It should come as no surprise that the hero and heroine of the new Michael Bay action extravaganza are clones. Exact copies of other people. You don’t get to be a Hollywood hitmeister like Bay — 200 Zillion Tickets Sold! — without indulging in formulas, and the characters Star Wars…
Murderball is a gem of a little film, one that’s at very least worth renting in its inevitable DVD release. It’s also one of the most over-hyped indies of the season. It won a couple of awards at Sundance — the Audience Choice prize and another for editing — and…
If I were not duty-bound to visit a restaurant more than once before reviewing it, I never would have returned to Scottsdale’s Tapas after my initial, disastrous visit. There were even a couple of points during the evening when my companion and I seriously discussed walking out. Mostly, this occurred…
It’s a morbid business, but most practical editors in the journalism racket have a folder filled with pre-written obituaries all ready to go for seriously ill, soon-to-be-departed public figures of import. John Prine undoubtedly found his way into some of those folders in 1998, when he was stricken with cancer…
If they really wanted to bring tantrum suppression to an amphitheater near you, they might’ve added The Game or Jah Rule or Triumph the Insult Dog to the bill. But this is more like a Rap Pack love fest, with Eminem most certainly Chairman of the Board, crunked-up Lil Jon…
There’s a never-ending supply of the young, loud and snotty picking through the rock trash heap, but the legions of glam punk godfathers are few. While many of his peers lived fast and died young — or simply settled into comfortable obscurity — singer and guitarist Jeff Dahl has maintained…
For the past 10 years, Bob Mould has been busy battling tinnitus, paying the bills by writing TV scripts for professional wrestling (!), and indulging a newfound passion for club music. With Body of Song, he returns from the wilderness to hard, passionate pop-rock — though he’s blissfully indifferent to…
Considering that son simply means “song,” one can imagine a wide definition. Indeed, this homegrown Cuban music developed from numerous styles more than a century ago, though most featured the defining tres (a guitar with three sets of equally tuned strings). If that instrument is the definitive sound, Sierra Maestra…
Like the comforting inevitability of nature’s cycles, Fruit Bats’ Eric Johnson returns every two years with more woodsy acoustic numbers that crawl out of the underbrush to feel the warmth of the sun. Spelled in Bones continues to revel in pastoral delights, but Johnson gives the new album a little…
You don’t ordinarily expect to find a young white woman from San Francisco digging deep into the heart of Crunk Country. But Tamara Palmer did just that in the course of researching her new book, Country Fried Soul: Adventures in Dirty South Hip-Hop, which includes interviews with such playas, impresarios,…
“You want road stories?” says Alfie Lucero, lead singer and bass player in the six-year-old Phoenix rock band Redfield, sharing some after-work drinks with the rest of the quartet at the George & Dragon pub on South 48th Street. “Oh, man! Where do we begin?” Mike Sandoval, the big, hulking…
b royalty, 37, painter, day-care artist and self- proclaimed mediocre violinist, says she paints “to make me visible to myself.” Visible to the rest of us are her enormous talents, via the oil-and-collage paintings that have brought her almost instant recognition in the fickle art world. Royalty’s texture-heavy, color-saturated paintings…
Screw Willy Wonka. Colin Redding is our very own chocolate wizard, a man with his own candy factory who’s willing to make a 40-foot dildo out of chocolate (although he’d rather not). He’s even pulling a Wonka by sneaking golden tickets into chocolate bars sold at Changing Hands Bookstore (ticket…
As a little girl growing up in Ferndale, Washington, miles from the bustle of big-city Seattle, Terra Naeve couldn’t understand why all the other kids went to church and her family didn’t. And so at 8-year-old Terra’s insistence, her family started attending the little Lutheran church in town. And they…
Gina Niedzwiecki was thrilled to learn of the Maricopa County grand jury indictment and July 11 arrest of Valley “divorce mediator” Gary Karpin. “I’m gleeful, to put it mildly,” says Niedzwiecki, a Phoenix single mother of two who suffers from multiple sclerosis. “I’d like to think that stepping up and…
1. Felt, Felt, Vol. 2: A Tribute to Lisa Bonet (Rhymesayers) 2. Manic Hispanic, Grupo Sexo (BYO Records) 3. 3 Melancholy Gypsies, Grand Caravan to the Rim of the World (Legendary Music) 4. The Regulations, The Regulations (Havoc) 5. Look Back and Laugh, Look Back and Laugh (Lengua Armada) 6…
Ever been to one of those Vietnamese nail salons and wondered if the woman pumicing your heel is talking about you to the other nail techs? She probably is, and she’s probably not complimenting your dainty, fragrant feet. Life imitated Seinfeld on a recent Monday morning at K Desert Nail…
THU 14 You pretend you’re joking around, trying to be funny by singing “The Greatest Love of All” at karaoke. But your friends can tell by the spirited way you grind out, “They can’t take away my dignity!” that you’re serious about this singing thing. So why not take a…
1. Gorillaz, Demon Days (Virgin) 2. Coldplay, X&Y (Capitol) 3. Black Eyed Peas, Monkey Business (A&M) 4. Foo Fighters, In Your Honor (RCA) 5. Various Artists, Look At All the Love We Found: A Tribute to Sublime (Cornerstone) 6. System of a Down, Mezmerize (Sony) 7. Dredg, Catch Without Arms…
Thursday 14 Ain’t Nobody’s Bizness: DJ Suzy (hip-hop, dance) Anderson’s Fifth Estate: Area 51 with AKA (gothic, industrial) Axis/Radius: Axis Idol (dance) Barcelona: DJ Rob (dance) Draft House: DJ Dave outta NYC (hip-hop) E-Lounge: DJ Domenica (high energy dance) Garcia’s: Latin Dance Night (Spanish rock/pop, reggaeton, cumbia) Hard Rock Cafe:…
“The voices of hardcore and metal will be heard,” warns the Living Dead-themed official Web site of this tour. And while things won’t go quite as long as dawn, the show will get under way at the ungodly hour of 11 a.m., when most of us are zombies even with…
Calling John Hiatt a songwriter’s songwriter makes it sound like people don’t like him. People do — they’re just not as demonstrative as Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, Bonnie Raitt, Willie Nelson, Iggy Pop and Bruce Springsteen, all of whom have paid the ultimate compliment by covering a John Hiatt song…
