Duke Cunningham Can't Have Gun
Don Bauder 9:47 p.m., May 25
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Stories by Dave Good
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The Cult's Choice of Weapon
“I was semi-detached from the world, but not from myself,” says Ian Astbury. The Cult lyricist and singer is on the phone from Los Angeles. He explains where his head was at during the writing ...
Paul Kamanski, the Heartbreakers Meets the Black Crowes
Songwriter Paul Kamanski goes way back with Country Dick Montana and that whole Beat Farmers scene.
Hands on a Hardbody's Silhouette of a Band
“A friend of mine, Ray Suen, he’s a local musician. He called me and said that Trey Anastasio [the leader of the band Phish] was looking for musicians and did I want him to submit ...
Plants and Animals Has Got a Beat, and You Can Dance to It
“Make a tricky record,” Warren Spicer once said, “and then spend the next year learning how to play it live.” He co-founded Plants and Animals, a Montreal indie trio, and, yes, their music is tricky. ...
Ferrets Eat Babies. They Shred Human Tissue. They Drink Blood.
The hush-hush life of forbidden pet ownership.
The Neo Bop of Charles McPherson
Sax master Charles McPherson began his career in 1959 with Charles Mingus. Inspired him to go get a job with the IRS.
Last Shot
“New Justice Records in Australia will be putting out our debut album.” That’s ex–Zombie Cartel member Jono LaNasa. He’s speaking about a record deal for his new band, Prevailer. New Justice will distribute hard copies ...
Delta Spirit, from the Piney Woods of San Diego
During the mid-2000s, the music industry produced a rash of bands that embraced roots. Dobros were heard, percussion sounded DIY, and arcane instruments such as toy piano were embraced. Standouts included Cage the Elephant, the ...
Is Prima Donna the Best Garage Band of All Time?
Score one for the old school: Prima Donna, a five-piece from Los Angeles, may be the best garage band of all time, albeit 40 years after the fact. They started in 2003. What we call ...
Get the Hell Out
When the Art Institute of San Diego needed a guest with pro music experience to speak to one of their audio production classes on the subject of freelancing in the music business, they tapped Bill ...
No More Road Dogging
“We’re going to put out teasers on the internet,” Scottie Blinn says, “and hope the show goes viral and possibly lands sponsors.” He is not particular who. “Taco stands, guitar-repair shops, car-parts stores, record stores.” ...
Sonny Vincent Keeps It Real
Last week a writer posed this question to online magazine Slate: “Is Madonna too old to make Madonna music?” Sonny Vincent would have a laugh. He’s just turned 59 and has no trouble still being ...
Jimmie Dale Gilmore and the First Alt-Country Record
Jimmie Dale Gilmore is a singer/songwriter from Lubbock, Texas. In the early 1970s he started a band called the Flatlanders with Joe Ely and Butch Hancock. They made the first alt-country record ever, but it ...
The Hives: Best in Sweden
When asked, the Hives will say that they are the best rock band in all of Sweden, maybe even the planet. For sure, they are the biggest smartasses. “First, you will clap,” singer Howlin’ Pelle ...
I Heart Slacker
“Local artists,” says Ofek Hayon, “can come onto Rockcityclub.com, upload content, and [potentially] be heard by millions of listeners on Slacker.” Hayon is the chief business development officer at Las Vegas–based Rockrena, owners of Rockcityclub.com. ...
Mikan Zlatkovich on Jazz
“You know what a drummer once told me? That I’m a drummer’s pianist,” says Mikan Zlatkovich. “Meaning that I’m percussive. The piano has to keep the time as well.” We meet in a café in ...
Rubblebucket, Live in San Diego
It’s Alex Toth, the trumpet-playing founder of Rubblebucket on the phone. He’s just finishing breakfast in Columbus, Missouri, a long way from home in Brooklyn. His band is touring in support of their latest, Live ...
The Axe Men: Smokin’ Joe Kubek and Bnois King
Smokin’ Joe Kubek and Bnois King are a blues band with two lead guitars. In the hyperactive world that is guitar-fronting, twin leads requires checked egos and dissimilar performance styles. Bnois (pronounced Buh-noise) King, from ...
Content for Young Ears, Compliments of David Rees
“I’ve never entered a contest before. I’ve usually been working too much to pull my head out to do any promotion.” David Rees, 46, is a longtime San Diego musician who lives and works in ...
The+Grass+Heat
The rise and fall and rise again of the power trio as an art form notwithstanding, the first thing I want to know about the Grass Heat is the name. How did it come to ...
The Strange Heaven of Mrs. Magician
By the time Mrs. Magician plays the Belly Up, their Swami Records debut Strange Heaven will have been released digitally. My advance copy reveals a collection of radio-ready indie power-pop tunes, all of them likeable ...
Rock ’n’ Roll Peg Pollard
“‘Rock ’n’ Roll” Peg Pollard got into radio to marry Bob Seger. She was in the sixth grade, she heard Live Bullet, and Pollard fell in love with the Detroit rocker. “I decided my route ...
Joe Louis Walker: Hellfire Rocks Harder
I ask Joe Louis Walker if Hellfire, the title of his debut release on Alligator Records, is short for “hellfire and brimstone.” He says it could be. After all, he does have a background in ...
The Griffin: One Degree from Kona
“I came here to help out at the request of the owners,” says Joe Rinaldi, the Griffin’s new talent buyer. He speaks of creating an image for the venue that was once O’Connells, an Irish-themed ...
Silent Comedy: “We’re Not Religious"
“My brother Josh and I started the Silent Comedy as sort of a side project,” says Jeremiah Zimmerman. “Sort of a lark.” They were both members of an aggressive punk band at the time. “But ...
