“Dude, I got the awesomest idea for our rave on Saturday, January 6!” “What?” “We should call it Yoshi’s Island.” “Don’tcha think that’s kinda ghey?” “Naw, everyone played Super Mario Bros. back in the day and will dig it. We can call our drum ‘n’ bass stage ‘Bowser’s Dungeon’ and…
Thursday 4 AZ 88: Mr. P-Body (synth pop, electro) Bunkhouse: DJ Doom (dance) Chilly Bombers: DJ Statik (hip-hop, dance) Club Central: DJ Luis (salsa, merengue) Club Vibe: DJ Statik (hip-hop) Coconut Club: DJ Coolstylz (Top 40, dance, hip-hop) The Crown Room: DJ Gable (rock, house, hip-hop) The Door: DJ J…
the Brothers Bell Today I’m talking with brothers Mike and Jared Bell, aka the Lymbyc Systym. The duo’s on the verge of releasing its first LP for Mush Records, already home to avant-weirdos and ethereal experimentation from artists like Clouddead, Her Space Holiday, Aesop Rock and more. The LP, which…
The Three Adams I’m actually pretty relieved that ’06 is in the books now; it was a pain in the ass year that I spent with a pain in the ass girl (who’s history as well) and I’d just as soon pretend it didn’t happen. In celebration of its ending,…
deep fried squid For the last couple of months – since this blog began, really – I’ve been harassing my fellow hard-drinker Tony Patino of Attack of the Giant Squid to leak me some preview tracks from the as-yet-untitled album the band’s been working on. If you don’t know, the…
Luke & Danny of North Side Kings I spent last night listening to the punk rock go down at BANNED in Tempe!, listening to DJ’s Alvin, Nate Dogg and Cro-Mag throw down the dope shit at the Stray Cat (which you’ll be able to read more about in my column…
Parents, be warned! Children, watch out! A new scourge sweeping through the country threatens to seduce innocent music fans into a life of crime! It starts with something as simple as a catchy new pop song, and it ends in federal prison with a forced sodomy nightcap. This slippery slope…
The babies were wearing scuba gear, and levitating above all the houses in the neighborhood. And when Christopher Pomerenke woke up, he wrote a song about the surreal scene from his subconscious, called “Throw Your Babies.” The tune serves as the leadoff track for I Know What It’s Like to…
To the best of drummer Victor DeLorenzo’s recollection, when the Violent Femmes unleashed their own peculiar strain of punk-inspired folk on the Milwaukee club scene of the early ’80s, people generally thought they were “demented.” “They didn’t understand how anyone would think that other people would want to see some…
If any good can be said to have come of what Elvis Costello refers to here as “a fearsome chain of events started out by a mean-tempered woman called Katrina and ably assisted by some nincompoops and incompetents,” you could start with Costello’s rekindled relationship with American R&B royalty Allen…
Watching the members of Cream retrace their steps, from Eric Clapton talking Ginger Baker into letting Jack Bruce join the band in 1966 to their acclaimed reunion in 2005, you have to wonder how they made it through a conversation, let alone two years of constant tours and classic albums…
Imitation is most definitely the sincerest form of flattery. For a perfect example, look no further than local ska group The 2 Tone Lizard Kings. The eight-member outfit, which has been a regular at joints like Alice Cooper’stown, covers a slew of ska classics in its raucous repertoire, including throwbacks…
When Sgt. Pepper first came out, one reviewer called it “George Martin’s finest hour.” He’s had several cracks at cheapening that high-water mark, from producing the disastrous Sgt. Pepper movie soundtrack to the George Martin: In My Life album on which he gave everyone from Sean Connery to Goldie Hawn…
Long before morphing into a three-headed disco machine, the Brothers Gibb recorded some of the weirdest head albums ever made. Robert Pollard of Guided By Voices ranked Bee Gees 1st among his all-time favorite albums. Imagine how many acid trips went awry with morbid advice like “Don’t go talking too…
It’s hard to say why anyone would think to cover Harry Nilsson’s Pussy Cats, a cover-heavy oddity whose appeal is based more on the spirit of friendship and drunken abandon producer John Lennon was able to capture on his way to passing out than on what he and his drinking…
The cover shot shows Nas about to drop a black rose into hip-hop’s open grave. But this is more a wake-up call than a eulogy, as though he’s saying hip-hop may be going down, but it’s not going down without a fight from Nas, who pronounces it dead here with…
Gwen Stefani is still pushing the limits of ridiculousness on The Sweet Escape; after all, it takes a person quite secure in her self-confidence to bring back yodeling as a viable chorus hook. But the aforementioned von Trapp-fest (“Wind It Up”) is actually the worst song on her second solo…
By the time My Morning Jacket dropped the reverb-laden Southern art-rock classic Z in late 2005, they’d reached the point where Rolling Stone could safely proclaim them America’s answer to Radiohead. But for many longtime fans, the quintessential MMJ experience will always be the live show, which explains their latest…
Tom VandenAvond embodies everything that makes alt-country awesome. He’s got a surly, drank-too-much-last-night-and-now-I-gotta-perform attitude, a killer take-no-shit slogan (“You may all go to Hell, and I will go to Texas”), and even an authentic trucker cap (no Hot Topic poseury here). One can hear wisps of such late greats as…
Y’all might be going to some fancy-ass party or hipster hootenanny on Sunday, December 31, but as for us, we’re going to Hell. More specifically, Club Hell’s nocturnal New Year’s Eve affair known as Hell’s Bells. The freaky fetishists, disturbing divas, and other assorted creatures of the night scene who…
Soundtrack CD release
DJ’s and Dancing
