Wendy O. Williams always said she liked to make “aggressive art,” and that’s what she did as the front woman for ’80s punk-metal band The Plasmatics — sporting a Mohawk on TV, wearing nothing but electrical tape over her nipples, blowing up luxury cars and school buses, cutting guitars in…
With 1988’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Chuck D and Public Enemy positioned hip-hop as “the CNN of black culture,” raging against the machine while bringing a noise as revolutionary as it was intense. The first true hip-hop masterpiece, it placed second, behind The Ramones’…
My neighborhood in Tempe is a pretty noisy place. The guys next door have a band practicing inside their house with the windows open every few days, and my neighbors across the back alley apparently have a band that practices there as well (I can hear them now as I’m…
If the answer is yes, then you have a fruitful few days ahead of you. Tonight, at the Stray Cat in Tempe you’ve got none other than the Danzig-killer Danny Marianino of North Side Kings DJing (yeah, this is almost as weird as Vince Ramirez from Flathead learning to scratch)…
Hella props to Lawrence for fashioning the Pandemic logo, which is making its debut in this post. If you didn’t hear already, I’ve asked a plethora of local artists, promoters, and playaz to submit their various Top 5 lists. This is the debut of the returns. If you think you…
Vince Ramirez, center, is playing for both teams Hang out with too many musicians too much of the time, and you’re bound to get some surreal-life moments where you threaten the space-time continuum by placing opposing elements in too close a proximity. Last night I had such an experience, and…
Throwdown on the Interweb; Ear Infection’s in Your Corner Seems a little pissing match has erupted on the interweb in the masturbatory little world of music criticism, between my own company and sister paper Village Voice’s annual Pazz & Jop Critics’ Poll and Gawker media’s too-cool-for-school Idolator music blog. The…
Despite authoring this blog, I’m not much of a software geek; I’ve got to rely on some smarter heads at HQ to fix little interweb/html quandaries for me, and I don’t install new programs often. Nonetheless, I got sucked in when I read a press release this morning about Dizzler,…
Ernie, flashin’ the bling Well, I guess “emo rap” is a bit insulting, but my friends in Who Cares (who are Sacto-based but spend a lot of time in the ‘Nix) pretty much wear their hearts on their sleeves, especially Ernie, the group’s MC. I hadn’t heard from them since…
Not sure if it’s the holidaze or or just the cooler weather that’s causing so much dope action on the music tip lately, but I really don’t care. Fact is, practically every night of the week there’s some bomb shit going on. Tonight’s no exception. If you’re not hitting up…
Today’s Thursday, aka Baby Friday, and Thursday nights there’s really only one gig in town worth spending your evening at: the infamous Blunt Club. Whether you’re a hip-hopper, backpacker, punk rocker, indie hipster, what-the-fuck-ever, the Blunt Club’s the bangin’est club night to hit up, five years strong now. This installation…
“We’re planning to do a children’s show in a couple of days, and I was asked which song I would like to play for this kids’ show. I started going through the songs on the record, and with every song it’s like, ‘Oh, shit, here’s the love-story phobia song, this…
Five of the 11 tracks on Robert Plant’s first DVD, Robert Plant and the Strange Sensation (Rounder/Zoe), are new performances of old Led Zeppelin songs. But this set isn’t nearly as safe or nostalgic as the track list would suggest. Captured live in 2005 for PBS’s Soundstage, Plant and a…
“I worry that I’m going to forget, like with ‘Gouge Away,’ I’m gonna think it’s in G,” Kim Deal says in Loud QUIET Loud: A Film About the Pixies (MVD Visual), providing just one example of how this 85-minute documentary shows the influential alt-rock band (whose 2004 reunion tour provided…
Bad Brains: Live at CBGB 1982 (MVD Visual) captures two historic and defunct components of punk rock’s ’70s heyday — the classic lineup of the seminal Washington, D.C., band (featuring vocalist H.R., guitarist Dr. Know, bassist Darryl Jennifer, and drummer Earl Hudson), performing within the cramped confines of the legendary…
Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man (Lionsgate) is not a documentary. Leonard Cohen obsessives learned this the hard way, flocking to jam-packed theaters only to encounter Bono’s banal assertion that Cohen’s religious imagery isn’t all that religious. If I’m Your Man documents anything at all, it’s that Cohen is loved most…
Jared and Michael Bell are the Lymbyc Systym Jared and Michael Bell, the brothers who make the pretty noises in Lymbyc Systym, are about to drop the band’s first album on the influential Mush Records label, home also to avant-beatmakers and MC’s like cLOUDDEAD, Aesop Rock, Jel, Odd Nosdam, and…
Scary Kids Stealing Names I usually find it pretty goddamn annnoying when bands take their names from other band’s song titles. This was the case when I first heard about Scary Kids Scaring Kids – especially since the band’s name is copped from one of my favorite bands, the Chicago-based…
Sweetbleeders Just received a missive and a new song from Robin Vining of the Sweetbleeders (and Colorstore) yesterday, asking if I’d let y’all know about the listening party for the band’s upcoming new album, Bzzzz. No problem; the Sweetbleeders make some of the prettiest little piano-laced pop songs aroud the…
Pokafase It’s been a while since I last checked in with Pokafase, the ‘Nix’s long-suffering aspirant to establishing PHX hip-hop as a west coast powerhouse. His latest album The Martyr is due out any time, so I grabbed a couple of his tracks (one off of Mastermind, and one off…
Yolanda Bejarano A few bar nights back I went out with my old friend Yolanda Bejarano, who’s not only a swell girl but an incredible musician, and who’s been cranking out music since I moved here eleven years ago, in bands like Slugger, the Slowdown, and a mariachi band that…
Walk into Trax on a Monday night, as I did recently to grab a beer, and you’ll run into a strange amalgamation of sonic styles emanating from the outdoor stage in the back, courtesy of the Dave Wade Trio. I saw the Dave Wade Trio accidentally the first time, and…
