Sound Advice

by Inlander Staff & r & & r & In His Own WordsDax Johnson died the way he lived, making music and doing drugs. We knew about the part drugs played in his last days -- it's already been nearly 10 months since he died of an "unintentional overdose" -- but we had no real clue about the musical part. That ends Tuesday at the Met, when his new CD The Beauty of Human Error drops and the final musical chapter of his life becomes a matter of public record. Read the whole story on page 71 of our Fall Arts Preview. & r &





& r & The What Now? & r &


Pulse calls the BOBS "the Beatles of the a cappella world," which makes absolutely no sense to us, given the absolutely integral part instruments played in the Beatles' oeuvre. (And if they mean the BOBS have savagely tight melodies and harmonies, then couldn't the same be said of every decent a cappella band in the world? Like, by definition?) Stranger still, they refer to themselves as the only "New Wave a cappella group in history." We'd argue that the only thing that makes New Wave discernibly different from post-punk are synths, so "New Wave a cappella" seems like a contradiction in terms. A riddle wrapped in an enigma, this group. Makes us curious about their show at CenterStage on Sept. 16. & r &





& r & Faked Death in the Afternoon & r &


So the High Holies broke up, which is sad, but not as potentially sad as the myspace bulleting that came from them last week, saying member Paul Forster had been shot and killed. It was remarkably somber for a Holies communiqu & eacute; -- their usual mode of inflammatory online expression involves your (our) girlfriends and mothers in compromising sex acts -- so we believed the violent/tragic news. That is, until an angry or drunk follow-up (as denoted by the use of ALL CAPITALS) mentioned something about Forster's being in a new band -- and then went about the usual thing of calling someone's girlfriend a slut. We're now less inclined to believe the death notice was true. Way to get our attention though, High Holies. You should have tried understatement while you were still a band.