By Steve Jansen The Octopus Project: What dreams are made of I had a strange dream last night. Possibly because I knew I was writing about The Octopus Project today, or I am truly super jacked up to see the Austin-based noise/rock ensemble. Either way, the dream went something like…
THURSDAY 31 Axis/Radius: Divine Ladies Night with MCB & DJ Devine (various) Bikini Lounge: DJ HFE (rockabilly, surf, jazz, classic country, indie, obscuro) Blooze Bar: DJ El Dedo (rockabilly) Bunkhouse: DJ Doom (dance) Cash Inn: DJ Sting (hip-hop, dance) Cherry Lounge: Greed Thursdays (hip-hop, Top 40) Club Forbidden: Respect Is Burning with…
Brian Coughlin plays guitar for Phoenix rock band Kinch, and he’s also the group’s self-appointed financial planner. He keeps detailed logs of where the band’s modest cash revenue is spent: T-shirts, gas, mechanical service, you name it. As he calculated potential costs for Kinch’s upcoming 19-day tour through the West…
Ringo’s All-Starr shows used to be just that: All stars. You had actual frontmen of bands (Mark Farner, Peter Frampton, Burton Cummings, Randy Bachman, Felix Cavaliere, Levon Helm, Joe Walsh, John Entwhistle, Gary Brooker, Dave Edmunds, Ian Hunter, and Jack Bruce to name too many), all happy to be able…
Being a booze pig, I pride myself on knowing the location of every dive bar in town. It gets a little more difficult when you are in the sixth-largest city in the country. Because our desert-gobbling sprawl is so huge, I often ask friends and strangers alike, “Do you know…
Given the band/album name and cover image, I half-expected this band to sound like either cheesy ’80s cock-rock throwbacks or raucous hardcore punk. It’s neither. Although the band describes its music as “metal/hardcore/Southern rock” on its MySpace page, I’d say that description’s only about two-thirds accurate. It’s definitely hardcore metal,…
Danger Mouse is arguably the most adventurous producer to tackle a Beck project since the Dust Brothers helped birth a 1996 baby called Odelay (the Dusters’ return for 2004’s Güero doesn’t count). The resulting sound is satisfyingly dense and intricate; the neo-surf of “Gamma Ray,” the delicate psychedelia of “Chemtrails,”…
Wild rumors are standard-issue for the intentionally enigmatic Reggie and the Full Effect. But if the latest Internet scuttlebutt is true, Last Stop: Crappy Town is Kansas City native James Dewees’ (meaning the entire band’s) final album before he goes full time as the keyboardist for My Chemical Romance. Such…
The members of Journey must be feeling the band’s name is more meaningful than ever these days. It’s unlikely any band has a comeback as thoroughly modern and convoluted as these AOR mainstays, pulled back into public consciousness by HBO and YouTube. Since the 1996 departure of lead singer Steve…
Rich and famous bands into their 10th year and sixth album demonstrate a worldview tempered by easy women and shysters. Hard-working bands with a growing cult following, like the Bay Area trio Totimoshi, demonstrate a worldview tempered by . . . actual observation! Singer and guitarist Antonio Aguilar describes the…
Rick Rubin already had been working for ZZ Top — the Houston trio recently enlisted Rubin to produce its next album — and now ZZ Top works for Rubin as well. Billboard reported that ZZ Top has signed a new record deal with Rubin’s American Recordings, an imprint distributed by…
When Coloradans talk about great musical artists with local roots, they seldom mention jazz guitarist Bill Frisell. Frankly, the omission is mystifying. Frisell has been releasing albums under his own name since 1984, and there’s not a single embarrassment in his extensive catalog, despite the variety of stylistic options he’s…
While people have often picked on Lovett for his looks (they’re just jealous they didn’t have a brief marriage to Julia Roberts), you can’t really argue with Lovett’s merits as a performer — the man’s released 13 albums, won four Grammy Awards, and appeared in more than a dozen films…
If you’re planning to head to The Door in Tempe to hang out at Groove Candy this coming Hump Day, a minor course correction is in order, yo. That’s because the crackalackin’ Wednesday-night hip-hop affair has flipped the script and moved northward to Lyte Lounge, 7419 East Indian Plaza in…
I expected a big show rock show. I saw Stone Temple Pilots perform at the Arizona State Fair in 2000, back in Veterans Memorial Coliseum’s “big crack in the ceiling” days. The band sounded great in spite of the venue’s structural damage, and I remember I left that show thinking Scott Weiland was the consummate front man.
This week’s review is the new solo album from Mark Zubia.
By Benjamin Leatherman It always takes some dexterity to maneuver through the cramped aisles of the seemingly closet-sized East Side Records, 217 West University Drive in Tempe. But believe us, a little fancy footwork and extra is totally worth visiting the shop, since East Side’s got all the good shit,…
If you’re hankering for some hard rock but haven’t had the dough to check out Cruefest this Thursday, July 31 at Cricket Wireless Pavilion, take heed: you can purchase lawn seats for $10 a piece. The catch is, these tickets are only available today (Monday, July 28). Visit www.ticketmaster.com or www.livenation.com to get some.
I’ll admit it: I didn’t do jack this weekend. There were some cool shows going on, but this past weekend was the first one in several months where I decided to just hang completely low for two days in a row. But the local music scene charged on, and I did keep an eye on my incoming e-mails. Hence, this week’s (and the first ever) local music news wrap!
Karen Traviss: 7 p.m. Monday, July 28, at Changing Hands Bookstore By Clay McNear George Lucas is the sort of hypersensitive, litigious billionaire who’d sue a vending company for stiffing him on a soda pop, so he’ll probably drag my ass to court for calling him sexist, but there it…
By Joseph Golfen The Sets in Tempe is not the first place that pops into my mind when I think of sexy, dancing girls. Usually when I think about this strip mall venue, I remember the story one of my friends told my about shattering his nose, via head butt,…
By Benjamin Leatherman The Ying Yang Twins are scheduled to perform at the Venue of Scottsdale on Saturday. Here’s our weekly list of all the major concerts and music shindigs that are scheduled to take place over the next 72 hours from tonight until Sunday. There’s a show for every…
