Tempe-based roots rocker Shelby James has a yen for yesteryear. The MySpace page for his band, Shelby James and the Crying Shames, is larded with grainy family snapshots and stylized faux ’50s portraits of the musician done up like Jack Kerouac’s nattier kid brother. Over at the band’s official Web…
Shows like The Big Bang Theory give the false impression that geeks are usually brilliant and successful. In reality, most of us are rather shiftless and underemployed, but occasionally someone like MC Chris manages to profit from his geekiness. The Chicago-area rapper first caught notice with “Fett’s Vette,” a humorous,…
Though the name Jed’s a Millionaire may conjure images of rich hicks who struck black gold, the five-piece band from Tempe is known for its softer side. Lead singer R. Shawn Harrington compares the songwriting process to sex: “It’s like, each time you make love, you give a little of yourself…
It’s decreasingly rare that a musician or band ever gets big enough that a tribute band is truly warranted. I don’t believe a tribute band is ever a good idea, just because they do a huge disservice to the one being paid tribute. Having said this, if there is one…
Phoenix resident Nick Nicholson is an especially earnest fellow singing in an especially earnest genre: country music. There’s no post-modern irony or veiled metaphors here. When Nicholson belts out lyrics such as “I’ve seen Creation’s glory displayed throughout the Earth / And cried as I witnessed a little baby’s birth”…
We’re going to let you in on a little secret: We love Portland’s on First Friday. Yes, we’ve fought the urge to keep the public from learning this little First Friday trick — it’s our job to do what’s best for our readers…
Though school may be out for the summer, Tempe kids shopping at Zia Records manage to stay turned on to all that is new.They’re still all over the Deftones latest record, and Sleigh Bells sneaks in at the number four slot even though not everyone on our staff is as…
It’s no secret that Quebecois indie rockers Stars were one of, if not the, first bands to boycott Arizona over SB1070. They issued their boycott through Twitter on April 27, a few days after the law was okayed by Gov. Brewer. Their move was bold, timely and rather unexpected –…
Title: Deceleration TraumaBasics: Billing themselves as “your new favorite band!” the Phoenix-based quartet, entirely comprising transplants, plays a pretty straight-forward brand of punk rock. This would usually be a humdrum or bad thing, but given the hordes of simply awful bands I have had to recently listen to for You…
The Arizona Republic’s website, AZCentral.com runs an annual “Reader’s Choice” contest which everyone should know by now is a huge farce.Editors have, for example, allowed the nomination of two canceled music festivals in the “Best Music Festival” category. So, yeah, it’s a joke and everyone should know it’s a joke.The…
Since musicians like Trey Songz are just not enough to send the message home that getting tipsy before hooking up is totally a great idea (and not risky at all), now pop music fans have Christina Aguilera to praise the virtues of getting drizzunk before getting physical in her latest…
There’s not a whole lot to this flier, for a show by The X Chromosomes at Rogue Bar Friday, June 4, but that doesn’t mean it’s unsuccessful in grabbing your attention. The prettily colored design just sucks you in, almost as if it’s hypnotizing you with its dizzying interlocking rings…and…
If ever there were a place designed to host punk and rockabilly events, it would be Sucker Punch Sallys. Sporting décor overflowing with retro style and hot rod attitude, the ’50s-style Tempe diner, at 4 East University Drive, is brimming with vintage guitars, paintings of souped-up racers, and other items…
Oy vey, these kids are young. How young? Well, they still have that wet, matted, quivering-foal youngness to them. You know? That certain gooeyness that just screams “Clearasil-sponsored talent search winners.” Raised on the mean streets of Fountain Hills, this mixed-gender foursome certainly looks the part of the lean, hungry,…
The Sail Inn seems an unlikely place to catch a marching band perform. You’d expect to find a marching band at a parade or somewhere they could, you know, actually march. But there isn’t very much traditional about Portland’s MarchFourth Marching Band. On paper, the group is built just like…
MURS does everything with purpose. Every song, every line, every collaborator seems to spring from deep thought. Even his name, which he asserts was received from the heavens, is an acronym for either “Making Underground Raw Shit” or “Making the Universe Recognize and Submit,” depending on whom you ask. The…
It would be unforgivably glib to say that Miike Snow — an electropop trio from Sweden — sometimes sounds like ABBA with an echo deck. But it’s true! It’s so true. Crisply emotive, with unusual phrasings and a disarming dash of neo-funk, the music has inspired comparisons to Vampire Weekend…
Is “indie movie trailer” its own genre yet? It’s hard to hear the final minute of a song like “The Cave” by London’s Mumford & Sons, marked by a soaring yet contemplative refrain of “I will change my ways,” without envisioning it accompanying scenes of, say, Jesse Eisenberg and Kat…
Tributes to John Denver run the gamut. Take the singer-songwriter’s chart-topping hit song “Leaving on a Jet Plane” for example. It’s been reborn as a rock song, reggae song, and even a punk song, covered by Liza Minnelli, Chantal Kreviazuk, Slightly Stoopid, Sister Hazel, Me First and the Gimmie Gimmies,…
Folks at The Stray Cat were wild’n out in a serious way at WTFunk Friday last weekend. See what you missed in our WTFunk Friday slideshow…
One of the coolest things about reading What’s Selling every week is seeing how people in different parts of town at different record stores in the same city buy such drastically different kinds of records. Revolver Records attracts a lot of the die-hard vinyl consumers in CenPho, and their taste…
Title: Late Night InnuendoBasics: I’ve given up trying to imagine some local Arizona bands sending in something remotely different from country-twinged rock music. It seems all local, smaller bands record this same type of music. There’s no point in trying to fight it. I don’t get it — but I…
