Pop Quiz: Imogen Heap

Pop Quiz: Imogen Heap

Aidin Vaziri | Imogen Heap makes great Hollywood endings. The 27-year-old London native's single "Hide and Seek" brought down the curtain on the second season finale of "The O.C.," and "Let Go," a song she recorded with Madonna producer Guy Sigsworth under the name Frou Frou, played out the closing scene of the movie "Garden State." With her second solo album, "Speak for Yourself," the glitzy pop star has shoved aside major labels and refinanced her home to independently write, record and produce things her way. It could mark a really great beginning.


Imogen Heap
Q: The last time you played San Francisco you wore white knee-high fishnet stockings, a silver-sequined scarf, a white shawl and a blue fedora with a feather sticking out of it. Do you own any mirrors?
A: Any mirrors? Why, do you think I need one?
Q: I'm asking the questions here.
A: You think I should have a mirror because it's not coming together very well? I did have a mirror on tour, actually, but it was a little mirror, not a full size. And it was quite liberating not having a full-size mirror because you can't sit there and stare at yourself for ages. The other thing is, because I rushed out on tour and I was trying to get my visa together I did the panic pack. So I ended up taking only 10 items of clothing with me, which is unheard of because it meant I had to restrict myself. So I got imaginative.
Q: I would buy that excuse if I didn't just see you on a magazine cover with red eye-shadow, white baby powder all over your chest and more feathers sticking out of your head.
A: I had a whole week to prepare for that photo shoot.
Q: What do you have against birds anyway?
A: I love birds. That's why I wear them all over me.

Review: Gilles Peterson

Review: Gilles Peterson

Gilles Peterson "Presents The BBC Sessions": Aidin Vaziri | In the United Kingdom, Radio One DJ Gilles Peterson is known for his impeccable ability to uncover dance music gems from around the globe alongside a cache of classic British jazz from the 1960s and '70s. With John Peel's passing, Peterson also has become the BBC's resident live-music curator, thanks to an internationally syndicated program, "Worldwide." This double-disc set pulls together some of the best in-studio sessions from recent years, and it is a typically eclectic affair, easing from Beck's somber "Round the Bend" to the hallucinatory hip-hop of Roots Manuva's "Dreamy Days," the late-night vibes of Zero 7's "This World" and Jamie Cullum's piano-bar spin on Pharrell Williams' "Frontin'." Jazzy instrumental bookends by Heritage Orchestra and Steve Reid with Four Tet confirm Peterson's inability to be confined.

His Freak-Folk Flag Flies: Devendra Banhart

His Freak-Folk Flag Flies: Devendra Banhart

Sweet, shocking, mesmerizing -- Devendra Banhart follows his sprawling, childlike musical muse: Aidin Vaziri | Wearing tight-fitting, flared jeans, brown boots and hoop earrings that make him look part hippie, part pirate, the songwriter leans back on a bed and tries to describe "Cripple Crow." "It's like a many-ribboned thing," he says. "It's like a ribboned octopus. Not even an octopus." The album, his fourth, is indeed something -- full of the vivid melodies and otherworldliness that have made him the unofficial leader of the freak-folk scene, alongside the likes of Joanna Newsom and Sufjan Stevens. There are psychedelic pop pastiches ("Lazy Butterfly"), lilting ballads ("Santa Maria Da Feira"), even a secret faux reggae MP3 for computer users. Mostly there are songs about children. Strange songs about children, such as "Long Haired Child," "Chinese Children" and "I Feel Just Like a Child." And perhaps strangest of all, "Little Boys," a bluesy romp with a lyrical kicker in Banhart's typically quavery voice: "I see so many little boys I want to marry, I see plenty little kids I've yet to have." If the line feels out of place on an otherwise eccentric but earnest album, that may be the point. "I was with this guy from the band Bunny Brains and he was saying, 'I heard your record, man, it's gonna be in, like, Starbucks, whatever.' And I was like, man, I don't want it to be in Starbucks! I'm going to write a song that will guarantee that it is not in Starbucks." At least that's how he rationalized it in earlier interviews. Today, Banhart has another account. "I knew four hermaphrodites in Caracas," he begins, maybe not really helping matters. "I was thinking about them and I wanted to write a song from the perspective of all four of them combined. So it's a song about a schizophrenic hermaphrodite."

