I’m in the back of Louis XIV’s tour bus as the San Diego group’s front man Jason Hill is knocking out a new composition on acoustic guitar on the couch next to me, something with the refrain, “I don’t want to be a fool no more.” I wait politely for…
THU 4 Swedish music exports never go out of style, whether we’re talking old-school staples like ABBA, or new-school buzz bands like the Jessica Fletchers. Another up-and-coming Swedish outfit, Blindside, will play the Abandon Video Benefit Show at the Clubhouse Music Venue, 1320 East Broadway Road in Tempe, on Thursday,…
Thursday 4Anderson’s Fifth Estate: Area 51 with AKA (gothic, industrial) Axis/Radius: Ladies’ Night (dance) Barcelona: DJ Rob (dance) Dos Gringos — Scottsdale: Block Party with DJ Sterling (all genres) Draft House: DJ Dave outta NYC (hip-hop) Garcia’s: Latin Dance Night (Spanish rock/pop, reggaeton, cumbia) Hard Rock Cafe: Skandilis (Latin) Hidden…
A former pro surfer before a collision with a reef led him to reconsider his options, Jack Johnson got a great jump-start penning “Rodeo Clowns” with G. Love on a beach one weekend in 1999. Like Love, Johnson favors simmering acoustic-folk with a jazzy R&B undercurrent. The Hawaii native’s honeyed…
Apparently, no one told CKY it’s dangerous to hate on your boss. Or maybe someone did and CKY just doesn’t give a fuck. Either way, that’s just what the Pennsylvania band does. In their audacious, straightforward rock ‘n’ roll style, the instigators in CKY make a point to tell everyone…
8/5-8/7 Science-fiction conventions attract the city’s geeks and freaks faster than you can say “dungeon master.” The largest gaming convention in Arizona, HexaCon 15, runs the gaming gamut from old-school Dungeons & Dragons adventures to Pokémon and Harry Potter. For a mere $25, wage head-to-head cyber wars, purchase a used…
SAT 8/6If cheering on 60 bowling teams raising money for animal welfare charities sounds like a tame way to spend a day, you haven’t been to the Pets911 Bowl-A-Rama, staging its third annual event Saturday, August 6, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the AMF Shea Village Lanes, 10870…
TUE 8/9Sammy Hagar’s career spans 30 years, including 10 years with Van Halen. “The Red Rocker’s” biggest solo hit, “I Can’t Drive 55,” was released in 1984, which begs the question: When is he going to update the lyrics to reflect current speed limits? “I changed the song,” Hagar tells…
WED 8/10As an artist who’s been kicking around the Phoenix art scene for more than 20 years, Stephen Michael Barnes has had his fill of noisy Art Detours. “I’ve been to art exhibitions where there’s a lot of wine and cheese and crowds, but you really can’t see the art,”…
For the three ladies at the helm of local image and styling consulting company Sophistikatz, the grand opening of the Sophistikatz Boutique on Friday, August 5, isn’t just a new notch in the Phoenix fashion scene: It’s a family affair. Business manager Muizzah “Mo” Carman, marketing director Iman Whitmore and…
Even if all you know about lowrider culture is limited to that Burger King drive-through commercial featuring a pair of young white employees pogo-ing to pass off a bag of burgers to a hydraulics-pumping Chevy, and that song by War from 1975, Johnny Lozoya wants you. “A lot of Anglos…
Toward the end of Saraband, the uneven new film from legendary director Ingmar Bergman, a character sits down with his daughter, a taut girl who is obviously undergoing emotional distress. “I have the feeling that some sort of discussion is coming on,” he says. Indeed it is — as it…
So how about those suburbs, eh? Boy, they sure do suck. All full of bored teens, inattentive parents, alcoholic housewives, middle-aged guys who suddenly realize they’ve been wasting their lives, and lots of mind-numbing psychoactive drugs. Also, people who live there are conformist! Why, someone really oughta make a movie…
The contentedly independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch has brought his restless energy to a series of surreal road movies that move nicely along on the strength of rare characters, quirky humor, and a willing embrace of chance adventure. These quest stories for hipsters have transported Jarmusch’s fiercely loyal audience from New…
And so, once more, the googolplex emits the stink of the network rerun, this week offering yet another worthless big-screen take on small-screen detritus. As Hollywood wonders — cries, actually, over spilt spoiled milk — why audiences are staying away from theaters, offering theories ranging from the absence of such…
You may not know his name, but Tony Moran has been a staple of the dance and pop scenes for years, having worked with mainstream artists like the Beach Boys, George Michael, Janet Jackson, and even Britney. These days, he focuses on working behind the turntables in the DJ booth,…
Pelican is the Mars Volta for metalheads. It’s transcendent, complex and experimental. Unlike the Mars Volta, however, Pelican’s music flows so smoothly, a vocalist isn’t necessary to help the listener navigate the intricate aural landscape created by these four Chicago men. After inking with Hydrahead Records (Isis, Pig Destroyer), the…
The year was 2000. I Am Shelby Lynne, the singer-songwriter’s declaration of independence after a career of genre-hopping and commercial frustration, had finally established her soulful, sultry country persona. At last, she didn’t need to listen to the charts or the label heads anymore — she was her own woman,…
If we didn’t have a certain amount of column space to fill, we’d just let Dance Disaster Movement’s name stand as everything you need to know about the band. You can dance to it, natch, you can wiggle and frug to the skittering, propulsive beats and bristling hooks. It’s a…
This Avenue of the Arts MC may have shortened his moniker to Anglo-Saxon, but you can still call him Ill Al — he sure lives up to the name with incredible rhymes on his new disc, Unplug, which is being jointly released by two up-and-coming local indie labels, Grave 9…
You could file Danny Barnes’ new album under folk, blues, old time, alt-country or gospel, but there isn’t a single category that defines his free-flowing acoustic alchemy. Barnes’ sparse banjo picking, and the high lonesome fiddling of Brittany Haas, makes the Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” sound like an ancient…
All hail Lester Bangs! Bow down to the chosen critical few who light our way through the caverns of music. For there is an upstart we have let slide for far too long, but who we will indulge no longer. Source, here is your critical fatwa! Source, you have been…
