Best I could tell from months of listening without a lyric sheet — thank you, Internet — this second disc from the kin of itinerant evangelist Leon Followill had something (okay, everything) to do with fuckin’. You could hear it in singer Caleb Followill’s delivery, the greasy whine of the…
Ahhh, free pornography. I’m happily back on the grid and into the glaring free light of the digital world now that broadband Internet service has returned to my home office. Free to download 20-second sample video clips off a billion girlie sites, or pull them from others’ computers with peer-to-peer…
Some things only get better with age. Looking back at the 10th annual New Times Music Showcase, which shook up Tempe’s Mill Avenue last Sunday, April 17, it’s clear that local music fans have not only made the event a tradition, but stepped up their support more than ever. With…
I knew it was going to be a long night when Koko! The Island Adventures of Miss Koko Neufchatel began with the show’s lone actor dragging a couple of audience members onto the stage to wish them happy birthday. Note to local directors: Theater is not Chuck E. Cheese’s, and…
“George,” I hear my stepfather, Nick, say to me in my mind, as I ride to the Phoenix Film Festival with my friend Maria, “your SAG card and a token will get you on the subway!” The more I think of this as I sit crunched into Maria’s tiny little…
Even before its publication, Phoenix author Martha Beck’s Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith was causing cramps among Latter-day Saints around the globe. In the memoir, Beck, a life coach and columnist for O, The Oprah Magazine, depicts sacred Mormon ceremonies and accuses her…
Here’s the lowdown on one of the latest scams to put local taxpayer money into the pockets of billion-dollar corporations. This is a tale that starts 33 years ago in a small town in Missouri and will hopefully end on May 17 when Mesa voters cast their ballots in the…
Spring is coming, and buds now speckle the granite gray woods of southeastern Pennsylvania with forest green. The sun is shining, the melting snow is glaring. It’s all so bright that Ray Krone needs sunglasses. He’d like some Oakleys. Something functional but stylish to go with the new hair and…
THU 21 You don’t get to be Rusty Wallace — with 55 NASCAR Cup career wins in more than 20 years — without being über-competitive. So just because Wallace won’t actually be behind the wheel of his quarter-scale, remote-controlled stock car at the MiniFASTCAR Challenge on Thursday, April 21, he’s…
Thursday 21 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) Big Fish Pub: Reggae with Selector J-Cut & DJ Blackstar (reggae, dance) Bobby McGee’s: DJs Mark & Mikyl (Top 40, dance) Draft…
1. Mudvayne, Lost and Found (Sony) 2. Mindless Self Indulgence, You’ll Rebel to Anything (Metropolis) 3. Beck, Guero (Geffen) 4. Slipknot, Volume 3: (The Subliminal Verses) (Roadrunner) 5. Mars Volta, Frances the Mute (Universal) 6. The Killers, Hot Fuss (Island) 7. The Bravery, The Bravery (Island) 8. Jack Johnson, In…
Life in Pictures has been making the trek from Prescott into Phoenix to play metal for a few years now. But beyond making a name in the local community, the band has caught the attention of Tim Lambesis, vocalist for the rising Christian metalcore band As I Lay Dying, who…
Perhaps Gratitude vocalist/songwriter Jonah Matranga’s just sick of paying his dues. He fronted emo hopefuls Far throughout the ’90s (preceding the emo explosion by a decade, it’s worth noting) before doing the solo thing as onelinedrawing, a more stripped-down (and frankly better) indie vehicle. Both bands got this close to…
You wonder how being on a wimpozoid emo label like Jade Tree sits with these Tennessee-via-Portland hardcore erupters — and vice versa, where their PR department has to dispatch terms like “bad asses.” Knowing that these brunos could lay waste to the label’s entire striped-shirt roster with a few time…
There’s nothing like a dose of yesterday’s flavors to put today’s in perspective. Roughly representative of hard rock from a time when “grunge” didn’t require quotation marks, Local H’s Scott Lucas is not only from the mid-’90s, but of the mid-’90s, ahead of his time only in the minimal guitar-and-drums…
With the exception of Phil Spector, Jack Nitzsche was the greatest arranger, musician and producer of the early rock era. Unlike Spector, Nitzsche didn’t allow himself to get stuck in a musical rut. He kept producing vital work, including soundtrack scores for films like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,…
In the 1980s, when Sunny Ade and other African stars surfaced, critics hoped their “world beat” blend of styles would lead to cultural respect and an international vision of pop music. It didn’t happened on the concert stage, but since the early ’90s, DJs and producers of club music have…
You can’t listen to “Bizarre Love Triangle” or any of New Order’s other tech-pop oldies without marveling that a generation of teenagers thought such stuff conferred sophistication, compared to, say, George Michael. But having never matched the dark romance of their original incarnation as Joy Division, the quartet’s strummy bass…
It’s the bane of my existence, a hideous blight to which I’ve been witness countless times, a painful bore that causes me to shrink in my theater seat each time it waggles its ugly theatrical head. Audience participation gives me gas. It ruins any play, lovely or ugly, and destroys…
Remember back in the day, when you’d fire up your NES (Nintendo Entertainment System), and instead of hunting ducks or picking flowers, you’d shoot drug dealers? Those were the days. When kiddy games were kiddy games, and adult games were kiddy games as well. The original eight-bit NARC for the…
Green Fairy Tales There is life here: I moved to Phoenix from California — the Bay Area — and I had all the usual regrets about moving from the big city to the not-so-big city. You know, Phoenix at first blush just seems like a ghost town, despite the fact…
WED 4/20 A bong-toting “Happy Hitler” is probably the last thing those celebrating “4-20” will expect when stumbling into the Paper Heart, 750 Grand Avenue, desperate for munchies. The reflexive response to such a warped spectacle is, of course, to get on your cell and curse out your dealer for…
