The Best Decade in Rock and Roll History: 1967-1977

I’m feeling a little guilty about last week’s column, in which I took the crappy popular music of the ’80s to task (High School Music: A Reunion from Hell). Why? It was negative, and generally I like to promote good music instead of baggin’ on bad stuff. I’ve fed my…

Three Woodstock Veterans to Honor the Heroes in Flagstaff

Even more than 40 years later, no musical period is more influential to today’s rock ‘n’ roll than the ’60s and early ’70s. Young bands on modern Top 20 radio may not be able to cite a single artist from the 1960s, but it’s still there in their influences from…

Glasspopcorn Embraces Questions About His Own Sincerity

Glasspopcorn’s latest video, “My Circle,” features him and his friends buying soda and eating tacos. They stomp on packets of hot sauces, shoot hoops, and ride bikes through Tempe. It’s filled with the inconvenient images he’s known for: He pets a lizard at one point; at another he raps in…

Alejandro Escovedo Chronicles the Rock ‘n’ Roll Lifestyle

Musician/songwriter Alejandro Escovedo has made a career out of taking chances. His first true band was the San Francisco-based punk outfit The Nuns. Then he joined up with cow-punks Rank & File before forming the country-oriented True Believers with his brothers, eventually hacking out a solo career. His music typically…

MTVu Picks Up Fayuca’s New Music Video

It’s been almost three months since Latin-reggae-punk-rock troupe Fayuca dropped its stellar new record, Barrio Sideshow. During that time, the band has spread its sound on the radio airwaves and touring circuit, but now the local boys are gearing up to take over dorm room television sets. Following fellow locals…

Will You See Sublime with Rome Without Bradley Nowell?

It can’t be easy being the other members of Sublime in 2013. On a cynical — but very real — level, you reached your peak fame and earning power in 1996, at the moment your band’s lead singer died and ensured you wouldn’t reach it again. On an idealistic –…

High School Music: A Reunion From Hell

I just got back from my 30th high school reunion in Minot, North Dakota. It was great to see so many of my lifelong friends and classmates. Most of us have spread out across the country, and we all commented on how comfortable and familiar it was to be back…

Anomaly Keeps Evolving, But Not With the Times

An anomaly is defined as a “deviation from the normal or common order.” That’s a fitting definition of local rockers Anomaly. The band’s sound walks everywhere but the beaten path — it’s a blend of heavy and harmonized vocals, unrelenting chords and structures, and electronic samples and digital beats that…

St Ranger Breezes Through Ambitious Pop Amid Stifling Heat

There’s not much to say about another stupefyingly hot Phoenix summer that hasn’t already been fired in all caps directly onto your Facebook news feed. It’s another year when Circle K Polar Pop cups might fuse with the blacktop if the mercury rises any further. But it hasn’t scorched the…

Whisperfest Takes Shape Just Outside Prescott

Located just an hour and a half north of the Valley and home to more retirees than the average small town, Prescott is better known as a premier Christmas getaway than as an arts community. But it’s a town with strong local values and arms open to touring acts and…

Ask Magic: Musicians Have to Be Proactive, Not Reactive

Lost in love? Your relationship too weird for Ann Landers to understand? Trying to discover what comes next in your life or your music? Bring your problems to Ask Magic, your chance to ask Arizona’s reigning slow-jam king for advice on whatever life throws at you. (Click here to ask…

Seven Terrible First Pitches by Otherwise Coordinated Pop Stars

Ahhh, the ceremonial first pitch of a baseball game. When it’s done right, nobody in the stands pays you any attention. When you screw it up, you’re on YouTube forever. Often celebrities are chosen to uphold this grand tradition, and often — most recently Carly Rae Jepsen — they fail…

American Idol Live! Is the Last Refuge of Idol Superfans

American Idol Live!, coming to Comerica Theatre next week, is a testament to how much smaller American Idol gets every year as a cultural institution. Don’t get me wrong — it’s still big. Season 11 winner Phillip Phillips’ debut single is still impossible to avoid if you are or have…

Which Arizona Diamondbacks Star Would Make the Best Metal Band?

One of the most important parts of being a baseball fan is the crushing certainty that you are The Underdogs and your rivals are getting special treatment from ESPN or Bud Selig or New York-biased media outlets. (If you’re a Mets or Yankees fan, your rivals are getting special treatment…

Finding New Music Is Easy; Listening To It Is Hard.

I’ll bet when you read that headline you thought, “Here we go again . . . Some old dude is going to bash on today’s music.” Wrong, Spanky. In my 48 years, I’ve never said “There’s no good new music these days.” In fact, after 26 years in the music…

Camper Van Beethoven Embraces Its Place Among the Hippie Ruins

If David Lowery were allowed only one word to describe his punk, Middle Eastern, folk, ska, Slavic, Indian, Spanish, psychedelic, country, rock band Camper Van Beethoven, it would be “weird.” Weird that a band with a catalog of entirely dissimilar albums has survived 30 years. Weird that influences include hippies,…

Kid Rock Cuts Ticket Prices All Summer Long

A few years ago, Kid Rock was at a concert, watching T-shirts sell for $40. He had more reason than most stars to wonder why they were charging so much. He has a T-shirt company of his own, Made in Detroit, and he knows exactly how much it costs to…