Few events on the U.S. holiday calendar muster the same degree of cynicism in people as Valentine’s Day, the other notable dates being Christmas and Election Day. Somehow, this tradition that spans more than six centuries is now just as bad as a religious holiday that became a secular merchandising…
Iron Maiden made it into the 1990 Guinness Book of World Records for achieving a sound level of 124 dB (decibels) at the 1988 “Monsters of Rock” Festival. Since the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) claims that 7.5 minutes of exposure to 120 dB can cause permanent hearing damage,…
David Lowery lost his share of fans when he followed his days at the helm of one of independent rock’s most willfully eccentric acts — Camper Van Beethoven — with Cracker, a far more conventional roots-rock band in slacker-rock clothing. Of course, as often happens when your second act is…
If there is a downside to the huge commercial comeback that American Idiot spawned for Green Day, it’s the way that comeback only reinforced the notion that the band had somehow lost its bearings after Dookie sold, like, 40 billion copies — when, in fact, the records from the oft-neglected…
Cballa I’m trying to count the ways that local Westside rapper Cballa annoys the shit out of me. Let’s start with calling your record Blacc Hitla. Because I’m a writer and by proxy an aspiring grammarian, the misspelling bothers the shit out of me. Now, I understand that urban street…
The dorks in Illegal Substance The other afternoon I was sitting in one of my local watering holes and the B-52’s “Rock Lobster” came on the satellite radio. I had to walk outside; that song and its ilk turn my stomach and make me puke a little bit in my…
Smokescreen Just received a CD and e-mails from the local band Smokescreen, and I’m torn between two opinions about its marketing strategy. I like the band; it sounds like lush late-’90s alt-rock in the vein of Radiohead or the Pumpkins, but not too clone-esque. Here’s the strategy though: the band…
I’ve been following hip-hop since I first heard Run-D.M.C.’s King of Rock album when I was 11 years old. I’m not a fanatic, though; my sneering, hip-hop-obsessed DJ friends will tell you that. They just recently schooled me in hyphy, the cartoonish — and kind of silly — Bay Area…
Joe Ely was born along the Rock Island line in Amarillo, three blocks from Route 66. At age 6, he witnessed Jerry Lee Lewis pounding a piano on the back of a flatbed truck. In his early twenties, he picked up a hitchhiking Townes Van Zandt, the now-mythical Texas folk…
When Taylor Swift first hit Nashville, she faced competition from many aspiring female country stars with beautiful faces and large voices. She had bigger ideas. “I had to figure out a way to stand out and be different. For me, that came through songwriting,” she says. As writer of 11…
For all intents and purposes, Mark Linkous is Sparklehorse. And yet, despite a welcome move to a western North Carolina mountaintop and noteworthy assists from Tom Waits, Danger Mouse, and The Flaming Lips’ Steven Drozd, his latest release, Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain (full of…
For professional observers like myself, nothing quite beats witnessing a good brawl. That’s why I’m issuing a call for y’all to encourage my ornithological cohort, Stephen Lemons of Feathered Bastard fame and infamy, to join in the festivities tonight at the party for AZPunk.com’s 5th birthday at BANNED in Tempe…
Joey Kamka Drummer Joey Kamka from local metal purveyors Autumn’s End was hit on his motorcycle on Saturday, January 27 by a drunk driver, according to reports I’m getting. This is what the band is reporting: On January 27, 2007 at 3:00am Autumn’s End’s drummer, Joe Kamka was hit by…
I just received news that Feedback Video Magazine, which I wrote about here last year, is having to end its run on KAZ-TV (channel 13 on Cox Cable or channel 27 in the atmosphere). Apparently the guys at 3B studios lost some sponsors at the last minute and the contract…
The legendary Chico Chism I received news this morning from my music editor, Niki D’Andrea, that legendary blues drummer Chico Chism passed away yesterday. You can read Niki’s farewell column here, a sweet tribute to one of Phoenix’s true musical institutions. This is what she sent about his passing… “I’m…
The Brothers Calabrese I’ve followed the horror-punk trio Calabrese for quite a while now (as you can see here in a June 2004 column I wrote), and I’m always pretty stoked when they drop a new record. The three brothers, Jimmy, Bobby, and Davey (that’s in order of their ages)…
As you may have read, I’ve been harassing the guys in Attack of the Giant Squid to let me hear their long-in-development-but-nearly-finished album. Last night they finally came through, treating me to a listen-through at guitarist Tony Patino’s house. You’ll have to wait for the 2/8 edition of my column…
When I was still in high school in Alaska, I had it in my head for a while that I wanted to be a producer or a sound engineer. I was already way into music. I’d self-published fanzines in Colorado, Texas, and Alaska, but at the time, writing about music…
Updated online January 29, 2007 “I’m the house rocker and the show stopper, the woman’s pet and the man’s threat. I’m Chico, the Boogie Man.” — Chico Chism Legendary blues drummer Napoleon “Chico” Chism, Phoenix’s longtime “Ambassador to the Blues,” died on Sunday, January 28, at the Kivel Campus for…
About eight years ago, the Anticon collective was known as an avant-garde and even revolutionary force within hip-hop culture. Living and recording together in a warehouse in Oakland, California, the eight men of Anticon — Sole, Alias, Doseone, Jel, Odd Nosdam, Baillie Parker, Pedestrian, and Why? — created unusually named…
Nearly four years after forming, Tempe hardcore/trashrock quartet Casket Life has no money, no booking agent, and no record label. But they’re still having a blast — touring the country, getting drunk, and writing great songs that end up sounding somewhere between Sick of It All and the Murder City…
P.O.S. I’ve said it many times before, but I’m compelled to continue preaching that the Blunt Club is the best club night ever in town for real underground hip-hop. DumperFoo and his homeys keep proving it, week after week. Rather than dropping some names every week I figured I’d give…
