You’d need a thousand tongues to taste every culture in New Orleans, and a four-CD boxed set with an 82-page, full-color book to appreciate the sundry musical styles meshing within the Big Easy. Doctors, Professors, Kings & Queens: The Big Ol’ Box of New Orleans contains more than five hours…
Casket Life’s latest press release jokes that the Tempe punk quintet’s plans for 2005 include heavy drinking, but it’s clear from the band’s brief résumé that time spent at the bar hasn’t gotten in the way of kicking ass onstage or in the recording studio. Since forming less than two…
Sales-wise, at least, 2004 was the year Nashville got its groove back. Heavy hitters such as Tim McGraw, George Strait, Kenny Chesney, Keith Urban and Shania Twain all dropped platinum records, but what has the city more excited than it’s been in years is the fact that it finally managed…
Thursday 30 Acme Bar & Grill: DJR (all genres) Acme Roadhouse: College Night with DJ J. Alan (Top 40) Ain’t Nobody’s Bizness: DJ Tsunami (Top 40, hip-hop) Anderson’s Fifth Estate: Piranha Room/Area 51 with DJ Jeremy (industrial/goth, electroclash) Axis/Radius: Ladies’ Night with DJ MCB & Josh Royal (all genres) AZ…
Hey, kids, I’m back! You might not have noticed my absence, but I made a recent excursion that felt like it must have lasted a year. In a way, it did. Using the principles I gleaned from Roberta Sparrow’s book Philosophy of Time Travel, and an ungodly amount of re-watching…
Britney got married. Ashlee was caught lip-synching. ODB died. Congress continued to wring its hands about the legality of downloads, which flourished anyway. Conservative groups condemned sex in popular culture, while Usher’s sultry Confessions shot to No. 1. A major label signed a guy who can’t sing, can’t dance and…
For hipsters, the coolest things are to be found 20 years ago, the most dreadful things 10 years ago. So starting a few years back, we were deluged with ’80s electro and synth-pop, and we pretended to forget jungle ever existed. Electroclash, the first naive sortie by dance music into…
It’s difficult to survey the hip-hop of 2004, more bloated and self-referential than ever, and not imagine the mythical AOR wasteland of the mid-’70s. Like rock before it, hip-hop has easily won a cultural acceptance once unthinkable, and our reward is a parade of Jadakisses and G-Unit solo projects, preaching…
Ever find yourself missing the word “alternative” as a concept, a signifier, a lifestyle? Nowadays, any dudes-with-guitars collective either has to do the Creed butt-rock thing, the whine-incessantly-about-your-ex-girlfriends emo thing, or the get-beat-up-incessantly-by-your-ex-girlfriends indie-rock thing. It’s harder and harder to find the best aspects of each combined: the fist-pumping intensity…
The sight of six makeup-clad Norwegian Satanists on the Ozzfest main stage this summer was a great sign for metal, if not the makers of Max Factor. During recent outings, metal’s biggest event of the year has been plagued by rote rap-rockers like Crazy Town, Papa Roach, and Linkin Park,…
In 2004, the line between indie and mainstream rock disintegrated even faster than Britney Spears’ quickie Vegas marriage. Vinyl obsessives mingled with white-hat-wearing fratheads at Modest Mouse shows, Taking Back Sunday debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard charts, and Death Cab for Cutie earned OC-sanctioned buzz and a major-label…
Everyone knows all of Usher’s Confessions by now; everyone went to see Prince play “1999” for the very last time. Everyone knows all about Lil Jon and his penchant for hollering “Yayy-uuhhh!” With everyone paying attention to these superstars, a lot of other talented folks got drowned out, and not…
Texas’ state motto is “Don’t mess with Texas.” Texas psychobilly rocker Jim Heath (a.k.a. the Reverend Horton Heat) has his own take on it: “Don’t mess with a man’s hat.” At a show in Indianapolis in 1999, a frisky female fan grabbed the hat off Heath’s head and promptly received…
1. Ludacris, Red Light District (Def Jam) 2. Green Day, American Idiot (Warner Bros.) 3. Gwen Stefani, Love, Angel, Music, Baby (Interscope) 4. Nas, Street’s Disciple (Sony) 5. Arcade Fire, Funeral (Merge) 6. Elliott Smith, From a Basement on the Hill (Anti) 7. Handsome Boy Modeling School, White People (Elektra)…
Most of the time when a band breaks up, fans find out after it’s too late to wish their musical heroes goodbye. But in the case of the Haystacks, who serenaded Phoenix indie-rock lovers for more than two years, they gave us some advance warning. While the “Haystack Variety Hour”…
It wasn’t all that long ago that Torry Jasper, Jonathan Kelly, Johnny Abdullah and Adam Rodgers were ordinary high schoolers in Peoria. But now with graduation out of the way, they’ve moved on to some out-of-the-ordinary things with their polished melodic hardcore band A Change of Pace: getting signed to…
Is your wallet feeling a bit light after all that holiday shopping? Run down to the Salt River Saloon (605 South Mill Avenue in Tempe) on Tuesday, December 28, and enjoy an economical night of beats and rhymes at Kill Mill, Blow Up Co-op’s weekly hip-hop night with special guest…
Thursday 23 Acme Bar & Grill: DJR (all genres) Acme Roadhouse: DJ J. Alan (Top 40) Ain’t Nobody’s Bizness: DJ Tsunami (Top 40, hip-hop) Anderson’s Fifth Estate: Piranha Room/Area 51 with DJ Jeremy (industrial/goth) Axis/Radius: Ladies’ Night with DJ MCB & Josh Royal (all genres) AZ 88: DJ P-Body (all…
For the ethnomusicologist in your life who has everything, The Rose & the Briar and its accompanying book of the same name (published by W.W. Norton) would make a dandy present. Greil Marcus and Sean Wilentz are responsible for both, and they each attempt to define the American ballad, a…
Damn! Did you hear that shit? Sounded like some thunderclap of female rage coming from the direction of Santa Cruz. It’s probably just Moana, the lead screamer, er, singer for Stalins War, the punk buzzbombs who blast out a feverish hybrid of hardcore energy and heavy-metal madness, occasionally switching up…
Recently, a few friends and I gathered for a Christmas celebration. With my girl on my arm, some nog in my hand, and a fire raging nearby, the night was a sublime salute to love, friendship, and general goodwill. Then someone had to go and fuck up a good thing…
I’m an unusual case study when it comes to Christmas, or most any holiday, for that matter. I was raised in an odd religion (the name of which I’ll omit, to save me and the religion the shame of the association) that doesn’t celebrate holidays, even birthdays. So my childhood…
