smell of Female/ A Date With Elvis/ Rockinnreelininaucklandnewzealandxxx/ Stay Sick!/ Look Mom, No Head!/ Big Beat From Badsville/

In the late 1970s, when other whippersnappers rediscovered the joys of rock 'n' roll, twisted it around, and called it punk, the Cramps latched onto rockabilly, tossed in other pop culture elements (B movies, surf music), and called it something even scarier -- psychobilly. That's sex,

Chris Thomas King - O brother, who art thou?

The Coen brothers couldn't have scripted a stranger irony than the musical resurrection of Chris Thomas King. After years of refusing to submit to traditionalist strictures -- resisting the pressures of a record industry that couldn't accept his streetwise raps and hip-hop samples as a natural

Mark Insley - Maybe he'll just go to Tucson

For several years singer-songwriter Mark Insley has been living in Ventura, California, and gigging around regional hot spots such as Bakersfield and Los Angeles' now-defunct Palomino Club. Yet from the sound of the title track on his new album Tucson, he seems ready for a change of scenery. In

"Love and Theft" The Veiled but Tangled Roots of Jimmie Rodgers and Tommy Johnson

Most people tend to view blues and country music as the province, by turns, of black and white cultures. Nothing wrong with that, really; with few exceptions, the greatest blues singers have been African-American, while the best honky-tonkers have been of European descent. And there's no denying that

Charley Patton - Screamin' And Hollerin' The Blues

A percussive truthfulness. A synthesis of conflict and beauty. A futuristic maturity. An opening out toward multidimensionality through simplicity. -- Yusef Komunyakaa Aw take my picture, hang it up in Jackson's wall Aw take my picture, hang it up in Jackson's wall Anybody asks you "

X - Los Angeles / Wild Gift / Under The Big Black Sun

"The World's A Mess; It's In My Kiss" -- Los Angeles' closing track aptly encapsulates X's sustaining power and accomplishment: wresting the universal from deeply felt personal experience. Again and again, these poets-turned-punks capture the telling detail -- snatches of overheard

Wild Seeds - I'm Sorry, I Can't Rock You All Night Long: 1984-1989

There are bad singers, and then there are good bad singers. Bad singers just make you wince at their ineptitude, either in sympathy or in horror. Good bad singers, meanwhile, can get you to dig their mood so much that you don't mind the cracked notes. When you