Trent Reznor Explains Scalping Controversy

Last week I told you about a story in the Wall Street Journal about Artist approved scalping.  Well over the weekend Trent Reznor of NIN posted in the NIN forum on his website a long explanation of the current situation from the perspective of some one in the middle of…

The Maine Posts New Video

Girls Do What They Want Tempe kiddie rockers The Maine released a new video via their MySpace yesterday. The video shows the band, which is on the cover of this month’s Alternative Press, doing typical band stuff: hanging out on the tour bus, rocking, hanging out on the tour bus,…

Valley Bands Unite to Rock Out for the Love of Boobs

Promoter Lance Wilson will host his annual Rock for the Cure (aka “Save the Boobs”) benefit concert Saturday, March 21 at Tempe’s Last Exit Bar & Grill. The bill is packed with some of Arizona’s finest including Let Go, Audra, Five High, The Bollox, Breaking Down, Pants, Sleepwalk a Robot,…

No Depression is Back! …Sorta

When No Depression, The New York Times of roots music, stopped publishing last May, then stopped updating the site frequently shortly thereafter it left a huge hole in the alt-country scene. Now it’s back. Sorta. The magazine, named for a Carter Family/Uncle Tupelo song, launched in 1995 is now a…

Shake, Shake, Shake it With Black Kids at The Rogue

Jacksonville, Fla. indie rockers Black Kids will grace DJ William Fucking Reed’s popular weekly dance/rock night Shake! Saturday, April 25 following their show at The Clubhouse Music Venue at south Scottsdale’s The Rogue Bar. Some of the members will guest spin for what is sure to be a packed club…

Why You Have To Pay So Much for Good Seats

On March 11, the Wall Street Journal ran an article titled “Concert Tickets Get Set Aside, Marked Up by Artists, Managers” written by Ethan Smith. In it, Smith explains the practice of large promoters, Ticketmaster, and artists teaming up to take the best seats at concerts and then not selling…

Miniature Tigers: Almost Everyone Loves Charlie Brand

Like many musicians, Charlie Brand was not a happy high-schooler. Discussing his days as an art school dropout — a troubled kid sent to a Scientology-run youth camp, where he lied to the E-Meter reader to escape, only to become a chronically depressed and morbidly obese pothead — the 24-year-old…

Can’t Make it to SxSW? Check Out These Shows

Young Jeezy rapped it best: “It’s the recession — everybody’s broke!” That being the case, South by Southwest, Austin, Texas’ annual orgy of music and networking, is beyond many of our means. While catching local SxSWers, Dear and the Headlights, Kinch, The Love Me Nots, The Maine, Miniature Tigers, and…

The California Wavves’ Wavves (Fat Possum) Is Insane and Out of Control, Just Like Real Life

What Wavves’ Nathan Williams vividly renders on cassette and aluminum isn’t the Beach Boys’ carefree beachscape, with its bathing beauties, surfboard-wielding Adonises, and pinks-on-the-line drag races. Last year’s Wavves (Fuck It Tapes) and new disc, Wavvves (Fat Possum), paint a decidedly grimmer, less idyllic picture: goth zombies everywhere, early 20-something…

Arizona’s SxSW Contingent

PHOENIX Kinch: The piano has gotten a bad rap lately, thanks mostly to schmaltzy lite-pop bands like Keane and those dueling piano bars that seem to be springing up everywhere. Fortunately, Kinch has come along to give the piano its balls back. The band’s debut, Advances, veered from rollicking, up-tempo…

William Elliot Whitmore Coming to Chyro

We don’t typically write up concert announcement blogs for shows in tiny, all-ages venues but this one deserves it. Because, well, YOU HAVE TO SEE WILLIAM ELLIOT WHITMORE! The bluesman who lives on a horse farm in Lee County, Iowa mesmerized me at Virginia’s MACRoCk a few years back.Whitmore, who…

Expected Lollapalooza Headliners Announced

Now that Coachella, Sasquatch, and Bonnaroo have all confirmed their acts for their respective music festivals, we are left to ponder only about the lineup of August’s Lollapalooza Festival at Chicago’s Grant Park. The Chicago Tribune’s music blog recently leaked who is expected to headline this year’s 3-day affair. It…

Amy Winehouse Leaves Coachella Lineup; A Nation Weeps

In news that should come as hardly shocking, Amy Winehouse has officially been dropped from her Saturday slot of this year’s Coachella Valley Arts & Music Festival lineup. Of course, the first thing that comes to mind when she ditches out on a concert is “what drug is it this…

The Maine’s Alternative Press Cover

The Alternative Press magazine cover featuring Tempe pretty boy “indie” rockers The Maine is now on stands. Looking good, fellas. The story, by the way, is here. Our you can check out our feature from last month…

Radiohead 1, Spoiled Over-Hyped Disney Brat 0

The indie blogs and main stream ones are loving the story today that Miley Cyrus told to morning zoo radio hosts Johnjay and Rich about her being insulted by Radiohead at the Grammys. The Teen Queen wanted to meet the band in private backstage. Turns out her manager was told…

Reflections On Clarity: Marty Welker

“Jimmy Eat World’s Clarity holds a special place in my heart as I’m sure it does with the countless other kids who bought it in 1999 of which it became the soundtrack to all of their high school break-ups and inadequacies. It wasn’t just kid stuff though because I found…