This year’s “D-Low Memorial Show,” with Sacred Reich, Car Bomb, Soulfly, and The Cavalera Conspiracy, certainly boasts one of the most exciting lineups in the history of the event. With brothers (and former Sepultura cornerstones) Max and Igor Cavalera in the lineup, The Cavalera Conspiracy’s live debut gives the show…
To some, Billy Childish will come off as a crank. He’s outspoken and has little patience for authority or institutions. It’s the reason he was kicked out of St. Martin’s School of Art in England when he was 16. You might call him a primitivist for the raw, gut-level attack…
Lately, we’ve been tying it on all over this town, and this past weekend, we were partied out. Thank Christ the Gold Lion Boutique held a fashion event called Arte Puro hosted by local designer Leonor Aispuro that mercifully started at 7 p.m., allowing us to hang with the gorgeous…
Among the various influences cited by this Phoenix-based band on its MySpace page, the band describes its sound by telling a story of various alt-rock musicians meeting in a dive bar as they drown their sorrows to Pearl Jam. The Seattle band is indeed the most obvious of all names…
If he hadn’t choked to death in London’s Samarkand Hotel 37 years ago, how many mediocre records would Jimi Hendrix have dropped by now? Stevie, The Stones, Sir Paul . . . they’re all way past the point where any residual genius is still expected. Since The Gold Experience more…
A snotty music critic’s hypothesis: No relevant artist releases a covers album. Several supporting examples have dropped in 2007 alone, and we’ll get to those in a minute. Contrary evidence is scarce, but Exhibit A for the defense is Patti Smith’s Twelve. Smith has always had a knack for rewriting…
It’s unfortunate that Daddy Yankee is the poster boy for reggaeton in this country. It’s even more unfortunate that he took this album as an opportunity to declare himself the Big Boss (of reggaeton, one would presume), mainly because the shortcomings of El Cartel: The Big Boss wouldn’t be as…
Okkervil River’s new release, The Stage Names (Jagjaguwar), was created with an eye to fun and frivolity (per notes from songwriting frontman Will Sheff). Lucky us! ‘Cause the lyrics — featuring suicidal poets and porn stars, burned-out man-children and their shut-down lovers — could really harsh one’s mellow otherwise. Musically,…
Blues singer/guitarist David “Honeyboy” Edwards wasn’t just influenced or inspired by icons Robert Johnson and Big Joe Williams, he actually played with them. Born in 1915 into a hardscrabble existence in Shaw, Mississippi, Edwards was literally baptized in the crucible of the blues. Oddly enough, though, despite continuous activity, he…
P-Town has played host to a number of giants in the drum ‘n’ bass genre over the past six months, including Goldie, Dieselboy, and Dara, to name a few. And now, to top it off, one of the godheads of the d’n’b movement, Jumping Jack Frost, is gonna be thumping…
I learned a few things at the Slayer/Marilyn Manson show:
1) Slayer becomes more aggressive and tight as the band’s brutal set wears on.
2) Marilyn Manson is a consummate performer, but looks better clothed.
3) Some stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason. The reason is they are true.
Should Amy Winehouse go to rehab? Should she retire from music? Should she divorce her husband? Does anybody care?
Get ready to crank your credit cards, PHX folks, ‘cause Future Shock’s back with the latest “just announced” concerts coming to town. This week’s edition is like a rock ‘n’ roll Baskin Robins, beeyotch, with acts representing the many different flavors the genre has to offer, from indie to emo to straight-out bizarro.
Thursday 23 Andersons: S.W.A.G. Thursdays with DJ Essence, DJ Astonish, & Bryce Breeze (hip-hop, reggae, R&B) Bikini Lounge: Sophisticated Boom Boom with DJ HFE (rockabilly, surf, jazz, classic country, indie, obscuro, R&B) The Blooze: DJ El Dedo (rockabilly) Bunkhouse: DJ Doom (dance) Dirty Pretty: Foxy Bitch with D-JR (rock, Top…
There’s nothin’ like a good old-fashioned drag show to kick off a CD-release party. Earlier this month, in what was quite possibly the wildest performance ever to grace the stage at Yucca Tap Room, a swarm of drag kings and queens danced, spanked, and stripped the roof off the joint…
I’ve been burping up the taste of local acid-punk band Blanche Davidian for the past two days — specifically, the carbonated cough syrup flavor of the band’s new “Orange Sunshine” shot, available exclusively at Hollywood Alley in Mesa. The shot was the first drink I had when I arrived at…
When we think of Willy Wonka, we think of a busy-bee eccentric, an inventor of sweet treats that capture the world’s imagination, a dude who’s content to plod away in a bizarre factory while ignoring societal norms in the process. So it’s fitting that a friend of Alex Votichenko (better…
Rich, hardcore jazz fans are different from you and me. They demand utter dedication to this art form from both artist and listener. Jazz is America’s “classical music” — serious, high art — and, to the aficionado, “pure” jazz is the only worthwhile music, period. Those folks have already stopped…
After a four-year absence, Marilyn Manson has returned to the public eye in the video for “Heart-Shaped Glasses,” porking his barely legal girlfriend in a rain of blood. That kind of flashy, trashy imagery may prevent Manson from ever being taken seriously as a credible artist (at least by the…
The psychedelic effects shine through sonically on Blanche Davidian’s second album. Songs like “Queef Action” and “Rottweilers Keep Following Me” brim with fuzz and roar with reverb behind singer Jamie Monistat VII’s spacey, snarky vocals, and the title track is a 61/2-minute raging jam. There’s even the occasional hippie vocal…
Ignore the cheesy cover art. Though it resembles a no-budget local LP pressing from 1970, Talk of the Town is one humdinger of a vocal album. For 40 years — you read right — Jerry Lawson was a singer with the long-lived a cappella group the Persuasions (who can count…
No one can accuse Gilbert’s Scary Kids Scaring Kids of lacking ambition. The local sextet’s self-titled second album is an epic song cycle characterized by the album-opening anthem “Degenerates,” which casts us into a jackbooted future, judging from all the clicks of pistol safeties and ominous helicopter hovering. The song…
