Less than six months after incurring life-threatening injuries when a taxicab ran over him as he slept in a Portland, Ore., hotel room, New York Night Train proprietor Jonathan Toubin is back at the turntables. Read More | Comment »

Gloria Gaynor is coming to South by Southwest, but she won’t be performing “I Will Survive.” Instead, the New Jersey-based disco diva will be discussing changes in the Copyright Act at a Music panel. I couldn’t help throwing in a few questions about her glory days. Read More | Comment »

Following in the footsteps of Jim Caligiuri, I decided to make a Best-of-2011 Spotify mix some weeks ago. Then a nightmarish DIY plumbing disaster intervened. Read More | Comment »

The past two weeks have been banner ones in the recovery of my pal and former bandmate Jonathan Toubin, aka the New York Night Train. Just over five weeks after sustaining life-threatening injuries when a taxicab crashed into his Portland, Ore., hotel room on Dec. 8, he was released from the Oregon Health & Human Sciences Hospital Jan. 13. Read More | Comment »

My old pal and former Noodle bandmate Jonathan Toubin remains in ICU at a Portland, Ore., hospital, recovering from serious injuries sustained when a taxicab crashed into his hotel room Dec. 8. Read More | Comment »

Congratulations are in order for onetime Austin resident Christopher Cross.

The former Chris Geppert recently topped VH-1’s list of the “40 Most Softsational Soft-Rock Songs” with his supremely soporific 1980 single, “Sailing.” Prior to penning the opus that inspired millions of dilettante yachtsmen to mortgage their childrens’ future in exchange for exorbitant slip fees, Cross led a popular local cover band called Flash. Though the very idea of “soft rock” begs for incessant ridicule, the fully realized tonality of Cross’ guitar work on “Sailing” is no joke.

Now fire up this clip and let the canvas do its miracles.

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It's been way too long since I thought about Fishbone.

The Los Angeles-based punk/ska/soul outfit plays Emo's Wednesday with Lick Lick and Opposite Day in support of Still Stuck in Your Throat (Sound in Color), their first new stateside album in seven years. Aside from helping pave the way for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jane’s Addiction, and No Doubt, they were one of the best live bands of the Eighties. Anyone who saw them plow through "Party at Ground Zero" or "Lyin' Ass Bitch" during their heyday can testify to that.

Fishbone's sweat-soaked August 1987 show at the Ritz with the True Believers and Bad Mutha Goose may have actually saved my life after being shown the dorm-room door by an unrequited summer-school crush. I also recall a 1989 show at the Texas Union Ballroom with Thelonious Monster at which the band stated they'd never play UT again until the university divested from apartheid South Africa (a promise they kept).

The 'Bone's commercial peak was 1991's The Reality of My Surroundings, but even that sprawling album never made the Top 10. Diminishing returns followed and original members started dropping off. Today only sax player/vocalist Angelo Moore and bassist/vocalist John Norwood Fisher remain from the original 1979 lineup.

At its finer points, Throat recalls the frenetic, stereotype-smashing fusion of “black” and “white” musical genres that made Fishbone’s 1985 debut EP so revolutionary. From the hardcore neurosis of "Frey'd Fuckin' Nerve Endings" to the goofyass ska hoedown, "Party With Saddam," the band retains its boiled-over melting-pot vibe. While hearing them pay tribute to the influenced with a cover of Sublime's obnoxious "Date Rape" is sort of sad; it's the last song and easy enough to skip. Either way, Fishbone was always a live band. I'd never write them off in that context. Read More | Comment »

If you're looking for a condensed history of "choogle," head over to TCBlog.
In the meantime, Minneapolis quartet Chooglin', who rocked Beerland shortly before South by Southwest, take the name seriously on their latest self-titled.

Armed with a Creedence-coined moniker and a logo nicked from Chicago (might wanna lawyer up on that count, boys), Chooglin' blasts far beyond whatever notions those two weapons might confer. The fourpiece utilizes garage-borne punk fury to remind us of the ass-shaking salvation once offered by the boogie-down guitar rock of the Seventies before it got all bloated on deli trays and cocaine.

