Screaming Trees
Hector Tellez Jr: The Cuban Shaking Up America’s Rock Scene
Four years ago, Cuban-born musician Hector Tellez Jr. was living in Havana: playing local clubs several nights a week, delivering passionate performances of well-oiled melodic blues rock. His style, merging the grit of Muddy Waters wailing on electric guitars with the tender-hearted yet mysterious air of Jeff Buckley, was not always welcomed by the locals, however. “In Cuba, it’s a Spanish language country, so I struggled a bit singing rock songs in English,” Tellez Jr. tells SPIN on a recent FaceTime video call from a friend’s backyard, looking every bit the brooding rocker, save for some frequent smiles. He’s wearing a cut-off muscle tee that shows off a few tattoos and a pair of round-rimmed sunglasses that look straight out of the John Lennon playbook. “There were a lot of naysayers, p...
Nearly Lost: Our 1993 Screaming Trees Feature
This article originally appeared in the March 1993 issue of SPIN. It is being republished in memory of Mark Lanegan, who died earlier this year. Stepping onto the Screaming Trees‘ tour bus, singer Mark Lanegan has the half-haggard look of a man somewhere in the middle of a long tour. Freshly washed long hair obscuring his craggy, classic rock features, he communicates with bandmates and crew in monosyllables. I might, under normal circumstances, be put off by his terse mien, but these are hardly normal circumstances. I’m still in awe of the Trees’ totally plush bus, which, according to road manager Rod Doak, saw recent service with U2. Bunks big enough to easily berth the largish Conner brothers (that’s Van “Bass” Conner and Gary Lee “Guitar” Conner), tasteful pastel decor, micro...
30 Overlooked 1991 Albums Turning 30 This Year
1991 was a transformative year for rock music, a time when alternative rock and heavy metal entered a new era of commercial dominance. Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden ushered in the explosion of Seattle grunge alongside blockbuster albums by Metallica, R.E.M. and Red Hot Chili Peppers, to say nothing of influential indie classics by My Bloody Valentine, Primal Scream and Slint, or SPIN’s album of the year, Teenage Fanclub’s Bandwagonesque. But while 1991’s hits set the agenda for alternative rock for the rest of the decade, the year was brimming over with fascinating career footnotes and debuts from other promising new bands. In England, the music press was excitedly hyping up genres like shoegaze, baggy, and whatever “grebo” was, while American indie bands like fIREHOSE, the Meat Puppe...
The 25 Best Soundtrack Albums of the 1990s
In the 1980s, music and film collided for cross-promotional blockbusters both transcendent (Purple Rain) and transcendently cheesy (Footloose). In the ‘90s, soundtracks continued to sell in the millions, capturing cultural moments like the Seattle grunge of Singles or the Britpop and electronica of Trainspotting. Auteurs like Quentin Tarantino and Wes Anderson reached deep into their record collections to set the mood while movies like Above the Rim and Menace II Society pioneered the concept of soundtracks as hip-hop mixtapes. A great soundtrack can propel an unsuccessful single, like Seal’s “Kiss From A Rose,” to the top of the charts, or revive a decades-old hit, like Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” It can also push a cult singer-songwriter like Elliott Smith or Aimee Mann to an Oscar perf...
Mark Lanegan and Cold Cave Cover Joy Division in Honor of Ian Curtis
Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis died 40 years ago today, and musicians and music publications and organizations of all stripes have been unveiling tributes throughout the day; here’s ours. Headstock, a music festival with a focus on mental health, livestreamed a tribute show called Moving Through the Silence earlier today, which featured performances from Brandon Flowers, Elbow and Kodaline performing “Love Will Tear Us Apart” with an orchestra. Mark Lanegan, whom SPIN recently had a third-eye-opening conversation with, is no stranger to surprising collaborations, from Isobel Campbell of Belle & Sebastian to Queens of the Stone Age. But in Curtis’ honor, he teamed up with the very Joy Division-indebted darkwave influencees Cold Cave on a faithful and fuzzed-up rendition of “Isolation,...
Mark Lanegan Walks Back Liam Gallagher Critique: ‘He’s Kind of an Eccentric Old Uncle’
Last week, a decades-old feud between Mark Lanegan and Liam Gallagher that stemmed from an Oasis-Screaming Trees tour was reignited over a passage in the ex-Screaming Trees singer’s memoir. Now, Lanegan seems to be extending the proverbial olive branch. “[The book] doesn’t reflect how I actually feel about [Gallagher] now,” Lanegan said to PA (via Metro). “I see his clips on Twitter now and it makes me laugh, he’s kind of an eccentric old uncle.” In his book, Lanegan also called Gallagher “an obvious poser, a playground bully. Like all bullies, he was also a total pussy.” While the two were set to have a fistfight, it never happened. However, Gallagher wanted to share his side of the story and shared his thoughts on Twitter last week (May 4). “Mark lannegn here’s how I saw it I asked you y...
Screaming Trees’ Gary Lee Conner Calls Mark Lanegan’s Memoir ‘Vicious and Petty’
Mark Lanegan published his memoir Sing Backwards and Weep last month, and to put it bluntly, it’s been pissing people off. Aside from reigniting a 24-year-old feud with Oasis’ Liam Gallagher, the former Screaming Trees frontman also took some swings at his old bandmates. Earlier this week, the band’s guitarist Gary Lee Conner expressed his thoughts about the book in a lengthy Facebook post. After admitting that the band didn’t “get along like friends and sometimes it felt like we were enemies,” Conner couldn’t deny their musical chemistry. “Mark took the songs Van and I wrote and helped elevate them lyrically and vocally to a higher level,” he wrote. However, while he’s able to take the higher road, Conner was disappointed with Lanegan’s recount of his time in Screaming Trees — a...
