When it comes to metal, humor is as dead a horse as you can get. Let’s face it: In the post-GWAR era, there arguably isn’t any new boundary of shtick that hasn’t been breached. Yet bands keep on flogging away. And, while the boneheaded insistence on sophomoric humor results in…
If anybody deserves to celebrate this weekend’s debut of P-town’s newfangled Metro light-rail system, it’s the party people down at Homme Lounge. Like many along Camelback Road, the staff and patronage of the ultra-fly nightspot have suffered through the seemingly endless track construction that snarled traffic and caused massive headaches…
Neil Percival Young during the late ’60s. Here’s some irony for you. In November 1968, future rock ‘n’ roll hall of famer Neil Young was paralyzed with fear before his solo show at the Canterbury House in Ann Arbor. According to a recent NPR story on the music legend, he…
Bartenders make it aaallllllll better. Slideshow.The Southwest corner of 7th Ave and McDowell has rocked a pretty decent daytime clientele since Starbucks and Pei Wei took over the building. Now, we expect that corner to be bumpin’ well until last call with the new addition of SideBar. This hot little…
This week’s Flier of the Week mostly makes the cut cuz it’s very interesting, but the bands are worth checking out too. Our Night & Day section had a little advance of the show, tonight at Trunk Space, which has Alas Alak Alaska headlining so check that out. –Martin Cizmar…
Around this time last year in these pages, I noted that a shit-ton of ancient hardcore punk bands are still regularly out on the road, and that “if you actually go see some of these crusty, old lifers, more often than not they can bring it like it’s still 1983.”…
Wading through the horde of indie pop coming out of Carefree/Cave Creek is no easy task. Well, maybe it’s a little easier than expected, thanks to goofballs Stefan Pruett and Johnny O’Keefe, better known to the world as Peachcake. The duo is about to release its first LP, What Year…
Phoenix isn’t anywhere near topping the list of the punkest cities in the U.S. Not even close. Burgs like New York City, Frisco, and Detroit have always, and will always, be far more famous for their contributions to the world of Mohawks and three-chord thunder than our fair city ever…
Live shows by touring bands are quite a rarity so close to the holidays. Musicians are people, too, and they would rather return to their hometowns to stay closer to the ones they love. No one can fault them for that. A band like Authority Zero, born out of Mesa’s…
Simultaneously familiar and otherworldly, the Soweto Gospel Choir is the right group performing at the right time. While so much of our fragile planet is being torn apart by social and political divisiveness, this glorious, 26-member choir is on a quest to lift our spirits through the amazing-yet-simple joy of…
Downtown Phoenix’s art scene is hard to exactly quantify in some respects, with creativity running amok across multiple genres and mediums. Hyphenates abound as musicians, DJs, painters, and other talented types collaborate and feed off each other’s muses. So it’s apropos that one of the art scene’s more pre-eminent bands,…
If you’re feeling the need to bump your hump to some hip-hop, R&B, or Top 40 dance jams, a few off-the-hook urban dance parties will be happening over the next 48 hours that you’ll definitely wanna check out. The Bay Area’s DJ Swift Rock will be hanging and banging over…
You’d probably expect a band with a song called “Sheriff Joe” (refrain: “Fuck you, Sheriff Joe, fuck you, Sheriff Joe”) to find a sympathetic ear here at Phoenix New Times. And, honestly, The Video Nasties do get some credit for calling out Maricopa County’s most evil man, even if it’s…
Carlos Coy (a.k.a. South Park Mexican): Sentenced to spend the the next four decades or so in the pokey. The life of Texas rapper Carlos Coy (a.k.a. South Park Mexican) is a tale of triumph, terror, and tragedy. As John Nova Lomax, current staff writer and former music editor for…
For more of this charming man, check the slideshow.What can we say about a DJ night with Andy Rourke of the Smiths that this guy didn’t? Well, for one, we didn’t spill a drink on him and make total asses of ourselves. Instead, we actually maintained some semblance of self…
The Daddy of Rock ‘N’ Roll (1963-2003)The late Wesley Shabazz Willis was one of the coolest mofos in music. The schizophrenic African-American musician (who refered to his psychotic episodes as “hellrides”) sung howling songs set to keyboard music usually about such disparate subjects as McDonalds, Alanis Morrisette, and Spider-Man. If…
This one comes from the “leave your number at the beginning of any voice mail you leave me” file: I got a call from the front man of Glass Heroes yesterday about the Joe Strummer benefit and memorial the band is hosting this Saturday at George and Dragon downtown. His…
Like an ambitious chef, Fear Before has attempted a new recipe with each of its four releases. The Colorado quintet’s 2003 debut, Odd How People Shake, raged with clamorous hardcore before graduating to a more spastic, experimental mathcore approach, for 2004’s Art Damage. It toned down the noisy, frenetic rumble…
Honky-tonk renegade Junior Brown is the consummate misfit. Beating the hell out of his one-of-a-kind guit-steel ax (custom-built after it appeared to him in a dream), roaring lyrics with coarse, chainsaw-toned vocals, and displaying the sort of nimble-fingered facility that makes guitar geeks around the world go limp, the Arizona-born,…
With their golden-age comic book costumes, silly supervillains, and absurd song titles, The Aquabats are punk rawk’s answer to GWAR. Only instead of promising the destruction of the known universe through copious bodily fluids, the ‘Bats are out to protect it. The superhero rock brigade got its start in 1994…
Transitioning from over-hyped buzz generator to perpetual powerhouse ain’t easy, even for figures as charismatic as the men of Bloc Party, and the strain shows on Intimacy, the Brits’ third LP. “Ares” is the sound of a band trying too hard, albeit with assists from some pretty interesting elements: screaming…
Neo-honky-tonker Wayne Hancock’s nickname is “The Train,” and though it may appear convenient to give the native Texan the moniker simply because of the Dr. Seuss-style rhyme one can play with his first name, Hancock has earned an allegiance with perhaps country music’s greatest symbol of both heartbreak and freedom…
