As the six-string slinger for Georgia raunch ‘n’ roll band Nashville Pussy, Ruyter Suys has all the finger-chops and flash of her idol, AC/DC’s Angus Young, plus big boobs that never manage to stay contained onstage. But rather than go off on a whole “respect me for my music only”…
Compared to the pandemonium you’d encounter on, say, a Mariah Carey tour when the wrong color limo arrives, the relative bedlam of a well-oiled machine like the Taste of Chaos tour might seem sedate. Created by Warped Tour mastermind Kevin Lyman as a successful off-season counterpart to Warped, Taste of…
In the 2003 documentary Live Forever: The Rise and Fall of Brit Pop, Prime Minister Tony Blair gets more screen time for his contributions to the genre than Supergrass. Maybe that’s because Gaz Coombes, Mickey Quinn and Danny Goffey weren’t directly responsible for ’90s Britpop’s rise or fall as much…
Local impresario Joe DiPadova’s StraightNoChaser night at The Loft in Tempe has blown up to the point where he’s expanding the sophisticated, jazzy lounge night to Los Angeles this spring. Meanwhile, SNC continues to bring in top-tier talent to rock the decks alongside the eclectic roster of local residents. This…
All hail R.E.M.! They were the jingle-jangle morning of indie rock, and their latest albums are . . . not bad for a bunch of old farts. For all the great tunes, we have held our tongues in regard to goofy front man Michael Stipe. But no longer. For releasing…
These days it seems that for a band to be credible, it has to reference some predecessor or style, preferably prefixed with “post.” There’s “post-ska punk à la Reel Big Fish,” “post-hardcore minimalism screamo,” and pretty soon, there will simply be “post-post.” This is not the case with Glendale’s Dietrichs…
Horror novelist (and recovering goth) Poppy Z. Brite once said, “You can only maintain a gothic frame of mind for so long before you either go crazy or kill yourself.” To wit, Joy Division singer Ian Curtis and Christian Death singer Roz Williams both shuffled off the mortal coil, but…
When I listen to Closing In, the new riff-fucking-tastic retro-metalfest from Early Man — the duo of singer/guitarist/bassist Mike Conte and drummer Adam Bennati that, thanks to the power of overdubbing, sounds at least three members larger — several things rush into my mind all at once: Heavy Metal Parking…
To commemorate the 30th anniversary of Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run, there were two notable occurrences last year — one intentional, one less so. The official celebration came in the form of a repackaged Born, complete with a DVD and other extras. But perhaps the livelier honoring of that album’s…
Thursday 16 Ain’t Nobody’s Bizness: DJ Brooklyn (hip-hop, Top 40) Anderson’s Fifth Estate: Area 51 with DJ Jeremy (goth, industrial) Axis/Radius: Scooter & Lavelle (house, hip-hop) AZ 88: DJ P-Body (jazz fusion, funk) The Bunkhouse: DJ Doom (dance) Camus: Sparkle with DJ Pablo Gomez (deep house, electro, rock) Cypress Lounge:…
On a recent Saturday night at Hollywood Alley, after Vin-Fiz and The Threads have run through their sets, Jared Christy, singer for The Liar’s Handshake, is perched on a stool onstage, smoking a cigarette. His bandmates Billy Culbertson and Nolan Thompson are setting up their acoustic guitar and upright bass,…
Bach. Beethoven. Brahms. Mozart. Mario. The five pillars of classical music. And while those first four dudes had a good run, it’s that last guy who enraptures us now: a Japanese-born yet ostensibly Italian plumber in a bright red jumpsuit who, in the mid-’80s, warp-zoned his way into 60 million…
It seems appropriate that local promoter Stephen Chilton (a.k.a. Psyko Steve) named his multi-venue music showcase Oh Shit! A Fest?. After all, many Valley scenesters likely will be invoking the expletive when figuring how they’ll make the most of the jam-packed lineup of 35 local and out-of-town acts spread across…
Ah, Valentine’s Day — that one day a year when you can say, “Baby, I love you as much as a diamond pendant from Zales.” Or, if you’re one of the unlucky ones, that one day a year when the loneliness actually gets worse. That’s because finding love ain’t as…
Maybe Jackie Wilson was singing about Concetta Rosa Maria Franconero when he sang “Reet Petite” — and if he wasn’t, he should have been, because Connie Francis was definitely the thing back in the late ’50s and early ’60s, the Teen Diva of Pop. Tuesday Weld opened her lips to…
The Fray is easily classified as a purveyor of sugar-coated angst; on closer inspection, the band often provides more than slickly packaged emo tunes, with lyrics that tell personal stories (rather than generic words of love and loss) and instrumentation too skilled to be studio-doctored. The Fray gives a solid…
It’s a safe bet no one’s ever had a recurring Willie Nelson nightmare but me. Years ago, a song I’d co-written was being recorded in Nashville, and the producer, a good friend of the Ponytailed One, said, “You know, I can hear Willie singing a harmony on this.” For four…
Sure, there are plenty o’ emo droids out there whining about hurtful girls, hopeless work environments and self-destructive habits, but Armor for Sleep is here to tell you there’s something else . . . the afterworld, a place of never-ending moodiness where you have the option of either going to…
Sing-Sing’s debut album, The Joy of Sing-Sing, hit stores in the fall of 2002 amidst numerous references to Emma Anderson’s former, much-beloved band Lush. The music didn’t help, either, since it seemed split between multi-instrumentalist Anderson’s shoegaze history and primary vocalist Lisa O’Neill’s own folk-pop background. And I is much…
With delicate tunes and referential album titles like The Boy With the Arab Strap, Belle & Sebastian main man Stuart Murdoch is a cult artist who’s more or less birthed a scene of pop miniaturists, known as Twee. But whoever thinks it’s impossible to make pop music of the overeducated,…
RJD2’s two-track production cameo on Aceyalone’s 2003 album Love & Hate stood among that disc’s high points. Fans have plenty of reason to be geeked for a full-length collab. But while Magnificent City’s peaks are as good as expected — the Carter-admin gloss-funk of “Fire,” and the gritty Hammond B-3…
Can you say “mainstream”? Seasoned Phoenix-based rock outfit Fivespeed has officially grown up with Morning Over Midnight, an album packed with alternacore radio hits destined to top sales charts and incite rabid fist-pounding and panty-wetting on a national level. Fivespeed has in spades what mediocre nausea-inducing radio bands like Nickelback…
