Here’s the concept behind the Burn to Shine DVD series, the latest installment of which (Burn to Shine 03: Portland, OR) was released August 22 by Trixie DVD: One city hosts a sunup-to-sundown procession of local bands performing one song each within a house that at day’s end will be…
While most bands are looking for sponsors like Fender and Gibson, Boston-based band Constants would prefer support from somebody like Wesson or Mazola vegetable oil. In March, the psychedelic indie prog-rock band kicked off a nine-month U.S. tour in a 66-passenger school bus that’s been modified to run on organic…
Tool grants very few interviews, never appears in its own videos, has a singer who often performs in the shadows onstage, and releases albums full of complex, epic songs that fans scour for secret codes and meanings that the band neither denies nor confirms. The rare occasions that front man…
It’s not exactly like unraveling there’s no Santa Claus, but it’s not unlike it, either. When a friend tells you about a three-day festival of stoner rock and doom metal and mentions that the organizer is a guy by the name of Ancient Rob, your thoughts naturally gravitate toward the…
Don’t even mention the words “dead horse” to Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist Rickey Medlocke — he gets pissed. Making it perfectly clear that the current incarnation of the iconic Southern rock band that brought us “Free Bird” is no knockoff, Medlocke vehemently issues a challenge to any naysayers. “For anyone who…
Considering the haunted after-hours vibe he kept returning to on last year’s critically acclaimed Forever Hasn’t Happened Yet, it may seem strange to find John Doe reissuing the far more raucous For the Rest of Us, a little-heard EP from 1998, as For the Best of Us, its outtakes only…
Corey Parks is like a bad-ass biker broad wielding a fierce four-string. The trashy, inked-up bassist has always struck an intimidating figure onstage, whether she was stomping around in shredded fishnets and cowboy boots in Die Hunns next to punk pariah husband Duane Peters (U.S. Bombs) or literally spewing fire…
Phoenix is a tough town for bands — the city doesn’t have a sound of its own (please don’t count Gin Blossoms-style jangle rock), and you can count on one hand the number of bands that have made it outside of our desert metropolis. That wasn’t always the case, though…
Malibu “psych-folk-rock” band Simon Dawes and math-rock mavens Don Caballero might be on to something: Give your band a solo-sounding name, play full-bodied songs, and watch people scratch their heads trying to figure out who you’re named after. (We’ll give ’em both away: Don Caballero takes its name from a…
Do hairstyles influence musical styles? They do if you’re Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Melissa Etheridge, whose various ‘dos (and don’ts, in the case of her late ’80s mullet) mirror her musical phases. Year of the Spiky Red Mullet (1988): Like the mullet, Etheridge’s music was often found in divey bars with…
If you asked Black Label Society guitarist/singer Zakk Wylde if he were a beer, what kind would he be, he’d probably heroically spout out the names of some hearty stout or high-octane Indian Pale Ale. Sadly, as evidenced on Black Label Society: The European Invasion — Doom Troopin’ Live, a…
Most casual music fans have that one person in their life they turn to before they buy new music, a guru who keeps up with the trends, reads the mags, goes to the shows, surfs the ‘Net, and has taste that aligns with theirs. It could be a friend, a…
It’s not a new phenomenon, but lately the perceptions of what punk rock is and is not have irritated the hell out of me. Do three chords, a faux-hawk, and a 14-year-old’s snotty voice make a band punk rock? Is there a formula? Does it have to be loud and…
Hello, Dan Quayle here. As the 44th Vice President of the United States of America, I all but coined the phrase “family values” back in 1992, when I famously criticized Murphy Brown for having a child out of wedlock. Sure, it was a fictional character, and yes, I was roundly…
No matter how bad some things are for people, they cannot resist. You know you should watch your cholesterol, but every once in a while, McDonald’s sounds terrific. You really oughta turn off the TV and hit the gym, but, hey, you’re kinda tired and maybe there’s something good on…
How come every time you see a NOFX picture, someone in the band is wearing an Adolescents shirt? Because The Ads friggin’ wrote the book on old-school, Orange County agit-punk, that’s why. And talk about living fast: The band was signed to Frontier Records, recorded its now-classic self-titled album (better…
On a quiet stretch of Old Litchfield Road in Litchfield Park, a jazz group called the Energy Trio is warming up at Park Wines, an unassuming wine bar that usually features straight-ahead, traditional jazz. But these band members look about as much like a typical jazz band as they sound…
Corey Busboom’s house is a gloriously ginormous mess. Quite frankly, it looks like a thrift store exploded inside the cluttered confines of the 27-year-old’s central Phoenix residence, as almost every inch of floor space is choked with a collection of castoff items, including colorful kids’ toys, vintage home electronics, bygone…
On a summer afternoon in Los Angeles, Dodger Stadium radiates heat that feels a lot like what hits you in the face when you open an oven two hours into a roast. Welcome to Van’s Warped Tour, where several thousand fans of punk music have gathered to pay $4.25 for…
When Matt Sharp started plotting the real-life return of the Rentals after seven years of focusing on other things, he didn’t want to get all hung up on bringing in people who’d actually been in the Rentals on either Return of the Rentals or Seven More Minutes. He was more…
Michael (a.k.a. MYKELL) Geyman, 40, former drummer of Phoenix retro glam band Psycho Gypsy, was found dead August 1 in Iowa, where he relocated in 2000 to become a pig farmer. He had been missing for four days since leaving a party at a Zearing campsite, reportedly in good spirits…
I’m sitting in a Tempe Starbucks with Abby and Mark Covert, the former owners of defunct rock club Nita’s Hideaway, discussing Mark’s need for a liver transplant, when Abby hands me a folder that contains, among articles about liver disease, an excerpt of her diary of Mark’s illness. “He hallucinates…
