Recent Articles

Recent Articles By Randall Roberts

  • Rebuilt to Suit
    SLU won't say what it has in store for the Locust Business District.
  • I Want My MP3
    Digital music just gets better. See ya later, major labels.
  • Horse's Kick
    Monarch, 7401 Manchester Road, Maplewood; 314-644-3995.
  • Lemp Lager
    The Duck Room at Blueberry Hill, 6504 Delmar Boulevard, University City; 314-727-4444.
  • Hendrick's Martini
    Lester's Sports Bar & Grill, 9906 Clayton Road, Ladue; 314-994-0055.

Recent Articles By Daniel Durchholz

Recent Articles By Roy Kasten

  • The Campbell Brothers
    8 p.m. Friday, February 15 and 11 a.m. Saturday, February 16. Edison Theatre, 6445 Forsyth Boulevard
  • Nina Nastasia
    8:30 p.m. Saturday, February 9. The Bluebird, 2706 Olive Street.
  • Richard Thompson
    8 p.m. Monday, February 11. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Boulevard
  • Parachute Musical
    9 p.m. Friday, February 1. The Bluebird, 2706 Olive Street.
  • Giant Bear
    9 p.m. Wednesday, February 6. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Avenue.

Recent Articles By Terry Perkins

Recent Articles By Jordan Oakes

Recent Articles By René Spencer Saller

  • So Long, Saller!
    Radar Station prepares for a regime change
  • Dott Com
    Meet Ahdedott, who just might be St. Louis' next hip-hop superstar
  • Expat Alert!
    The exodus of the creative class continues apace
  • Mix Masters
    These days anyone can make a mix CD, and everyone does. Two local standouts manage to challenge as well as entertain.
  • Public Enema
    For the noble souls of Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center, relieving social constipation has become a real pain in the ass

Recent Articles By Steve Pick

Recent Articles By Jason Toon

Recent Articles By Paul Friswold

National Features

  • Phoenix New Times
    Canine Crusaders

    That drug-sniffing dog up ahead? He may not be your best friend.

    By Ray Stern
  • Broward-Palm Beach New Times
    The Muscle Men

    Thanks to a string of Florida "anti-aging clinics," baseball's steroid scandal isn't limited to superstars.

    By Michael J. Mooney
  • Miami New Times
    Picked On

    Farm workers earn nada in America's green-bean capital.

    By Janine Zeitlin
  • Village Voice
    "Why I'm No Longer a Brain-Dead Liberal"

    An election-season essay from one of America's greatest playwrights.

    By David Mamet

As anyone who's read Nick Hornby's High Fidelity knows, music critics -- especially that species known as Criticus hiparawkasauraus -- luv, luv, luv catalogs, lists, rankings of all kinds. Chained forever to futile whim and sterile subjectivity, they dream of science. At the end of the year, they number their opinions and chart their neuroses and believe, for a moment, that instead of telling one more solipsistic story, they're contributing to some definitive ordering of a year in the life. They fail, but it's not as if anyone had imagined it could be otherwise. The turn of a decade and a millennium only makes their empirical flusters all the more poignant or hilarious -- depending on your vantage point. (RK)

1999 surely must rank with 1961 and 1974 as nadirs in pop-music history. Beset on one side by simpering middle-school goo and on the other by charmless metal-rap, discerning ears everywhere were forced to face the fact that we are living in a dark, dark time. The year's best big hit -- Fatboy Slim's "Praise You" -- actually came out in 1998. Even acts that did something worthwhile toiled without honor; the forces of good taste are scattered and confused. (JT)

Some critics seem to be suspicious of pleasure, especially if that pleasure is at all aligned with the taste of the masses. My favorite albums in 1999 -- the Barkers' Burn Your Piano, Wilco's Summerteeth and the Continental Drifters' Vermillion -- received little notice by either the press or the public. However, this year found more great singles on the radio than I've heard in some time.

The age-old themes of sex and dancing and bragging and begging and the experience of being alive were all over the airwaves. There was Kid Rock screaming his name at the top of his lungs before he rapped a litany of his own thrills in "Bawitdaba." There was Ricky Martin transferring power chords to his lungs on the hook-filled, Latin-rhythmed "Livin' La Vida Loca." There was Tal Bachman conjuring up the spirit of Todd Rundgren with the delightfully melodic "She's So High." (SP)

1999 was the year in which buying music once again became an overwhelming passion and navigating Web sites and record stores, debit card cocked, became totally exciting once again. Though there's no denying the glory of waltzing into a record store and discovering something in a rack, the online record store puts every single release out there available with a click -- a music geek's wet dream (or worst nightmare). Every order was a new revelation; every techno, blip-hop and hip-hop release created a new context; and, overall, the promise of computer-based music became an overwhelming reality. 1999 was the first year in my music-buying life in which the prominent instrument wasn't the guitar but the computer. And it's as exciting to be buying music as it was when I was 15 years old and snatching up punk 45s; the "here's three chords -- now go start a band" philosophy of punk has been overtaken by a new one: "Here's some software -- go crazy." So much amazing music out there, so many techniques, so much potential. (RR)

Electronica may be an apt sound for the turn of the century, but there's (we hope) a lot of future left. So when futuristic music becomes passé, what then? We're living in an era that's the musical equivalent of old science-fiction movies -- the ones that predicted a near-Jetsons environment by the year 2000. Or Disney World's Futureland, whose sloped, cliché-worn-structures sit rusting in obsolescence. When music is saddled with a makeshift futurism, not only does it become dated, there are no songs to remember later. Considering this, the millennium overchill makes me want to head for the genial hills of country music, among other fertile genres. (JO)

Nine hundred years ago, Hasan-i Sabbah, the founder of the mystical Assassins, claimed, "Nothing is true. Everything is permitted." Mr. Bungle seemingly created California to prove him right. They warp and weave the sticky tendrils of pop, noise and thrash-rock into a glistening mass of music that defies convention. If Burt Bacharach had gone to Woodstock and eaten the brown acid and then rewritten Pet Sounds as the soundtrack for a Jodorowsky sci-fi spy epic starring Christopher Walken as Barbarella, the resulting album would not be as spectacular as California is. Mr. Bungle unleash 10 songs that bear strange fruit and blossom into malodorous flowers of unearthly delights without the between-song skits and samples of their previous albums. Of the 10, "Pink Cigarette" stands out as the most fascinating. A love song, an empty threat, a suicide note -- whatever it is, "Pink Cigarette" captures the dark psychology of selfish devotion to another human being better than any excerpt from Monica's book or Jerry Springer's sideshow. (PF)

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