Russell Sepulveda wears a cowboy hat and sings with a twang. His songs leave room for pedal-steel-guitar breaks, and his bands–both of ’em–cover C&W tunes by the likes of Buck Owens and Gram Parsons. Sound like a country boy? Not quite. “Country music today is so far from its roots,”…
God knows what I was thinking. I’m no rap fan, I hate Candlebox, and I hate sports. I know even less about sports than I know about music. Yet for some reason, I allowed myself to be talked into going to that live MTV/All-Star broadcast thing at America West Arena…
What’s an O.J. junkie to do? That rascally Judge Ito recessed the Simpson trial for four days, and it looked like a long weekend, indeed, until I found myself at Phoenix Theatre’s immensely satisfying production of To Kill a Mockingbird. There is something inherently dramatic about trials: two sides in…
“Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!” When this magic mantra rings out across the land on Friday, it won’t be the sound of Judge Lance Ito admonishing the head prosecution lawyer in the O.J. Simpson trial. Instead, that’s the catch phrase du jour that’ll be echoing around another big, mysterious cultural phenomenon America…
Suzzane Rivera knows people look at her funny sometimes. Maybe they feel threatened, think they see a hard-core gang member. She says to herself: Go ahead. Get a good look. See the bandanna, the proud tattoos, the dangling crucifix. I may surprise you. She sees the impressions form behind those…
As Jerry Colangelo’s major league baseball bandwagon rolls on, seemingly unabated, a small pack of stadium-tax foes continues to give chase, yelping like bloodthirsty poodles. Now, however, one segment of the opposition wants to wage economic warfare. A group known as Taxpayers Against Corporate Welfare has announced a sales-tax boycott…
For 15 years, Linda Hayes had the mettle to toil as an ironworker at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station. She was there in 1980, when construction on the plant was just beginning. By 1985, she was doing major overhaul work on the three nuclear generators when they were shut…
Greg and Bernadette Johnson started looking in March of 1994. The two had some scratches and dings on their credit records but had been working diligently for some time to pay off their bills. Greg had just changed jobs after working at one company for years. When Greg got back…
Middle East Shift: One of my favorite mom-and-pop eating and grocery spots, Yusef’s, at 15238 North Cave Creek Road in Phoenix, has changed hands. The former proprietor, sensing the possibility of peace and prosperity, is thinking of returning to his native Jordan. Let’s hope the new owners keep up the…
The Wolfgang Press Funky Little Demons (4AD) Cranky Little Demons might be a more appropriate description. Showing the equivalent of an extraterrestial’s grasp on what makes music soulful and thus funky, Wolfgang Press spews lyrical references to Motown on the first two cuts and lifts the chorus from the Four…
The first film by New Zealander Peter Jackson to gain much notice here was last year’s Dead Alive. This frenzied, farcical splatter parody, about people turned into cannibalistic zombies through the bite of the dreaded Sumatran rat monkey, was like a cinematic coup de grce–it was so revoltingly, yet hilariously,…
Last week I became a member of that select group of people who can claim to have received a telephone call from the Jerky Boys. Lucky me. Also known as Johnny Brennan and Kamal, the two Queens, New York, natives were in town to promote their bold effort to move…
The box is full; time once again to throw the tapes in the machine and let the opinions spew out. But first, this: Apologies to Spinning Jenny; the title of the band’s new CD is not Piata Full of Beans (as I wrote last week), but Piata Full of Bees…
Let us now perform a general dissection of the various forms of rock ‘n’ roll music being performed in the Valley of the Sun. There are the pop guitars on Mill Avenue that go jingle jangle jingle; there is the bouffant metal of Phoenix; you’ve got your neohippie groove funk;…
A frog? “Yeah,” confirms Emo, tour manager for G. Love and Special Sauce, “last night they played so long, somebody threw a frog up onstage.” A live frog? “No” he says, voice turning thoughtful over the phone. “They must have brought it from a high school or something. It was…
The first movie I ever saw was the epic drama Blood and Sand. Tyrone Power played the dashing Manolete, the greatest bullfighter who ever lived. With the dramatic flourish of a spangled cape, Arizona Theatre Company is presenting the world premiäre of Milcha Sanchez-Scott’s The Old Matador on the main…
Hosanna! Hallelujah! Hooray! The Herberger has a hit! We have been told that by acquiring a major league baseball franchise, Phoenix will become one of America’s premier cities. Until now, sunny Phoenix has languished in the shadows of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, San Diego and Minneapolis–not…
Hi, NBA fans! I’m Chuck Barkley, and I own this town. New Times asked me to do this guide for the folks who are pouring in to Phoenix for the big All-Star show. Hope you dig it. Party hard, and don’t spit on anyone! EAST VAN BUREN STREET For those…
James Dunham cringed while he was watching the film Wyatt Earp last year. Well, so did a lot of other people, but mostly they were film lovers appalled by Kevin Costner’s performance. Dunham was covering his eyes because of the historical inaccuracies he saw perpetrated onscreen. One was particularly close…
On Christmas Eve 1992, at the advanced age of 64, Carlos Contreras hiccupped for the first time in his life. Sixteen months, four dozen doctor visits, thousands of dollars in medical bills and more than two and a half million hiccups later, the retired Phoenix postal service employee was still…
On weekends, the big dirt parking lot next to Pinnacle Peak Patio, a cowboy restaurant in distant North Scottsdale, is usually filled with the cars and trucks of climbers, who rope themselves up Pinnacle Peak, and the mountain bikers, who pedal the single-track trails through the neighboring hills. Last Saturday,…
From where he stood on the ridge, Ron Day could hear the hounds baying as they lined out on a scent, and he could make out the hunter on his mule ambling across the rocky meadows behind the dogs. He didn’t expect to see the mountain lion they were trailing,…