Pop Quiz: Mark Kozelek

Pop Quiz: Mark Kozelek

Aidin Vaziri | Mark Kozelek, lead singer of Red House Painters and Sun Kil Moon, has always had eccentric taste in covers. A few years ago, the San Francisco singer-songwriter put out an entire collection of Bon Scott-era AC/DC tunes, rendered unrecognizable in a low-key folk style. For his latest release, "Tiny Cities," Kozelek gives an extreme makeover to 11 songs by indie rockers Modest Mouse. It's the first release on his own Caldo Verde imprint and will also be available on vinyl through director Cameron Crowe's Vinyl Films label featuring an alternate version of "Exit Does Not Exist."

Mark Kozelek
Q: How did you become an expert on Modest Mouse all of a sudden?
A: I saw them by accident. I went to see this band the Shins, who were opening for them a few years ago, and Modest Mouse just came out and all these weird cryptic lyrics were unraveling and the music was really explosive. You could tell this band had been together for a while. You could feel this history and you don't really get that sort of payoff when you go see a band like the Killers or Franz Ferdinand or something.
Q: Before Modest Mouse came along, you didn't own too many records that were made after 1976.
A: It's really true. That's the thing. Isaac Brock is an exceptional writer, and you don't see that anymore. He just gets really deep down in this stuff and the lyrics take all these twists and turns. To me, it's almost like Bob Dylan or Neil Young. It stops you in your tracks. You don't know what it is, but something about it makes you stop and think and feel, and it puts you in this other place.
Q: How do you go from covering AC/DC to Modest Mouse?
A: It's quite a leap. But the truth of the matter is this is nothing I planned. At least it's not like a Thin Lizzy or Judas Priest covers record. That would be too obvious. I mean, everybody I've covered until now is dead or, like Paul McCartney, almost dead -- John Denver, Bon Scott, Neil Diamond, Kiss, Yes. So at least it makes me unpredictable.

Review: Destiny's Child

Review: Destiny's Child

Destiny's Child "# 1's": Aidin Vaziri | There's no reason to cry over the demise of Destiny's Child. The powerhouse R&B trio played its final concert in Vancouver, British Columbia, last month, leaving behind a legacy of sterling hits and enough gold-spangled gowns to ward off any imminent Dark Ages. Yes, the group's peak period singles like "Say My Name" and "Bootylicious" were pure pop bliss, the perfect collusion of well-oiled studio technology and honest spunk clamped onto melodies so insidious that the words, "I don't think you ready for this jelly," will follow an entire generation to the grave. But, honestly, surveying Destiny's Child's entire career on this set -- 13 hits, three new tracks -- it's obvious their hearts slipped away around the same time Beyonce's solo album sold its first million. And let's not forget that the other band members were totally interchangeable. Compare the pre-Michelle Williams and Kelly Rowland material with the later stuff -- the difference is negligible. "Survivor" and "Independent Women Part I" still sound like proper girl-power anthems, while the group's sensual cover of the Bee Gees' "Emotion" exemplifies devotion without submission. Not so much the songs from its last album, "Destiny Fulfilled" -- "Soldier" and "Cater 2 U" (sample lyric: "When you come home late/ Tap me on the shoulder/ I'll roll over") seem to grow more limp and lifeless with every passing second. And the less said about the very new stuff, including the single "Stand Up for Love (2005 World Children's Day Anthem)," the sweeter the memories.

