“Pure devastation” is how the boys in local screamo outfit Greeley Estates jokingly describe their band on the mini-documentary “The Life of Greeley Estates,” included on this recently released DVD. While they certainly have some devastating riffage, Greeley’s live songs included here are more remarkable for their affability. Crowds of…
The swamp cooler: water + electric fan = cool air. It’s a device as minimal as the desert landscape itself, and it entered American popular culture right here in Arizona. It’s as key to the classic Phoenix tableau as saguaros, ranch houses and retirees. Swampers are about leaving the door…
Whenever I visit The Gelato Spot, that new purveyor of Italian “ice cream” across from Zen 32 at 32nd Street and Camelback Road, I’m often reminded of that classic short story by Irwin Shaw, “The Girls in Their Summer Dresses.” It’s the one where this Gotham couple gets into a…
Thursday 2Acme Roadhouse: College Night with DJ J. Alan (Top 40) Anderson’s Fifth Estate: Area 51 with AKA (gothic, industrial) Draft House: DJ Dave outta NYC (dance) Exit Seven: DJ Martin Soliz (dance) Garcia’s: Latin Dance Night (Spanish rock/pop, reggaeton, cumbia) Hidden House: The Shop Redux (dance) Lagerfields: DJ L-Ectric…
The lineup for Phoenix Fest is damn good, but there is something you must know. This is not the show to kick back at the bar with a beer. You will be lonely in the 21-and-over section. Tough hardcore band Embrace Today is leading new legions of straight-edge kids with…
There are always some old-school characters at local hardcore punk shows (think Northside Kings) telling the youngsters how it was back in the day, how much better the pits were in the prime years of Agnostic Front and Sick of It All. However, this is one show where those types…
If language were a virus, then L.A. rapper Aceyalone would be one of the sickest men ever to touch a mic. Whether pioneering the art of modern freestyle in the late ’80s as part of Freestyle Fellowship or releasing classic underground albums such as ’98’s A Book of Human Language…
Simplicity is a profound doorway. Two trips to Cameroon during college inspired Denver native Corey Harris so much that he set his course for a life of blues. The influence of his travels seeped into every second of Mississippi to Mali, a gorgeous minimalist recording reconnecting this sonic tradition created…
Dogg Show Reefer madness: I absolutely loved your Snoop Dogg cover. It was a beautiful piece of art! Plus it was funny to see Kreme cowering in the corner [of the cover page] in awe of Mr. Doggy Dogg and his harem. And the Inferno column itself was very funny…
Like Houston MC Mike Jones says, if you don’t grind, you don’t shine, so the bisexual Eva Green and her cohort (that would be me) always make the scene, even when our funds are tight. As this has been the case of late, Jett and I have been on the…
Spoken Here By Mark Abley Mariner, $14 Schlepping Through the Alps By Sam Apple Ballantine, $23.95 Wrong About Japan By Peter Carey Knopf, $17.95 The 8:55 to Baghdad By Andrew Eames Overlook, $24.95 You Can’t Get There From Here By Gayle Forman Rodale, $23.95 A Continent for the Taking By…
FRI 6/3Andrew Lockwood discovered he wasn’t the performer he fancied himself as part of the local bands Velveteen Dream and the Heartgraves. “When the Heartgraves disintegrated, I decided I needed to go in another direction,” Lockwood says, “and to very specifically stop trying to rock. Rocking is for people who…
FRI 6/3Dear Cubicle Drone,We are pleased with your interest in The Raethier Corp and our latest event, Corposition, at 6 p.m. Friday, June 3, at Lumbre Metal Gallery, 925 Grand Avenue. Robert Kilman, a cog in our collective art machine, has reviewed your vitals and determined your “current condition of…
FRI 6/3Kick the ball! Kick some ass! In this heat, they’ll never last! That’s what we’re hoping, at least, when the Vancouver Whitecaps come down from cooler climates to take on our own Arizona Heatwave in the Women’s United Soccer League’s Western Division. The game, which takes place Friday, June…
6/3-6/4Most of us can’t chalk up our blunders to “all the drugs we did in the ’60s.” Deadheads under the age of 50 have had to acknowledge that “acid” today is more strychnine than LSD, and since their parents did all the good drugs, they have no excuse for the…
She jokes about giving blowjobs to rescue workers after 9/11. She jokes about the myth of the vaunted G-spot. She even jokes about being fisted. But it isn’t comedienne Margaret Cho’s brash sexual jokes that have conservative groups protesting. Cho, a self-professed liberal, will be flying in to fill Dodge…
Jerry Springer wishes he could get into the Arizona Fetish Prom. After all, there’s going to be enough subculture action going on that he’d have material for his show for the next 10 years. But unless Springer springs for a leather g-string, he’d look really out of place. “We’re going…
Ten is a magical age, when kids are old enough to make articulate statements about their experience and young enough to express their feelings without shame. In a couple of years, excitement will go the way of the bag lunch and become uncool, and acceptable poses will shrink to a…
Layer Cake, the new British crime drama from first-time director Matthew Vaughn, is a block of granite struggling to liberate the statue inside it. Vaughn (producer of Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) has plenty of dark threat and compelling visual style, but his ambitious trip into the…
Lords of Dogtown is an odd, disorienting commodity — a fictional version of a documentary (Dogtown and Z-Boys) about the birth of skateboarding in 1970s Venice, California, that was written by the man who directed said doc, in which he was a central figure. Stacy Peralta, whose Dogtown and Z-Boys…
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is a flawed movie born of a flawed novel, but let this be clear: Girls will eat it up with a spoon. It features three young stars, indulges in rampant romantic fantasy, drips with teary-eyed sentimentality, and pays a heapload of lip service to…
There was no reason to expect much from Cinderella Man, Ron Howard’s biography of boxer James Braddock, who in the summer of 1935 became the most unlikely heavyweight champion in the history of boxing. After all, it’s a true tale whose outcome has been predetermined; surely there could be no…
