AT RISK
Two recent developments at the site are both raising and dashing hopes of a cleanup. The good news is that earlier this year, the EPA pinpointed 15 potentially responsible companies for the R&H contamination (see box, this page) and is trying to force them to remove it – although the companies can sue the federal…
SIX FOR HENDRIX, ONE MORE FOR US
A pretty, young blonde girl had shown up, looking a little scared but very determined. She waited her turn and set up to play her three songs for us. When she began to sing, everyone noticed immediately that this one had something special. If only we could get her to face the audience when she…
VELVET FUSIONS
Brad Mehldau, Largo (Warner Brothers): Instrumentation includes “piano with putty treatment in lower two octaves” and “distorto-piano through leslie with whammy pedal” (I did not make that up). Oboes and bassoons and French horns play material by Radiohead (“Paranoid Android”), Antonio Carlos Jobim (“Wave”), and the Beatles (“Dear Prudence,” “Mother Nature’s Son”). There are rock…
WEST SIDE STORY
I had known all of these renegades for many years and understood why he was so adamant about using only these players. They were the embodiment of the “San Antonio sound,” as was Doug. They had history, and every player was a monster in his own right. And their overall pedigree was nothing less than…
TRANSFORMER(S)
A new music/DVD release does something like this on an epic pop culture scale. Best of Bowie (EMI) is a two-disc collection of David Bowie videos put out to accompany the new CD comp of the same name. While there is no evident need for another greatest hits CD from the one-time Thin White Duke,…
BURN ONE
With recent reissues chronicling the drug years (1983-1991), those fans lured by the recent symphonic years (from 1999’s The Soft Bulletin to today’s Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots) may be a bit put off by the Lips’ early, feedback-drenched psyche assaults. Spanning two releases and five discs – Finally the Punk Rockers Are Taking Acid:…
TAMALE PAST, TAMALE PRESENT
All six of my aunts made the migration from different corners of the United States. In the end, Tío Pancho was fine, and the hours of driving and waiting reconnected the family. I took along a hand-held tape recorder, because I knew the trip would yield stories – bits of my family history that I…
BITTERSWEET DREAMS
Frontera Dreams takes place during the end of the 1980s, in the midst of el crisis: a period when Mexico experienced astronomical inflation under the inept, corrupt presidency of Carlos Salinas. Briefly, we are introduced to (or, for those who have followed Paco Ignacio Taibo’s series, reunited with) Héctor Belascoarán, the one-eyed, middle-aged detective who…
