Scratching, mixing, beat-juggling, all the elements of hip-hop DJing — they’re all good, but sometimes you just wanna hear a song you can dance to straight through, the way you know it, the way you loved it in the first place. And especially if you’re a dance-music recidivist, you need…
Thursday 27 Acme Bar & Grill: DJR (all genres) Acme Roadhouse: College Night with DJ J. Alan (Top 40) Ain’t Nobody’s Bizness: DJ Tsunami (Top 40, hip-hop) Anderson’s Fifth Estate: Panic! with DJ Manchester (Britpop, indie, New Wave) Big Fish Pub: Reggae Thursdays with Selector J-Cut & DJ Blackstar (reggae,…
It’s fitting that the band name Avail evokes the word “alive.” The best rock, like all the best art, is not some rarefied air breathable only to people who wear puffy shirts and pointy shoes. It’s music that makes everyday life feel alive. Richmond, Virginia’s Avail — perhaps the only…
When I run into Phoenix rapper Pokafase a few days before his record release party for Mastermind, the long-overdue LP he recorded back in 2002, I remind him we met several times years ago when he was in the hip-hop group Know Qwestion, back when his moniker was Cappuccino. “Shhh,…
Kyle Howard will make himself throw up for the Stiletto Formal. Dedication of that extent is rarely called for, but sure enough, on the third night of its first tour, the slender vocalist has to heave for his band. For the December show in Omaha, Nebraska, the Stiletto Formal wants…
Past a certain point in their careers, musicians tend to get more serious, putting away childish obsessions with pop culture in favor of creating something of more importance (or self-importance), sometimes with mixed results. The career of Mike Park, former vocalist/saxophonist for the ’90s third-wave ska supergroup Skankin’ Pickle, certainly…
Carson Daly prefaced Citizen Cope’s network TV debut with some blubbering comparisons to Bob Dylan and John Lennon, which Cope obliterated by performing a first-rate single (“Bullet and a Target”) that sounded like neither. Clearly the new Dylan/Lennon analogy has more to do with the engineer’s cap Cope sports on…
If any indie band could be reconstituted with a properly calibrated mix of the mood, pop and rock quarks, Early Day Miners would require practically a whole shaker of mood, seasoned with a sprinkle of pop and but a dash of rock. Like the paintings of Winslow Homer, their watercolor…
Shortly after last week’s Revolver column appeared (“Tom’s Tax,” January 13), detailing the hidden charges tacked on to the face value of tickets for events promoted by Lucky Man Productions, the Marquee Theatre, and its owner, Tom Lapenna, New Times’ sources contacted us to let us know that Lapenna had…
Call me cynical, but when someone approaches me and offers up a review copy of a CD unavailable in stores, the first thing I think is, “How many different ways is this going to suck?” However, I’d just seen Chopper, L.S. perform “one for the ladies” titled “Baby What Up?”…
The roster reads like a list of things you wouldn’t want to relate to: Heroes Dead and Gone, Obskurity, Coercion, Lifeless Embrace, Kill the Last Hour, And the Hero Fails, Learn to Suffer, Men Shall Fall, Fate to Fall, and Desolate Demise. But really, death comes sooner or later, so…
Laurie Anderson worked for the Olympic organization in Athens, was NASA’s artist-in-residence for a time, and has been finding some satori taking long walks down archaic roads in Greece, Sri Lanka and England. Add on the fact that Anderson lives only a handful of blocks from the scar of 9/11,…
There’s something about an emo band that talks shit about emo — the genre dedicated to self-deprecation — that seems overly appropriate. The Letter Kills are that band. The Southern California five-piece is highly vocal about its disapproval of the notion that being classified as emo makes one popular. Sure,…
Let’s eliminate any potential confusion right off the top: The Explosion is not the Blues Explosion. Besides, the Explosion couldn’t be more different from Jon Spencer’s garage-rock project. This Boston five-piece digs into punk rock the way it was done in Berkeley’s Gilman Street club, D.C.’s F Street club, and…
1. Apathy, Where’s Your Album?!! (Demigodz Entertainment) 2. Atmosphere, Headshots: Se7en (Rhymesayers) 3. MacGuyver vs. Rainbow Revenge 7″ (iXodes/Drachenwerkstatt04) 4. Pig Destroyer, Terrifyer (Relapse) 5. Handsome Boy Modeling School, White People (Elektra) 6. Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, Ruin Jonny’s Bar Mitzvah (Live) (Fat Wreck Chords) 7. Against Me!,…
Thursday 20 Acme Bar & Grill: DJR (all genres) Acme Roadhouse: College Night with DJ J. Alan (Top 40) Ain’t Nobody’s Bizness: DJ Tsunami (Top 40, hip-hop) Anderson’s Fifth Estate: Piranha Room/Area 51 with DJ Jeremy (industrial/goth, electroclash) AZ 88: DJ P-Body (all genres) Club Central: Latino Night (Latin pop,…
If you heard a quiet tear falling as December 31 ushered in yet another stupid year, it might have been gear heads sobbing over the end of an era. At that auspicious moment, Quantegy, the last analog tape manufacturer in the United States, decided to decorate its gates with chains…
Elvis Presley was the King, but there are others who claim that crown as well, including (with some legitimacy) Little Richard. But there is only one Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll, and her name is Wanda Jackson. So revered is Wanda, in fact, that she’s the subject of a tribute…
New York-born DJ Kid Capri is one of the most recognized names in hip-hop turntablism, having been scratching since the tender age of 8. With a résumé that includes tours with P. Diddy, LL Cool J, Jay-Z, Usher, and Aaliyah, a stint as the live DJ on Russell Simmons’ Def…
Talented as he is, Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy has never particularly struck me as “fun.” Same goes for R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck, unless he’s (allegedly) throwing yogurt around an airplane cabin. But Minus 5 singer/commandant Scott McCaughey, he of Young Fresh Fellows, Tuatara, and late-period R.E.M. fame? Now that dude oozes…
It would be easy to name off the big hip-hop hitters who participated in the production of Pokafase’s self-titled debut album for Artist Direct Records (including Warren G. and Kokane from the Doggystyle All-Stars) and let hype build from there. But the truth is, what makes Poka’s CD so good…
Good band names can be hard to come by. Budding groups have to conjure up something catchy and unique that nails their sound exactly. For instance, there’s San Diego-based indie Tristeza, whose moniker sticks in your brainpan but also describes the emotional makeup behind a bulk of its songs (the…
