Michael Hoinski

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The Pen and the Axe

Michael Hoinski
“I don’t know that anyone’s ever done both at the same time with any seriousness,” fast-talking and frank Sasha Frere-Jones says over the phone from his apartment in New York City. “I mean, the closest I can think of .?.?. well, I can’t actually think of anyone who’s done both......
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Spinal Fusion

Michael Hoinski
The story of Norwegian kitchen-appliance rockers Hurra Torpedo and the wildly inventive, if not downright duplicitous, marketing campaign that Ford Motor Co. concocted around the trio’s theatrics — think Spinal Tap crossed with Monty Python — starts with Welsh pop diva Bonnie Tyler.That’s right: In 1983, Tyler recorded “Total Eclipse......

In Order To Build a More Perfect Union?

Michael Hoinski
AUSTIN, TEXAS — Had Lupe Valdez bet on the Kentucky Derby, chances are she would’ve let it ride on 50-1 longshot Giacomo . . . and won bigtime. Valdez knows how to beat the odds. As a triple threat — female, Latina, lesbian — she’s overcome a lot more than......
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Britt Daniel Speaks the Truth

Michael Hoinski
When you grow mighty tall, like Britt Daniel, people are bound to start taking swipes at your kneecaps. It’s all part of the rock & roll beast: Success spawns jealousy; jealousy inspires jealous people to talk trash. Or maybe jealousy has nothing to do with it. Either way, the water-cooler......
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The Weirdo

Michael Hoinski
“I’m weird. Weird. Yeah, I’m weird.” ’Round about midnight on the final night of South by Southwest, with the majority of tourists back on the coasts, Ariel Pink is doing a spot-on impression of Leo DiCaprio’s retarded character in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? (Ariel Pink . . . Arnie Grape......

The Day-Glo Effect

Michael Hoinski
(top): Photo by Tom Johnson (bottom): Photo by Ted Streshinsky Skippin’ through the lily fields I came across an empty space, It trembled and exploded, left a bus stop in its place. The bus came by and I got on, that’s when it all began, There was Cowboy Neal at......

Snaking Through the Garden of Delight

Michael Hoinski
Photos by Mark Hunter Mark “the Cobrasnake” Hunter can pop up suddenly in front of unsuspecting partygoers and temporarily blind them with the flash from one of his Canon digital cameras, just as his nickname implies. For five or so nights a week since January, Hunter, 19, has photographed the......
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High Times

Michael Hoinski
LOS ANGELES CAN CHEW a person up and spit him out. Anthony Kiedis and Dave Navarro, two founding fathers of alternative rock, should know; in their new books, Scar Tissue and Don’t Try This at Home, respectively, they find themselves trapped like loveless Geppetto in the belly of the beast......
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Happy, Texas

Michael Hoinski
Bret Anthony Johnston’s Corpus Christi is not the one of sun and fun, where spring-breakers do keg stands on the beach and cowboys trade in their horses for surfboards; it’s a locale populated with tragic characters whose lives play out like the modern-day Westerns synonymous with Sam Shepard. The lone......
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Rock On

Michael Hoinski
Jay Leno could play his man-on-the-street game all night and probably not find anybody able to name even one of Jesse Sublett’s songs. That isn’t to say the Skunks, the most popular band he fronted, lack influence (they played their fair share of shows at CBGB); it’s just that they......