It’s something of a rarity when homeboy brothers Mike and Jared Bell are both in town to play as the Lymbyc Systym ever since Mike relocated with his girlfriend to Austin, so I highly recommend that you hightail it to Modified this evening to scope them out with Colorstore and…
According to the sister-act death metal band Hellen’s Myspace page, the older sister, Desiree, passed away on Friday the 13th. My initial thought was that it was a gag, but the photo above is captioned “Chaser’s 4/7/07 Desi’s Last Show,” and I haven’t found any information to the contrary. In…
I haven’t heard this band yet, but Vag of Honor definitely ranks high in my opinion as far as band names go. It’s supposedly feminist grindcore, but the grrrls really need to get some songs up on the Myspace or list some shows so I know it’s for real. I…
Ohh yeah, the ol’ Friday the 13th barrage of shows has arrived, as you can see above. Rather than reiterating what the flyers above let you know, I’ll just say that I wouldn’t recommend the HellHouse show, but I will recommend one that I can’t find a decent flyer to…
Well, Elliott Smith’s not with us in the physical world any longer, but, especially for those of us who got to know him at least briefly, he’s still living in his beautiful songs, a double-CD of which is being released in a few weeks on May 8 (which I dig,…
If you’re anything like me, you’ve got absolutely no use for the mall-punk-distillery that is Hot Topic. It might be alright for the high school kids who need a leather-studded punk rock belt or a t-shirt of the The Used (eccchh!), but Hot Topic is really just a symbol of…
Thursday 12 Bikini Lounge: Scratchy Rekkid Night with DJ Shane Kennedy (various) Bobby Cs: Willie B (old-school R&B) Bunkhouse: DJ Doom (dance) The Door: Pink Thursdays with DJ Astonish (hip-hop, Motown, Top 40) Dos Gringos – Scottsdale: DJs Benjamin Cutswell & Kid Vicious (rock, ’80s, old-school hip-hop) E-Lounge: DJ Domenica…
Do you want what’s in the box or what’s behind door No. 3? The latest episode in the radio payola version of Let’s Make a Deal is looking like a zonk. Then again, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s heroic crusade against payola — netting more than $35 million in…
Even if the night hadn’t ended with whip-its and Adult Mad-Libs, my recent Saturday night excursion onto Mill Avenue in Tempe would still be among my most fun forays into Valley nightlife ever. It was a pleasant surprise, because I don’t usually hang out on Mill, the main drag in…
UK chanteuse Amy Winehouse is quickly becoming known for two things: her drinking habit and her amazing voice. She combines the two on “Rehab,” the opening song on her second album, Back to Black, in which she sings, “They tried to make me go to rehab/I said no no no”…
Directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez know a thing or two about music and the movies. Tarantino’s soundtracks have become pop-culture staples, while Rodriguez scores his own movies. We sat down with them recently to discuss their new double feature, Grindhouse, and how music affects their creative process. New Times:…
Dear Gods of Rock: It’s me, The Mullet. Please kill me. My time on this Earth — hanging off Richard Marx’s head as it sang “Don’t Mean Nothin’,” going to Indigo Girls shows, and bathing in NASCAR exhaust fumes — has been fun, but I just can’t take being the…
For Amon Tobin’s Chaos Theory: Splinter Cell 3 Soundtrack, the Brazilian-born UK resident and producer/DJ spun delicately assembled cinematic instrumentals into epic nightmarish video-game backdrops, boasting chopped organ and string section bits over boisterous drum breaks. It was another impressive exercise in Tobin’s venturesome sound manipulation, but Foley Room presented…
In a progressive jazz culture dominated by New York and Chicago, other towns with improvised music scenes tend to get the shaft. That’s too bad, because pockets of experimental sounds — from Santa Cruz, California, to Montague, Massachusetts — continue to challenge and imbue eardrums. A perfect example is Look…
It’s funny how trends turn in terms of the cool becoming passé and the unspeakably lame becoming “the shit.” For first-wave punks, guitar solos were as voguish as a Three’s Company T-shirt; the ascendance of Meat Puppets and Dinosaur Jr. made nimble-fingered six-string aerobics stylish again. Generations of indie-rock aesthetes…
Though there is no shortage of young, angst-ridden musicians with angst-ridden tales to tell, ultimately, the power of a story is in its telling — a notion that puts Dave Smallen, the brains and emotion behind Oakland’s Street to Nowhere, at the top of his game. Comparisons to Bright Eyes’…
Santa Cruz’s Comets on Fire. D.C.’s Dead Meadow. Japan’s Ghost. Add Atlanta’s Deerhunter to the list. With the summer of ’07 fast approaching, a new slew of bands is channeling the ghosts of the Summer of Love, 40 years after the original hippie counterculture movement. Like their parents in the…
Yes, it’s been too long since ZZ Top has made a song half as brilliant as “La Grange” or “Tube Snake Boogie.” But if classic rock has taught us anything, and we both know it has, it’s that it doesn’t matter if an old band’s new stuff isn’t fit to…
Even though Camp Crystal Lake ain’t anywhere near P-Town, the dance demons of ClixBagofTricks and Mafiatic will channel the teen-slashing spirit of Jason Voorhees for their latest raucous rave event, My Friend Jason’s House. The horrifying all-night hootenanny on Friday, April 13 (natch), sounds like something the hockey mask-clad killer…
If national elections are the government’s way of dicking you over every four years, Tax Day is its way of making sure you don’t forget who has the biggest dick every year. Of course, if you’re a musician — especially if you’re a rock star and, therefore, predisposed to civil…
The new CD by local industrial metal band The Iris sounds like a sonic blueprint for a band that’s finding its sound, and getting hotter by the minute. But the blueprint isn’t new — Marilyn Manson, Deftones, and a dozen other bands drew it. What’s great about The Vanity Fair…
We’ve been on a roll with the weekday party circuit, so Club Candids decided to make a humpday run for one of Tempe’s favorite neighborhood drinking digs, Casey Moore’s, on Wednesday, April 4. We can always count on this old standby for attractive twentysomethings looking to unwind on a school…
