Features

Every obit, blog post, and newscast will not fail to mention his despicable treatment of his ex-wife Tina Turner — so consider it mentioned.

What those voices will not tell you is what you can only hear and feel in the urgency and ambition of his music. From his rock & roll-christening fuzzed guitar on “Rocket 88” to his psychedelic gospel funk; from his unvarnished tremolo on uncountable electric blues singles to the black-power groove of the instrumentals he recorded with another St. Louis master, Oliver Sain; from his transformation of rhythm & blues into rock into soul (and then back again), to his electrification of the wildest stage spectacles that pop music had ever seen, Ike Turner deserves the appellation visionary — and can hold his own with touchstone figures such as Scott Joplin, Chuck Berry and Miles Davis.

Because kids in 2007 aren’t buying CDs like kids of yesteryear did, retailers like Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and Target are threatening to scale back their shelf space to stock only new releases from artists with proven sales. Not a big deal if you buy CDs on Amazon or iTunes, but…

After more than a year of nonstop touring behind their latest album, Sacrament, Virginia thrashers Lamb of God are out on the road for one last leg before taking a much-needed break in 2008. But before the band closes the book on Sacrament, we caught up with ultra-friendly powerhouse drummer…

One lament you’d never expect to hear about the local punk scene is that there’s no sense of community. Punk, by its very nature, champions apathy, an I-could-give-a-shit belief system and do-it-yourself work ethic. But truth be told, punk’s nihilistic front just ensures that you’re not listening to music made…

James Mulhern, guitarist/vocalist of local indie band What Laura Says Thinks and Feels, speaks of his first concert experience with pride. It was a Bon Jovi show, Mulhern was in the ninth row, and it was “pretty badass.” The rest of the band has no qualms about listing the “skin…

Greg Pritchard is a consummate multi-tasker. On an early November afternoon, the Minnesota-bred musician is conducting a telephone interview with a reporter from an Oakland coffeehouse while sipping java and using his “mobile dubbing station” to make cassette copies of Shards, a release that his psychedelic prog-thrash band, Clipd Beaks,…

Chief among the reasons Deftones is one of the most compelling hard-rock acts of the past 15 years is Chino Moreno’s gripping vocals, which often act as a moody, atmospheric foil to the band’s raging guitar riffs. But with Team Sleep — Moreno’s long-running side project — pretty much everything…

Not long ago, a three-CD, 50-track collection of America-themed songs that’s titled, appropriately enough, Song of America, arrived in stores. What’s so special about that? Well, aside from the fact that it features freak folker Devendra Banhart (“Little Boxes”) and Springsteen acolytes Marah (“John Brown’s Body”) alongside the likes of soul diva Bettye LaVette (“Streets of Philadelphia”) and Chevy rocker John Mellencamp (“This Land is Your Land”), the set was executive produced, oddly enough, by Clinton-era Attorney General Janet Reno (no, “Burning Down the House” isn’t on there, but thanks for playing). Apparently, she and her niece’s husband, a record producer, conceived the idea a few years ago, and even made a trip to the 2005 Grammys to get artists to sign on to the project. “I just hope that people will have the opportunity to hear [Song of America] and to see what songs can do to inspire and to motivate and to give people a sense of themselves,” Reno recently told NPR.

If the massive rainstorms that’ve been plaguing the Valley today have given you second thoughts about checking out The Locust’s scheduled gig tonight at The Sets in Tempe, it’s kind of a good thing, since we just got word that the show (which was being put on by local concert powerhouse Lucky Man) has been axed.

There’s little dispute that Judas Priest singer Rob Halford is the Metal God. Since 1974, Judas Priest has sold more than 9 million albums in the U.S. alone, not to mention the success of Halford’s other bands, Halford and Fight. The British-born Phoenix resident is named as a vocal influence by everybody from original Iron Maiden singer Paul Di’Anno to Arch Enemy singer Angela Gossow, and is also credited with introducing the leather-and-spikes look to the genre. And at 56 years-old, Halford continues to churn out his beloved heavy metal music. We recently caught up with Halford to discuss the new Fight DVD (War of Words), the upcoming new Judas Priest album, and how he feels about being one of the few openly gay men in metal.