Live Review: Gwen Stefani

Live Review: Gwen Stefani

Step aside, Ashlee, Kelly and all you clones. Gwen Stefani has something to show you: Aidin Vaziri | For her second solo arena show ever Tuesday night at HP Pavilion in San Jose, Stefani set out to break free of not only No Doubt's shadow but also of blood-sucking clones like Ashlee Simpson and Kelly Clarkson, who sound like puking cats by comparison. She didn't mess around. There were pirates, break-dancers, marching bands, magic mushrooms, wind-up toys and more sequins onstage than in Beyonce's sewing drawer. Stefani, 36, opened the show by rising from a double-layered platform and sitting on a huge throne, appropriately dressed like an albino Snow White and flanked by four body-rocking Asian women. She threw off her cape and crown and it was on -- a full hour of madhouse electro-funk, louche R&B and android rock. It sounded exactly like what 2005 is supposed to sound like.

Review: Ashlee Simpson

Review: Ashlee Simpson

Ashlee Simpson "I Am Me": Aidin Vaziri | George W. Bush put it best: "There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once, shame on ... shame on you. Fool me ... you can't get fooled again." After the "Saturday Night Live" lip-synching debacle, Orange Bowl jeers and countless late-night talk show gags, Ashlee Simpson is not fooling anyone. Her biggest contribution to this follow-up to "Autobiography" was most likely posing for the creepy photo on the cover, leaving producer John Shanks (Sheryl Crow, Alanis Morissette) and lots of high-end studio gadgets to do all the heavy lifting. She wrestles with feelings of vulnerability on more-of-the-same tracks like "Beautifully Broken" and "Who Will Help Me When I Fall," but the whole thing feels so predictable, so cynical, so phony that for once it seems like the president knows what he's talking about.

Pop Quiz: Daniel Lanois

Pop Quiz: Daniel Lanois

Aidin Vaziri | Until the Neptunes came along, Daniel Lanois was the must-have producer for critically acclaimed, bazillion-selling albums. Just ask U2, Peter Gabriel and Bob Dylan, or anyone else with as many mansions as gray hairs. But he doesn't just twiddle knobs -- Lanois has been putting out beautifully crafted solo albums since 1989, when he released his debut, "Acadie." His latest, "Belladonna," is an all-instrumental disc reminiscent of his delicate, atmospheric work with Brian Eno.

Daniel Lanois
Q: You have Bono, Bob Dylan and Emmylou Harris in your phone book. Why would you make an instrumental album?
A: I've always loved my Miles Davis records. I still listen to Santo and Johnny. I like instrumental music. It holds a special place. It can very easily transport a listener, and it's just a lovely thing to have out there.
Q: What makes good instrumental music? I honestly don't know.
A: Its capacity to raise the spirit, to take somebody on a journey, to allow somebody to get out of their usual mood and be brought to a special place.
Q: Can't you just take pills for that?
A: I was hoping to take people on a psychedelic journey without the drugs. On a good night, I hope "Belladonna" will reach that place. That's really the driving force, in the name of quality and having work out there that will last a long time.
Q: How do I know I'm not being tricked into listening to New Age music?
A: Well, you know, that's a bit of a shame because an awful lot of it is massage music, so it kind of gives a lot of instrumental music a bad name. But I like to think I have enough of a reputation, having done those records with Eno, and that my body of work is strong enough, that people will associate me with some sort of quality.

Philip Seymour Hoffman Feels The Love

Philip Seymour Hoffman Feels The Love

Disheveled dad Hoffman changed himself into Capote. Now he's feeling the love: Aidin Vaziri | Hoffman recalls the day they brought a renowned Italian hair designer into the preproduction meetings for "Capote" so he could survey old television clips of the "Breakfast at Tiffany's" author and come up with a strategy for making the schleppy actor look as much like the dapper real thing as possible. The stylist took one glance at the screen, one at Hoffman, also the movie's executive producer, and declared, "This is not going to work!" It took about five months for Hoffman to go through the physical and mental transformation to play Truman Capote circa 1959-1965, the unsavory years when the Southern author spent investigating and writing his nonfiction novel, "In Cold Blood," about a quadruple homicide in the small conservative community of Holcomb, Kan., and the lives of the killers. "It's not the feel-good movie of the year," the actor laughs. Hoffman actually had to lose weight to play the famously egg-shaped socialite. He also had to lose some height and change his deep baritone into the writer's high-pitched wheeze. "I needed every minute of it," he says of the time he spent willing himself to become Capote. "The most important thing was internal -- to somehow understand very specifically why and how he did what he did. It couldn't have been easy being that guy, basically."

