Earlimart get together, grow up, stop looking back

PHOTO by DREW REYNOLDS
Heading for Los Angeles from California’s Central Valley, 70 miles south of Fresno on Highway 99, you see the signs that lead to the town of Earlimart. To founder and frontman Aaron Espinoza, those signs mean you’ve left Fresno and you’re on your way to [...]

Will Raekwon show up with Indian Jewelry?

PHOTO by DANNY KERSCHEN
Known for deeply affecting live performances dug deeper by tribal percussion, overdriven amplifiers, strobe lights set for seizure and any number of guest musicians, Texas-based electronic-noise outfit Indian Jewelry is a band that leaves marks—even if they don’t show right away. Latest album Free Gold! (out [...]

Too $hort lives real

ILLUSTRATION by LUKE MCGARRY
In August of 1992, Too $hort (born Todd Anthony Shaw) was living in Oakland and had just released Shorty the Pimp. Shorty was the follow-up to hit Short Dog’s in the House, which contained “The Ghetto,” a social realist depiction of his roots backed up by a mesmerizing and [...]

Agent Ribbons: Call them honey

ILLUSTRATION by JOE MCGARRY
Sacramento’s Agent Ribbons started about two and a half years ago—not long after drummer Lauren Hess bought her first drum kit. (“It was real cheap—Nat knew that I had a drum set and she asked me to back her up, so we started practicing,” she says.) Nat is [...]

Following Thee Suspect and 20 lost years of OC hip-hop

PHOTO by JEFF GOULD
West Coast hip-hop was just learning how to walk in 1987. Ice-T had released Rhyme Pays—the first hip-hop album stamped with a parental advisory—while giant live hip-hop-fueled flyer parties were starting up all over LA and Orange County and 15-year-old Santa Ana native [...]

Nomo’s regional approach

ILLUSTRATION by JOE MCGARRY
Nomo produced their first record in the classic tradition of Afro-beat founder Fela Kuti: fifteen people huddled together in a room, recording each song live together. They used everything that made Kuti famous, like huge horn arrangements and hypnotic guitar lines backed up by what sounds like a polyrhythmic army [...]

Guitar Shorty flips the Blues

ILLUSTRATION by LUKE MCGARRY
Guitar Shorty started at age 17 and signed on as student with Willie Dixon for a moment, releasing (with Willie’s professorial treatment) a single under Chicago’s top-flight blues label Cobra. With guitarist Otis Rush as his second, Shorty knocked out “You Don’t Treat Me Right” and the swaggering [...]

Avi Buffalo is born

PHOTO by LOUIS TRINH
The Avi Buffalo discography is right now so unofficial as to be almost imaginary; careful songwriter Avi (leading the band of the same name) paces out songs from his bedroom right into the built-in mic on a MacBook without even pirated Pro Tools to add a little shine. This [...]

A plea for tenderness with Thee Makeout Party

As you’d expect from a band with a song title just one letter away from Wreckless Eric, Anaheim’s Thee Makeout Party have a bratty power-pop sensibility that’s struck a chord or three amongst the adolescents (and Adolescents) of Southern California. (Though bassist Lee Rickard also skates like Tony [...]

Post-Mode and Pre-Erasure with Yaz

ILLUSTRATION by JOE MCGARRY“>
You could say that Depeche Mode’s first big single, “Just Can’t Get Enough,” was one of the first-ever Yaz songs. It was written by Yaz (known outside the U.S. as Yazoo) co-founder Vince Clarke, who would become the prince of synth-pop in Erasure but who was in Depeche [...]