Brad Lee: Loud and Clear
“You’ve caught me at a milestone in my life.” Meaning the ten-year anniversary of Loud and Clear Records? No, says label owner Brad Lee. “This is my second day in San Diego without a day ...
Dunwells Invade Belly Up
The Dunwells are the latest players in the emerging West London folk scene to come to America. When they play the Belly Up, it will be for the first time. The latest UK folk invasion ...
It Was the Piano
In January Chuck Perrin pulled his Dizzy’s jazz series out of the San Diego Wine and Culinary Event Center in the Harbor Club Towers downtown. “I got a couple of days’ notice that the piano ...
Petunia, Vipers, and Exene Cervenka
Petunia won’t give his real name when he calls from British Columbia, where he lives, which may be a self-protective habit grown of living on the streets and having busked his way across Canada and ...
Was 2011 the Year of the Sax?
By the end of last year, music journalists were tagging it the Year of the Sax. Why? Because Lady Gaga hired Clarence Clemons to play on “Born This Way.” But that’s not all: Odd Future ...
Dave Good Doubts the Features
The Features are indie rockers from Sparta, Tennessee, an eighth-grade startup born of small-town boredom. Coming of age in a cultural backwater of less than 5000 had its limitations, and a lot of the Features’ ...
Joe Walsh, Analog Man
If you played electric guitar in high school during the 1970s, you probably had your Steppenwolf and Bad Company and Deep Purple and Neil Young licks down, but you also knew some James Gang. Their ...
Rolle Love & the Beat Farmers
A haircut changed Rolle Love’s life. At 17, he was a hard-rocking bassist with a crash pad in North Park. “We furnished it with cases of beer, and we drank our furniture.” A major life ...
Total Distortion
“It’s kind of a trip,” says Donald Vercelli, who plays Mike Ness in the Social D tribute band formerly known as Socially Distorted. “Apparently, Mr. Ness doesn’t like other bands spreading his music around.” In ...
Big Mountain's Leap of Faith with Tim Tebow
“I’ve been a Chargers fan since I was a little boy,” says Quino McWhinney of Big Mountain. “The Denver Broncos have always symbolized evil in my world.” But maybe not so much anymore: “Leap of ...
Nada Surf. Not Weezer.
“Popular” has been called an accidental alt-rock radio hit by almost every music writer who has tackled the subject of Nada Surf. It was on the radio for what seemed an eternity in 1996, and ...
Elephant Revival at AMSD
Daniel Rodriguez tells this story about the origin of his band’s name, Elephant Revival: “Our bass player busked outside the elephant cage at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago,” he says, where two elephants had ...
Colonel J.D. Wilkes and His Dirt Daubers
The Dirt Daubers came to be because the organizers of the Raindance film festival in London couldn’t afford airfare for the Legendary Shack Shakers. Colonel J.D. Wilkes is a member of both bands. “It started ...
Tim Garcia's Amazing Bass
“I had sent him a text around 1:30 in the afternoon.” Lemon Grove prog-rocker Andy Gorman needed a bass player, and Gorman wanted Tim Garcia for the date. That was Thursday, December 22. “I told ...
Buddy Blue Reunion
Who’s in the Buddy Blue Reunion Band? All of the original players, says Joe Dyke, aka Sweetlips Mysterioso — with the exception of Blue himself, who died in 2006. “We try to get as many ...
Who Are Those Guys?
Joe Walsh heard a copy of their debut CD and liked it. “He said it was pretty fucking good,” says Steve Bulger — Stevie B — the singer/harpist who fronts 145th Street. The band recently ...
Fred Wesley & the Greyboy Allstars
Trombonist Fred Wesley would like to be known for more than just funk and soul. Since the late ’90s, straight-ahead jazz has been the focus of his Fred Wesley Group. “But trying to get back ...
Tracy Shedd, Simpatico with Sonic Youth
Tracy Shedd’s “Whatever It Takes” at first sounds as if it’s going to turn into one of those über-positive “don’t let life get you down” girlpop rants, but no. It’s more about evading the suffocation ...
Lot 373W: Sgt. Pepper's Amp?
Those who may have searched Bonham’s auction website in the days following November 29 for news about “sale 19037, lot 373W” found a cryptic message posted in red: “This lot has been withdrawn.” Lot 373W ...
The White Arrows Have Direction
When Mickey Schiff rings from Los Angeles, I ask about his voice. If he’s not using a megaphone or something like that, it sounds like it must hurt to sing. “There’s no real tricks,” he ...
Legion Air
Last year, when the Far West band went looking for a place to record, they settled on the American Legion post in Encinitas. “Our drummer, Tony Sanborn, lives just south of Oceanside,” says Lee Briante. ...
Penetrating Questions with Chris Sullivan
The rough cut of Eric Rife’s rockumentary Garageland begins with the shrill alarm of “Walk the Beat” by the Penetrators. And rightly so — some local rock historians say that the Penetrators, in 1978, were ...
Don't Take Exit 40
“That douchebag was definitely not at our show.” It’s James Smith, the Drowning Men’s singer on the phone from Boston. On November 18, a Friday night, the Oceanside band’s van was hit by a drunk ...
Boxer Rebellion: “The Best Men in Black”
Spin Magazine’s critic called Boxer Rebellion the “Best Men in Black,” following their performance this year at SXSW. Was that a reference to Johnny Cash? Will Smith? No. Spin tagged Boxer Rebellion as a standard ...
Nick Waterhouse @ Soda
In due time, all things pop music eventually get recycled. Punk, girl bands, new wave, rockabilly, jam bands, metal, fusion, funk — you name it. Granted, some artists merely repurpose rather than recycle. Moby’s first ...
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