Woe betide the “next big thing” who gets squeezed through the music industry hit machine, only to find their visions are all misshapen and the expectations are impossible to meet.

Once upon a time, an artist whose debut album charted at #10 on the Billboard charts and sold 119,000 copies the week of its release would be considered a success. Not so for American idol winner and Phoenix resident Jordin Sparks, whose self-titled debut is being flagged as a failure by music pundits because she didn’t debut at #1 like previous Idol winners Kelly Clarkson and Ruben Studdard.

“I’m a big fan of beautiful accidents,” says Skeleton Key leader Erik Sanko. And he might as well be. Though he is referring to spontaneous creative accidents, Sanko also admits to being mystified that Skeleton Key — which formed in 1996 amidst a thriving downtown New York arts scene —…

These days, most gentiles (that’s non-Jews, folks) think Hanukkah is some sort of Christmas equivalent for God’s Chosen People, but the truth is, it’s one of Judaism’s minor holidays and has moved to the forefront only since secular pop culture felt the religion was getting the shaft during the “holiday…

Since 1996, Jay Vance (a.k.a. JBOT) has been a prisoner of robots he originally created to serve as his onstage death metal band. That’s the gist of Captured! By Robots’ bio — that, and Vance has a problem playing with others, necessitating animatronic bandmates. But the reality of the situation…

Rarely has revenge been served colder than the frozen shit sandwich the record industry has been served. Two decades after forcing the record-buying public into accepting the CD without once lowering its list price, people let it be known via iTunes that they just want the tracks they like, thanks…

Not all music interviews aspire to get at the pith of an artist or band’s identity, or to say anything all that insightful about them. No, sometimes interviews exist just as a means to give an artist a chance to voice a bit of his or her personality and, if…

1921, Sugar Land: Huddie “Lead belly” Ledbetter, incarcerated for killing his cousin during a fight, pleads his case for early release to Texas Governor Pat Morris Neff. During the proceedings, Leadbelly performs — for no money — a clemency song he penned especially for the occasion. Soon thereafter, Neff frees…

Why is Disneyland in California? Call me an idiot (as some surely already do), but I’d venture to guess it’s because Disney studios were founded in Cali and the entire movie industry (Disney included) thrives in the Golden State. So it makes sense that a huge theme park based on Walt Disney’s cartoon characters would be planted in Anaheim.

Compared with other holidays, Thanksgiving hasn’t inspired bards overmuch. There are no traditional hymns, no instantly identifiable music associated with the day save possibly various football broadcast bumpers. Nevertheless, here and there we find certain songs that — in lyric or in spirit — fit the theme of the day…

Vibe magazine recently named the “51 Best MySpace Rappers,” by state. I’m not sure how Vibe determined who made the list, but I beg to differ with their Arizona pick. The only artist from ‘Zona that passed muster with Vibe was a Phoenix rapper who goes by the handle MC Magic. Now, I’ll admit, I’d never heard of MC Magic until I saw this list. So I checked out the songs on his MySpace page, and they’re pretty solid — mostly a mix of reggaeton and other Latin flavors, R&B, and low-key, seduce-you type rhymes (think Pitbull-meets-D’Angelo). But while MC Magic’s tracks are slick, I feel that Vibe totally overlooked at least a dozen of our best local hip-hop acts. Believe it or not, P-city is a hip-hop haven, and we’ve got an amazingly diverse array of artists here, any one of which could (and should) have made the Vibe list.

I was 16 years old when my older cousin started dating the guy who would turn me on to punk rock. This was in a very backward Pennsylvania town during one of my transitional teenage years. By this time (1996-’97), most of the cool kids in my school were in…

It’s been 22 years since Celine Dion turned the Colosseum at Caesars Palace into the place where female pop stars go to die as publicly as Roman gladiators once did, but, of course, for a hell of a lot more money. Last night, Kelly Clarkson joined the club that, since…