Mara Schwartz

Photo by Rodney Gitzel Acetone vocalist, bassist and songwriter Richie Lee died at his home on July 23. It was an apparent suicide. He was 34. Lee formed Acetone with guitarist-vocalist Mark Lightcap and drummer Steve Hadley in ’93, following the trio’s stint in garage-rockers Spinout. The group had played......

“Everything about it is appealing! Everything the traffic will allow!” belts a recorded Ethel Merman for the gazillionth time this century, before she suddenly trips into a cut-and-paste stutter. “Nowhere can you get that happy feeling! When you are stealing! When you are stealing! Stealll-ling!” This moment of aural collision......

This shouldn’t really be much of a news flash, as David‘s the leader of Scottish art-poppers Looper, who’ve just released a well-received second album. If you‘re someone like David, you talk to the media when you’ve got your new record out. You want people to write about you, so other......

Photo by Debra DiPaolo "How can you truly be an artist if you’re so worried about being some thing?" pon ders producer and remixer The Angel. "If you’re an artist, you’re an artist." That’s a tough attitude to stick by in the modern music biz, which puts its participants in......

"I have written so many songs that have nothing to do with sex," says Liz Phair, and true enough, most of the tunes on her brand-new album, Whitechocolatespaceegg, don't even broach the topic. And, despite the media tornado that surrounded her 1993 debut, Exile in Guyville, much of which dwelled......

Record-label A&R execs devote their days to appraising usually excruciating demo tapes and their nights prowling the clubs, searching for that hoped-for Next Big Thing and often spending their careers without once striking platinum. But that future No. 1 hit each so desperately seeks may already be receiving radio play......