Journalist, Author & Syndicated Columnist
Bob Geldof is a hard sell. He is 40 and says he feels it, though he doesn’t look much different from when he was a young punk in the ’70s band the Boomtown Rats. Tall and gangly, he is charismatic on stage – defiant in conversation. He is quick to laugh, but the Irishman makes it clear he doesn’t suffer fools.
Here he comes, here comes Speed Racer. The cartoon hero’s heading for the finish line again, only this time around, Chicago’s Alpha Team is driving him past the checkered flag.
Call them a supergroup, and the Arc Angels will shrug off the compliment. “Maybe we’re an almost supergroup,” says vocalist-guitarist Charlie Sexton. “We’re not there yet.”
Webb Wilder, 6 feet 3 inches tall, has a wardrobe so unusual that even director Peter Bogdanovich was impressed. But more on that later.
He’s got a name that sounds like Elliott Ness’ punk cousin and a look that’s half Elvis, half mechanic. Mike Ness is Social Distortion’s singer, songwriter and mouthpiece. The music industry’s indifference almost made the medium-core punk band disappear. But 13 years after its inception, the California group is finally enjoying success, thanks to radio’s acceptance of its latest album, “Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell.”
He took his stage name from a Bob Dylan album almost as old as he is and nicks his album titles from Frank Capra movies. So where’s John Wesley Harding’s originality? In his music. An acerbically witty songwriter who sings folk-style rock songs, Harding is touring with a group of musicians who he refuses to Christian with a band name. Catch him and them when they perform tomorrow at the Metro.
As Michael McDermott sips a cold mug of beer at Harrington’s Pub, a wide smiles spreads across his face. McDermott used to play acoustic guitar here not too long ago, and he feels a tad weird today lounging like the customer he is.
Butts are big. When the No. 1-selling pop single in America features a rapper rhapsodizing about rumps, the rest of the world sits up and takes notice. Many people take offense. That’s the case with Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back.” But even he doesn’t understand the controversy.
“When my first record bombed, I chose not to look at anything,” says Tori Amos. “I thought I was making a statement having 12-feet-high hair. I didn’t look beyond the outside and had a hard time looking in.”
Rowdy heavy metal rocker Axl Rose cancelled a concert at the Rosemont Horizon and skipped town to escape the long arms of persecuting prosecutors, a representative for the singer says. Leaving thousands of fans waiting outside the Rosemont Horizon, Rose’s band, Guns N’ Roses, canceled a Friday night show half an hour before doors were to open so that Rose could avoid being served with misdemeanor arrest warrants for his alleged role in a Missouri riot last year.
In the four years it took to go from being an anonymous L.A. club band to America’s reigning hard rock kings, members of Guns N’ Roses have created more controversy and publicity by being themselves than most musicians could conjure with an army of PR flacks thinking things up.
“Yeah, I guess my next step is making a disgusting sexist video for MTV,” Luka Bloom said, laughing. “But my treatment would have to be very different. For an Irish rap song, we’d have to get green babes. No, I go for the pretty soft videos, which I hope aren’t too schmaltzy. But as long as it doesn’t get mistaken for one of Michael Bolton’s, I’m fine.”
Miles Hunt ticks off a lot of people. He thinks the majority of record buyers are lazy, that Elvis is little more than a joke and that the media play right into the hands of bands that have next to nothing to offer artistically. There are a lot of people who think Hunt is full of it, including Hunt himself, but the British vocalist for the Wonder Stuff doesn’t care. He’s just got to be him.
“Our producer told us that anyone can get good guitar or drum sounds, but the vocals identify you as individuals,” says Raymond McGinley, guitarist-vocalist for Scotland’s latest darlings, Teenage Fanclub. “That’s one reason why we all sing, even though I’m not particularly comfortable doing it.”
When an actor plays his role so well that his buddy’s mom refuses to speak to him, he knows he has done his job. “After the screening of `Juice,’ my mother couldn’t even look at Tupac (Shakur, who plays Bishop), much less speak to him,” said Khalil Kain, whose character, Raheem, has a tragic falling out with his friend Bishop. “Even though that’s an irrational feeling, I certainly understand it. Certain scenes between Bishop and Raheem were intense even for me, and I knew how everything was going to turn out.”
Joan Jett has been a part of the rock ‘n’ roll vocabulary for so long, it’s easy to forget she is just 32. She has been neither a trend-setter nor a follower in her 17-year music career. Even when critics dismissed her as a novelty, one-trick pony or, perhaps worst yet, “girl singer,” the raspy-voiced musician persevered and produced a string of anthemic records that hailed the primal joys of adolescence with rebellious vocal sneers.
Back when Ned’s Atomic Dustbin started, the five-man British group was lumped in with Jesus Jones and Pop Will Eat Itself in a genre called grebo rock. In English schoolyard lingo, “grebo” is the equivalent of “dork.” In pop jargon, it refers to a long-haired, smelly person. Either way, Ned’s considers the term appropriate.
As a pre-teen, Charlie Sexton studied guitar with the late Stevie Ray Vaughan. Now 23, the former solo artist is teamed up with two members of Vaughan’s band Double Trouble, as well as another Vaughan pupil.
“I wave a banner for Charlie (Sexton),” David Bowie said, calling from Liverpool, England. “I like him a lot. He’s a good kid and very talented. Yes, he’s very pretty, but he didn’t need to be oversold. (MCA) saw him as a one-man Duran Duran, which was a big mistake. Charlie’s a blues boy and that’s where he really shines. Arc Angels probably is the best thing for him at this point in his career.”
