People

Perhaps I was dizzy from the gratis Sprite and the blueberry muffins that Atlantic Records plied me with at their New York City headquarters last week, but I’ll admit it straight out: I was completely enamoured with Jewel Kilcher. The vocally soaring, angelic 22-year-old singer/songwriter with a neo-hippie past too Tom Robbins to believe looked…

Weezer’s Central Park Summerstage benefit Saturday looked like the MTV Beach House: Kennedy threatened to drop in at any minute on the frolicking throngs of baby-dolled and beatnicked kids at Rumsey Playfield. Little wonder Rivers Cuomo almost failed to get his feedback-spewing alterna-rock spaceship off the ground. Plodding lethargically through “In The Garage,” “Say It…

The sun creeps over the jagged Coxcomb Mountains, Joshua Tree National Park’s eastern-most border, and falls lightly onto the valley floor ahead. Chris Collins steers a battered Marine van down a narrow, bumpy gravel road. The vastness and seclusion of the surrounding Colorado Desert is breathtaking. But Collins and his five post-graduate volunteers are silent…

What a monster I’ve become. I met The Figgs’ Pete Hayes while I was schlocking coffee. Spinal Tap references ensued. I proved my musicianship in a fit of name dropping: Arty Fufkin (“Polymer Records”), Stumpey Joe, Viv Savage. They were all I needed to know. The Figgs had just been signed to Imago and were…

Although his music has been compared to that of James Taylor, Michael Penn, Jeffrey Gaines and Suzanne Vega, Saratoga Springs resident Benjamin Wagner has his roots in a somewhat louder tradition. While an undergraduate at Syracuse University, Wagner led a jangly alternative-rock aggregatioin called Smokey Junglefrog, which opened concerts for Dada, the Samples and the…

John Flansburgh may rock legions of disenfranchised, flannel-clad youth, but he ain’t no slacker. Calling from his New York City recoding studio Sunday, half of Brooklyn’s alterna-rock team, They Might Be Giants (TMBG) was busy mixing an upcoming live EP. Short of breath and apologetic, Flansburgh’s Sunday was no day of rest. “I’m kind of…