Ex-Midnight Evils Jesse Tomlinson and Brian Vanderwerf conjure up double-barreled guitar pyrotechnics while drummer Shawn Walker splays himself every which way at a hundred miles an hour without losing time. Opener "So Stupid" spins itself into a frenzy approximating a speed-of-sound collision between Muddy Waters, Foghat, and the Streetwalkin' Cheetahs. Breakneck soul workout "Do It to It" and a well-placed cover of Roy Head's "Treat Her Right" garner extra oomph from the Horns of Eleganza's barroom brass. Theirs is the sound of workaday shackles rapidly evaporating into a rank steam of spilled beer and hormones. Read More | Comment »

America’s most phallic state may soon forgive Jim Morrison for a 1970 indecent-exposure conviction.

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist says he’s thinking about granting the Doors vocalist a posthumous pardon for allegedly brandishing his unknown soldier during an infamous March 1, 1969, concert at Miami’s Dinner Key Auditorium. Local officials also charged Morrison with using profanity.

Bootleg recordings of the Miami show demonstrate Morrison’s drunken, foul-mouthed invective, but the exposure charge has always been a matter of conjecture because accounts vary and no photographs of the unsheathed tool are known to exist. Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek has long maintained that Morrison was merely taunting the audience and never whipped anything out.

Morrison, a Florida native, was sentenced to six months of hard labor by a Dade County judge in September 1970, but he remained free on appeal. The case was still pending when Morrison died of an overdose in a Paris bathtub on July 3, 1971.

"He died when he was 27,” Crist notes. “That's really a kid, when you think about it, and obviously he was having some challenges."

Crist does not have the authority to pardon Morrison on his own. Two of the three other members of the Florida cabinet, which serves as the state’s clemency board, would also have to agree to a pardon. Moreover, Florida does not have a procedure for pardoning the dead.

Still, between this and his politically brave effort to restore the voting rights of most Florida felons once they are released from prison, Charlie Crist deserves to be short-listed for the title of coolest Republican governor. Read More | Comment »

Here’s a video treasure for aficionados of Texas psych – Dallas-based Southwest F.O.B. performing their 1968 cover of the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band’s “Smell of Incense” on The Larry Kane Show.

During the Sixties, TV stations throughout the country aired locally produced teen dance shows each weekday afternoon to attract afterschool viewers. These shows were similar in format – if not budget – to American Bandstand, with regular featured dancers from area high schools and pop groups lip-syncing their latest hit. WJZ-TV in Baltimore had The Buddy Deane Show (reimagined in John Waters’ Hairspray as The Corny Collins Show), WFAA in Dallas had Sump’n Else, and KTRK in Houston had The Larry Kane Show.

By decade’s end, local teen dance shows had become an anachronism due to high production costs. Because they aired live, and because videotapes of daily shows were often “wiped” for reuse, very little footage of these shows exists today, which makes this garbled 39-year-old clip a real find.

Despite their deep Texas drawls, the boys in F.O.B. (F.O.B. = Freight on Board) really knew how to freak out. Their version of “Incense” only made it to No. 56 on the pop chart, but band members Dan Seals and John Colley transformed themselves into England Dan & John Ford Coley in the Seventies, scoring a No. 2 hit in 1976 with "I'd Really Love to See You Tonight." Read More | 2 Comments »

If you have ghosts, Roky Erickson once posited, then you have everything.

I’m borrowing that lyric as the title for this bloggerly endeavor because we’ll be talking a lot about the ghosts of music’s past here – particularly the obscurities and curiosities that never got their due the first time around – along with an ephemeral frosting of everything else.

So let’s heat it and eat it, shall we?

Concord Music Group’s reactivation of Stax Records hits jamming speed Thursday night when Isaac Hayes, William Bell, Eddie Floyd, and Booker T & the MGs roll into town for the “Stax 50” SXSW showcase at Antone’s. It’s a shame Johnnie Taylor won’t be there with them.

Taylor died of a heart attack at Dallas’ Methodist Charlton Hospital in 2000 at age 62. Although he was born in Crawfordsville, Ark., Taylor lived in the Dallas area for many years and was a DJ on Soul 73 KKDA-AM. In Texas, that’s more than enough to claim an artist as our own. Read More | Comment »