Born in Chicago, Bad Boy Bill grew up on hip-hop as well as dance music. There in the hotbed of house, he listened to Farley Jackmaster Funk of WBMX’s Hot Mix Five, the area’s legendary DJ team. Funk had one of the first house singles to chart (a cover of…
Screw the Crüe — for our money, the single most iconic moment of the ’80s sleaze-metal era is that scene in The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years in which belligerent W.A.S.P. guitarist Chris Holmes floats in a swimming pool in full stage leather, swearing and dumping…
When Tucson’s The Bled recorded their first full-length for Fiddler Records, Pass the Flask, vocalist James Muñoz had just replaced the band’s former singer and had mere days to familiarize himself with the songs. Nonetheless, Pass the Flask was a masterpiece of screaming, growling heaviness, a blend of mathematical metal,…
With most new bands trying to hit platinum their first time out, you rarely see acts develop over the course of several albums anymore — either you’re huge or you’re gone. This sad fact is yet another reason to enjoy the twists and turns of the White Stripes, who have…
Every Time I Die isn’t a hardcore band — at least, it isn’t anymore. On Gutter Phenomenon, the Buffalo band adopts a much more straightforward rock sound in tracks like the heavy “Tusk and Temper.” ETID exemplifies hardcore’s roots in punk rock as well, keeping things high-speed and gritty (the…
Fans expecting more crushing feedback, pile-driver drumming and arty, late-’90s-style British bluster will be shocked by the quiet, introspective vibe BRMC displays on its third outing. There’s plenty of overdubbing — Autoharp, congas, piano, organ, drums and electric-guitar noise — but the mix has an unplugged feel that leaves the…
You could almost touch the hesitation when people finally got an earful of Electric Version, the New Pornographers’ 2003 follow-up to their instantly canonized debut. An “It’s-Good-But” record if ever there was one, Version was easy to defend but difficult to love, a record that demanded a little more than…
Gogol Bordello, New York’s only Ukrainian Gypsy punk band, has a planetary musical vision. The band’s strong Ukrainian roots — evidenced by the furious accordion work of Yuri Lemeshev and the mad fiddling of Sergey Rjabtzev — are augmented by morsels of reggae, flamenco, Balkan wedding music, heavy metal guitar…
Everybody Rise! demonstrates that as surely as a band can lose its mojo — usually when the recording budget is high, along with the burden of expectation — it can find it again. Free from the snooty art class that Sub Pop has become, the Makers return to the winking…
Oasis Don’t Believe the Truth Source: eBay Price: $3.75 + $1.50 S&H Thriftin’ ain’t just about sticking it to the man; it’s about giving second chances to artists you’d given up on because there’s a considerable discount involved. Most Yanks wrote these unibrows off after the overstuffed Be Here Now…
In 2002, while holding court in his office overlooking NYC’s Madison Square Park, David Barker — a friendly young Englishman editing a series of chapbooks on contemporary American fiction — decided it might be nice to produce a set of books fixated not on individual novels, but on individual albums…
Here in the ‘Nix, we’re not known as a hotbed for mainstream hip-hop — we’re an indie hip-hop town, with a packed schedule of weekly club events and frequent visits from crews like the Shapeshifters. That’s going to change in the near future, thanks to the imminent migration of Proof,…
Attention, shoppers: You can forget about parking in the shade, at least when you’re headed for Metrocenter. Despite Karen Bauernschmidt’s best efforts, the west-side mall recently axed more than 300 trees (most of them eucalyptus) growing in its expansive parking lot, a move that Bauernschmidt, a radical environmentalist, tried to…
On a sweltering Sunday night in mid-July, the Pussycat Lounge in Old Town Scottsdale is crawling with twentysomethings pounding shots of Patrón and sipping mojitos. A no-kill animal shelter is trying to raise money tonight by pimping a swimsuit calendar filled with local models in bikinis. Clearly, this crowd is…
In the weeks leading up to last September’s Republican primary election for sheriff, challenger Dan Saban predicted that someday someone inside Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s inner circle would disclose damaging information that would end Arpaio’s political career. Might that day soon arrive? Federal prosecutors now have a rare opportunity to obtain…
Carlos Batts is a big-deal Los Angeles-based photographer who, since the mid-1990s, has shot models for fashion spreads, rock and rap bands for CD covers, and hot gals for sex magazines. Hustler, NBC and Skechers have all used his work to inject a dash of edgy alterna-cool to their image…
Art photography doesn’t get its due. Because everyone has a camera, most people figure taking art photos is as easy as pointing the lens at something, uh, arty, and pushing the shutter button. We’re a bit skeptical of art photographers because we think they aren’t as skilled as someone who…
Can you imagine The Knack as a death metal band? We didn’t think so, either, until we heard The Number 12 Looks Like You’s cover of the late ’70s New Wavers’ classic “My Sharona.” After experiencing The Number 12’s guttural growling followed by the chorus’ cheesy, high-pitched “woo!”, we knew…
THU 11 Since Arizona seems to get more transplants than strippers get implants, why not reward out-of-staters for coming to our broiling desert metropolis with some cold, cheap drinks? Every Thursday, Daisy Dukes, 222 East University Drive in Tempe, plays host to “Transplant” — a drinking game that epitomizes random…
1. Led Zeppelin, Houses of the Holy (Atlantic) 2. The Beatles, The Beatles (The White Album) (Apple) 3. Cream, Fresh Cream/Disraeli Gears (Atco) 4. Black Sabbath, Paranoid (Warner Bros.) 5. The Who, Who’s Next (Decca) 6. David Bowie, Ziggy Stardust (RCA) 7. Jimi Hendrix, Electric Ladyland (Reprise) 8. The Beatles,…
Thursday 11 Acme Roadhouse: College Night with DJ J. Alan (Top 40) Ain’t Nobody’s Bizness: DJ Suzy (hip-hop, dance) Anderson’s Fifth Estate: Area 51 with AKA (gothic, industrial) Axis/Radius: Ladies’ Night (dance) AZ 88: DJ P-Body (jazz fusion, funk) Barcelona: DJ Rob (dance) Dos Gringos — Scottsdale: Block Party with…
Anyone paying attention knows that punk bands are in a Zelig-like state of national confusion. So if Scandinavians can sound like Detroit rockers and the Japanese can capture British hardcore, then what seems so perverse about an L.A. band that embodies Boston street-punk? Maybe it’s just our familiarity with American…
