SAT 9/3In the ’60s, if you caught people leaving a rock concert and asked how the show was, they might have answered with something like, “Man, that three-hour version of ‘White Rabbit’ was totally groovy!” But in the “here today, gone today” world of modern rock and short attention spans,…
9/3-12/31Designer Michael Graves (of Target teakettle fame) cemented his household-word status in 1979, when he participated in the “Tea and Coffee Piazza” project sponsored by Italian design house Alessi. The next wave, “Tea and Coffee Towers,” visits the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art beginning Saturday, September 3. Architects from 11…
SAT 9/3Wieners go great with mustard. Or ketchup. Or . . . racing stripes? Proud owners of pintsize pups pounded the pavement over the past few months, digging up donations for Arizona Adopt-A-Greyhound. The 32 top fund-raising dogs face off in the 2005 Wiener Dog Nationals on Saturday, September 3,…
9/2-9/30Looking at Gidget Gein’s art is like recognizing an old friend in a crowd and joyfully running up to greet him, only to be appalled by the huge new tumor sticking out of his side. The former bassist for shock-rocker Marilyn Manson, Gein will unveil his new artwork in an…
Tommy Nuñez knows that if you put 600 players in an amateur basketball tournament, there’s going to be some major machismo in the air — especially if all of the players are Hispanic. “There’s a lot of pride,” says Nuñez, who runs the Phoenix-based National Hispanic Basketball Classic. “They’re intense…
Somehow, there’s nothing offensive about, say, Barry Manilow’s oeuvre being transformed into a big, shiny musical. In fact, it just plain made sense when one of Manilow’s nelly pop songs became a musical comedy called Barry Manilow’s Copacabana — starring The Phantom of the Opera’s Frank D’Ambrosio and The Love…
The questing hero of Hans Petter Moland’s The Beautiful Country is a slender, big-eyed young man named Binh (California-educated Damien Nguyen), who has little going for him but his obsession. Ostracized in his homeland because he’s the offspring of a Vietnamese mother and an American G.I. father — bui doi,…
Many of those who saw the Disney superhero spoof Sky High were impressed by the debut of Steven Strait. Playing the brooding school bully Warren Peace, who hurls fireballs at our heroes before showing his more sensitive and heroic side, Strait displayed a moody rock-star charisma and an impressive range…
Remember Nick Cannon? For a while there, he seemed to be the next big young heartthrob, right after starring in the marching-band movie Drumline and the remake of the ’80s comedy Love Don’t Co$t a Thing. When Dave Chappelle joked that his son was leaving him for Nick Cannon, people…
Viewers of those VH1 nostalgia countdown shows are familiar with the term “awesomely bad,” denoting a song that one hates to love because it’s unintentionally tacky and awful, yet there’s something about it that won’t let you dismiss it entirely. It’s also a fine way to describe The Cave, but…
At the opening of The Constant Gardener, Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles’ adaptation of the novel by John le Carr, we hear a conversation before we see it. The screen remains black, still running credits, as a man and a woman negotiate a departure. Slowly, the scene dawns, revealing the couple…
Who needs freakin’ DJs anyway? Unless they’re scratching, beat juggling, or throwing down mash-ups, they’re just playing songs — you know what you wanna listen to better than they do, right? If you think so, and you’re bourgeois enough to own an iPod, bring it down to AZ 88 on…
Besides the White Stripes, the Volebeats might be the best band the Motor City has to offer. Like the Jayhawks drenched in reverb, they make classic folk-rock that’s part Everly Brothers harmonies and part Byrdsian 12-string jangle. Firm believers in quality over quantity, the Volebeats have released only six proper…
If hip-hop is dead, somebody forgot to tell Little Brother. The North Carolina-based affiliates of the Justus League crew have gone from regional up-and-comers to nationally recognized stars, aided by the well-deserved critical acclaim for their ABB Records debut, The Listening, and producer 9th Wonder’s work on Jay-Z’s Black Album…
These Scots seem destined to be the U.K.’s odd men out, a fate that’s tragic but fitting. Unlike conquering heroes Coldplay, this quintet wears a disgruntled sense of defeat even in its most defiant moments, such as on 2000’s melodic, punkish 100 Broken Windows. Since Windows’ failure to break the…
What Death Cab for Cutie does best on its major-label debut, Plans, is capture flashbulb moments of melancholy — the dissolution of a summer romance, growing apart from a lover, being dumped by an egotistical jerk — and analyze them with astounding honesty. Take the tear-inducing “What Sarah Said.” Solitary…
Veda’s hometown of Kansas City was immediately sold on its early sound — a soaring, loose, emo-operatic, naked-soul-baring tidal wave fit for washing over today’s tragic versions of when Andrew McCarthy met Molly Ringwald. Most endearing of all was Kristen May’s trained voice, applied with tearful precision to the drifting,…
Anyone silly enough to believe that music journalism is populated exclusively by deep thinkers will be quickly disabused of the notion after thumbing through the Jucifer clip file. Most articles about the combo mention that it sprang from the same Athens, Georgia, scene that produced R.E.M. — an act that…
The lifeblood of ska has always been struggle and adversity of some sort. Songs like Desmond Dekker’s “007 (Shanty Town)” and Dandy Livingstone’s “A Message to You Rudy” embody the hardships of unemployed Rude Boy youths of 1960s Jamaica turning to a life of crime to survive, while The Specials’…
One stands, one sits! Both sing, rock and overextend themselves! It’s a simple winning concept that every minimalist duo without a bass player has employed to great personal gain, but few have excelled with greater zeal for multi-tasking and whimsy like James Karnes and Chris Pomerenke. Living on opposite ends…
Here’s a cultural riddle: Take an icon of a major pop movement and pretend the movement never happened: Ice Cube without gangsta rap, Ken Kesey without LSD, John Lydon without punk. What’s left? Would we ever even have heard of these guys? Like Lydon, Joe Strummer rose with punk and…
If you’ve ever wondered why there are so many cryptic jabs at Arizona on The Simpsons — from Homer’s nixing of a Grand Canyon State vacation (“Arizona smells funny!”) to Ned Flanders’ unforgettable decree, “Looks like Heaven’s easier to get into than Arizona State” — a proclamation from Governor Janet…
