Concerts

Here are a handful of concerts that were just announced this week.

By Jonathan McNamara Friday July 18: Minibosses at The Ruby Room If you’ve been perusing Up on the Sun’s podcast entries you already know that the bossest of video game music-based bands will be hitting the Ruby Room tonight. See you there? Saturday July 19: The Dark Knight Has Heath…

By Steve Jansen The B-Side Players apparently aren’t digging some of our local jazz acts. The other night, I ran into Ted Sistrunk, who played bass for two of the four local bands on the New Times Summer of Sound: Jazz bill on Friday, July 11. (I was at The…

By Sarah Ventre Better Than: Any other rainy Sunday afternoon with about 100 underage kids. Ah, summertime! It is a time for remembering one’s youth from endless days of swimming to eating ice-cold watermelon and who can forget summer camp? Certainly not the good folks at Unlimited Enthusiasm, a summer…

Here’s a handful of concerts that were just announced.

By Jonathan McNamara Friday: Ukulele Ray and the KoKonutz We’re unsure how much faith you can put in anything a parody artist says, but if myspace is to be believed, Ukulele Ray is capable of imitating a “cast of thousands.” Come take a gander at the man who dresses like…

All of the *Sadisco events I’ve been to have been fun, but very few shows by the underground productions company/local rivethead collective that I’ve attended have featured full band instrumentation. Usually, there’s just a crew of DJs, spinning a sick mix of underground trance, psycho techno, industrial, and death rock.

By Joseph Golfen Better than: a sauna, but not by much. The little, wooden stage at the Modified Arts was sweltering. The air was still and thick with the type of humidity that rolls in with the monsoons every summer. “I know you guys probably get tired of bands coming…

By Jonathan McNamara While I’m sure all of you are planning to spend the weekend reading biographies on our founding fathers and saluting the flag, here are a few less patriotic suggestions you may wish to employ. Friday: First Friday Just because it’s Independence Day doesn’t mean the monthly spectacle…

Here are a handful of shows that were just announced this week.

By Sarah Ventre Better Than: A release party for a four song EP. The legendary Yucca Tap Room is perhaps best known as a training ground where local bands come up before they hit it big. Many Phoenix stars has graced the stage with the neon beer light situated just…

By Jonathan McNamara Better Than: All the other bands that peaked while I was in high school. See more of Alien Ant Farm bassist Tye Zamora in our slide show: Alien Ant Farm at Tempe Marketplace for Third Thursday Make no mistake that the majority of the crowd out for…

By Adriane Goetz Better Than: Getting attacked by Killa Beez Wu Tang Clan master, The RZA, i.e. Ruler Zig-Zag-Zig Allah, is known by many names (The Abbott, Prince Rakeem, Rzarector, and Bobby Steels, just to name a few) but his most notorious alias is the incorrigible Bobby Digital. Enamored with…

By Paul Rubin The best shows are the ones where you go through some unexpected things in your head as you’re watching and listening. It’s really about the magic — the sound and sights of surprise — that transcendent music and performance can be. It happened to me last night…

Surely Tempe-based Americana/rock bands get tired of the Gin Blossoms comparisons. But that’s the best measuring stick we can come up with for many of the bands making music off Mill Avenue now – including Los Guys and Tramps & Thieves. The music harks back to the days when Mill Avenue was a rock club strip, and heartfelt confessions made their way through lyrics draped over solid Americana strumming and time-tested rock rhythms. The sound always reminded me of Heartland Rock, lost in the desert and trying to find its way back.

By Jonathan McNamara Better Than: Spinal Tap. Sure, this animated band owes a lot to its comedic predecessor, but sheer technical skill from the band that makes Nathan Explosion, Pickles the drummer and all the rest of these rogue rockers live puts Dethklok a few notches higher. See more shots…

By Benjamin Leatherman Better than: Hanging out with the dicks in Scottsdale. Back in mid-1996, Zach de la Rocha and the rest of Rage Against the Machine ruled the alt-rock world, with stations like The Edge (then on 106.3/100.3 FM) broadcasting the foursome’s aggro agitprop songs from their second album…

Eartha Kitt is 81 years-old. But you’d never know it by the way she sang, joked, teased, and pranced around the stage at Phoenix Symphony Hall on Saturday Night. Perhaps best known for her role as Catwoman on the Batman TV series in the 1960s, Eartha Kitt proved herself to be a consummate performer. And she showed that she can still pull off the sex-kitten shtick with startling aplomb, repeating showing her shapely leg (the slit in her dress was longer than the Wall of China) and grinding her hips like something out of Grandmothers Gone Wild. It was hot; I won’t lie. I know that sounds weird. Eartha Kitt seduced me — she and her 76 wingmen, in the form of the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra Ensemble.

I guess we should consider ourselves lucky. Foxboro Hot Tubs (a.k.a. all three members of Green Day, plus Jason White of Pinhead Gunpowder, Green Day backing musician Jason Freese, and Kevin Preston of Prima Donna and the Skulls) only announced ten dates for their U.S. tour, and the band’s stop at the Brickhouse Theatre in Phoenix on Sunday, May 25, was one of those precious ten.

By Joseph Golfen Better than: No music on Mill Avenue. If Mill Ave. Inc, a new documentary by local film maker Nicholas “Nico” Holthaus centers around the idea that the iconic street to ASU just isn’t as cool as it use to be, tell that to the bands that performed…

When I arrive at the Brickhouse Theatre to see Lake Havasu City band Blackmarket open for Eisley, there’s a line winding around the side of the venue. It’s hot outside and “I’m on the list,” so I push my way through the crowd of fresh-faced emo kids who’ve already been waiting an hour and charge up to the door. “I’m on the list,” I tell the guy at the window. “Don’t you know who I am, biotch? I want my VIP wristband and my comp tickets NOW.”

By Jonathan McNamara Better Than: Listening to music in only one language and/or style. Pink Martini is what every band wants to be even if they don’t know it yet. From the first note of their show at the Scottsdale Civic Center Mall Amphitheater, it was unquestionably clear that the…