You know you’ve made it big when your band’s T-shirt is featured on reality television. Phoenix band Blessthefall, who is playing a couple dates in Russia in October, is certainly proud of the national exposure they’ve encountered after some threads bearing the band’s name made it onto truTV’s “World’s Dumbest…
Lilly Allen is not in an extremely public fight with Courtney Love, she still finds ways to make headlines. According to NME, both the Conservative and the Labour Party invited the outspoken British recording artist to attend their party conferences. Allen was especially surprised by the invite in light of…
The two folk artists are no strangers, having spent plenty of time on the road together, playing shows throughout the 70s as the Rolling Thunder Revue and again in 1998 when she co-headlined a tour with Van Morrison and Dylan. While it’s unclear whether Mitchell has spoken to Dylan in…
The debate over a crazy Arizona law that would, essentially, make it a state law to violate federal immigration law (and thus empower state and local cops to enforce federal immigration law) is something the folks over at Valley Fever and Feathered Bastard can tell you a lot more about…
In case you’ve missed it for the last eight years, AZPunk.com has put out these incredibly cool DIY compilations of local punk bands. Sold for merely $3 and containing anywhere from 30 to 40 tracks from different bands, the albums, which are simply titled AZPunk.comp Vol. 1-6, were a way to…
According to Spin and MTV, Death Cab’s ultra-busy frontman Ben Gibbard has announced that the band is working on a new record that should be out in the spring of next year. The album will be produced by guitarist Chris Walla, who also produced last year’s record by The Thermals.While…
But you’re not listening to this stuff to hear music editor Martin Cizmar (he even says the “f” word on this show. Don’t ever mention Beastie Boys; he can’t abide those guys) and I yammer. You’re listening for the music, right? Check out this week’s playlist after the jump…
Artist: Roky Erickson and Okkervil RiverTitle: True Love Cast Out All EvilRelease date: April 20Label: Anti-Score another one for the old goats. The latest has-been to crawl out of the peculiar limbo that the popular culture reserves for aging legends is Roky Erickson.If you’ve never heard of the guy, he’s…
In case you were at Coachella this past weekend, or don’t watch SNL any more because it’s lost all its humor, here are two delightful (gag) performances by trashy singer Ke$ha that would make even Ashlee Simpson cringe. They are so incredibly awkward, they might actually make you feel sorry…
The Old Gray Lady is getting a little bit hipstery today. The New York Times is streaming The National’s newest record, High Violet, here.It’s the first time the paper has streamed a record. The multimedia is paired with a feature from the Times’ magazine which comes out Saturday.A few things…
Name: J.Alan EhrhardtAKA: DJ J. AlanCurrent club nights: Thursday at Suede, Friday at Axis/Radius, Saturday at Suede, one Sunday per month at Martini Ranch.Genres spun: Hip-hop, house, electro, and Top 40How did you get started as a DJ: Rob Wegner was DJing at Club 411 at the time. He and…
Are you planning to see Norah Jones’ show at the Dodge Theatre Sunday, April 25, 2010? If you’re into jazz you should, since, as Steve Jansen argues in this week’s print issue, she’s the rare bird who sings as good as she looks. If so, get there early to see…
Artist: CaribouTitle: SwimRelease date: April 20Label: MergeSometimes you just have to throw your hands up and declare, “I don’t get it.” And I’m not talking about matters of taste, because people like what they like, and that’s totally cool. The older I get as a music fan, I try to…
It’s never surprising when Lady Gaga makes headlines, and given that Cyndi Lauper has been laying down the law on Celebrity Apprentice, it should come as no surprise that she’s making headlines with her own ventures outside of the show. According to feministing, Lauper and Gaga teamed up with the…
This week’s music feature gives you the skinny on Phoenix’s new Musical Instrument Museum, which opens this weekend. You know you’re curious about how instruments from all 195 countries were obtained. And why they’re in Phoenix of all places…We take a look at the old-school, Americana, “grassroots success story” the…
As the debate about bringing indie rock to Phoenix’s NPR station, KJZZ, continues to bubble, you’ll see some mentions of internet-only Radio Phoenix as a possible solution to the problem.Personally, I think web radio is a pretty poor substitute for the over-the-air kind, but you have to respect what Radio…
So it seems that even though Vampire Weekend’s critically acclaimed, (by nearly all music critics except our very own Jay Bennett,) Contra came out just this January, the plan is that they’ll have another recording out before the year’s end, according to TwentyFourBit.Their frontman, Ezra Koenig said that they band…
This week, New Times ran a box in our print publication highlighting some of the most interesting posts published at Up On The Sun over the past week. Here are links to those posts. What was the scene like at Coachella? Why does Glenn Danzig need to watch his back…
Shock-rocker Alice Cooper’s downtown bar and grill, Cooperstown, has been named one of the nation’s top 10 celeb-owned eateries by TripAdviser.Cooper joins athletes (Michael Jordan), actors (Robert DeNiro) and fellow musicians (Justin Timberlake and Gladys Knight) on the list, which was compiled based on the travel site’s user reviews. Here’s…
At one point in their career, the North Carolina trio The Avett Brothers (brothers Scott and Seth Avett, along with Bob Crawford), were better suited to perform at an old fashioned hootenanny than at a classy place like Mesa Arts Center. But though the band started out playing old-timey bluegrass,…
The great “could have been” story is a tired tale in the music business. Anyone with more than a casual relationship with popular music can remember a band that should have been huge, likely an act similar to another act that did hit it big. Mine: Christian pop geniuses, the…
Two types of jazz singing inspired this piece. First, the good: Norah Jones at Tempe’s Red River Opry (now the Marquee Theatre) in July 2002. At the time of this show, Come Away With Me, Jones’ jazz-ish debut, had yet to hit suburbia stereos en masse. However, after blow-me-away interpretations…