Pop Quiz: Ryan Cabrera

Pop Quiz: Ryan Cabrera

Aidin Vaziri | It only makes sense that Ryan Cabrera is the host of MTV's new reality dating series, "Score." The singer-songwriter, who just released his second pop album, "You Stand Watching," got a lot of dating experience with his on-again-off-again-and-definitely-off-now relationship with Ashlee Simpson. Each week, the "Shine On" hitmaker will help a pair of hapless dudes compete for a date with a girl by writing a song.

Ryan Cabrera
Q: Your love life sounds like a mess.
A: That's what everybody always says. That's the good thing about being able to write. A lot of people get stuff out in different ways and there are a lot of songs on the record about past relationships, future relationships and, you know, other people and self-confidence and God and being lost and stuff like that. There was a big transition between the last record and this record, just going through so much crap and learning from it. Writing about it gets it all out.
Q: It must make things harder having aired your last relationship on TV.
A: It definitely makes things interesting. Especially with new relationships, sometimes they'll mention stuff they saw or hold certain things against you. It's so not fair.
Q: When will be the next time you get to go on a date?
A: Man, my gosh, probably not anytime soon.
Q: Maybe I'll start a TV show to help you find a girl.
A: Well, I can find them. I just can't find the time.

Pop Quiz: Liz Phair

Pop Quiz: Liz Phair

Aidin Vaziri | Liz Phair, a singer-songwriter still best known for her 1993 debut, "Exile in Guyville," a feisty song-for-song retort to the 1972 Rolling Stones album "Exile on Main Street," is up to her old tricks. On her latest, "Somebody's Miracle," she takes aim at Stevie Wonder's 1976 release, "Songs in the Key of Life." Well, kind of. She tells us that was the original intent, but there was a change of plans. Either way, it's an improvement on the Matrix-produced pop on her self-titled 2003 album.

Liz Phair
Q: Was this album really meant to be a song-by-song response to Stevie Wonder's 1976 album, "Songs in the Key of Life"?
A: Yeah, but I never got to finish it. It would have taken me at least another year.
Q: I never understood how "Exile in Guyville" was supposed to be an answer to "Exile on Main Street."
A: It really, really was.
Q: How do you respond to another album?
A: It's really simple. I was using "Exile" as both how to structurally make a record and also using Mick's lyrics to stand in for the guy I was involved with at the time. Whatever he said, I would do a song that refuted what he was talking about. It was like a conversation with that record.
Q: But how could you be mad at Stevie Wonder?
A: I so could have done it but it would take a Herculean effort on my part.
Q: Next time try responding to the Strokes. Their albums are only like 15 minutes long.
A: You know, that's not a bad idea.

Review: Talking Heads

Review: Talking Heads

Talking Heads "Brick": Aidin Vaziri | Three years ago, Talking Heads were inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, ahead of the Sex Pistols, Stooges and, yes, even Lynyrd Skynyrd. This lavish box set -- containing all eight of the New York band's studio albums in DualDisc format, with rare photos and exhaustive liner notes -- explains why. Get past the irritating pop hits like "Burning Down the House" and "Once in a Lifetime," and what comes up is a band that innovated at every turn, matching fluid African rhythms with a punk sensibility and art school education. They revolutionized rock not only with David Byrne's oversize suits but also with an anything-goes sense of adventure in college radio classics like "Crosseyed and Painless" and "This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)" that still inspires. If Franz Ferdinand and the Arcade Fire aren't signing over their royalty checks, something isn't right.