BY EVA LIAO Madlib is a super-mysterious musical magician. He’s involved in a billion different hip-hop projects, and chances are you’ve heard his music. But you wouldn’t know it since he’s so low-key and rarely gives interviews. When speaking to his publicist, she says, “Madlib only does interviews on select months.” Then real nonchalant-like, she’s all, “you’d be lucky to catch him during an ‘on’ month.” It seems it’s all a ploy to keep things simplistic at bay. But the irony is that there’s nothing simplistic about his music. In fact, the story of Madlib is actually a bit complicated […]

TIGER BOMB: M.I.A., Electric Factory, Last Night CLICK TO ENLARGE Yes, the rumors are true — M.I.A. is absolutely beautiful, both in sparkly skintight spandex and a t-shirt three sizes too large, either standing tall like Shiva the Destroyer or seemingly trying to make a baby with the stack of speakers. Few things fire up a crowd more than opening with “Bamboo Banger.” And seeing as how it’s HER song, it only makes sense that she should open with it, if you think about it. Also, few things are as hard as waiting for the song to kick in after […]

Chris Larkin played keyboards for the most prominent line-up of Kenn Kweder’s Secret Kidds in the late 1970s (the one that recorded the “Man on the Moon” 45), was in a short-lived jazz fusion group called Snow, played in a duo with Kweder as “Tom & Jim,” did some producing (including Kweder’s 2nd 7″, and some tracks by The Impossible Years), was a keyboardist, singer and songwriter for electropop trio The Vels, who recorded for Mercury Records, and in the late 1980s played bass for Mikey Wild and the Mess. Chris passed away due to complications from pneumonia & liver […]

GOD + WEEN + SATAN = THE ONENESS: Ween, Tower Theater, Last Night BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER They say actors are the ultimate existential heroes because they get to live multiple lives, while the rest of us have to settle for just one. Similarly, there is something heroic about Ween’s 23-year quest for the ultimate buzz, musical or otherwise, and their Zelig-like ability to utterly inhabit any genre they choose — shit-kicker country, dirtball metal, gold chain disco, hobbit-hole psychedelia, even fern-bar kool jazz — while simultaneously satirizing it for your protection. The new La Cucaracha, the 11th […]