Author Archives: Eva Neuberg

The Molemen are to Chicago hip-hop what Eddie Murphy was to The Nutty Professor: they’re everywhere, even when you don’t realize it. Founded in 1991 and still going strong, the crew has played multiple starring and supporting roles both in the local scene and abroad. PNS, Memo, and crew leader Panik (formerly His-Panik) are best […]

On their most recent release, The Tain (Acuarela), the Decemberists have cast a pall over the relatively sunny pop that’s won the band such a dedicated following over the past two years. The Tain is a five-part, 18-minute song cycle loosely based on a pre-Christian Irish epic, whose young hero, Cuchulainn, turns the tide in […]

Brothers Jimmy and Dennis Flemion infiltrated popular consciousness in the early 1990s via superstar fans and collaborators like Billy Corgan, who produced some of their records, Beck, who’s sampled them, and Pearl Jam, who put them on the B side of one of their singles. After a self-released debut in ’88, the Frogs got on […]

Son of Clifton Chenier, the late great king of zydeco, Clayton Joseph Chenier joined his dad’s Red Hot Louisiana Band in 1978 as a sax player but took over as bandleader and accordionist after he died in 1987. Some say C.J. isn’t quite the squeeze-box star his Grammy-winning pop was, but the burly roots-music Renaissance […]

Greg Trooper’s songs have been recorded by the likes of Steve Earle, Billy Bragg, and Vince Gill, but I’d say they sound best sung in his own rough-hewn voice. On his latest release, Floating (Sugarhill), Trooper treads a fine line between cynicism and idealism, experience and hope. He tends to write about people who’ve been […]

Everyday housewives, your dreams have come true. Glen Campbell’s brush with the law last month won’t keep him from taking his Rhinestone Christmas extravaganza on the road. The Cowboy, who was arrested for driving drunk and leaving the scene of an accident, is also accused of giving one of the officers a charley horse, but […]