SAT 4/9 While most consider rolling off the couch to manually change TV channels a severe hardship, a unique subculture that thrives on brutally pushing their bodies to the verge of collapse visits Tempe this weekend. They’ll compete hoping to break the tape — or simply finish — in Arizona’s…
SAT 4/9 Wanna be in gay porn pronto, Tonto? Better show ’em your “Oh!” face on Saturday, April 9, at the Bunkhouse, 4428 North Seventh Avenue, where Will Clark, a gay porn “star” — none of the men at the Bunkhouse during a recent happy hour would admit to knowing…
If it’s any consolation to Kevin Bacon, the backers of the Phoenix Film Festival believe he’s worthy of recognition, even if the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences doesn’t. Bacon’s taken the Oscars snub — the Academy ignoring his leading-role performance in The Woodsman, one most critics said was…
Sorry, retro rock fans, but Rush: The Musical won’t have a Geddy Lee cameo, nor will there be any chorus-line cancans to “Tom Sawyer.” ASU senior Lauren Henschen came up with something even cheekier: a “goofy pop-rock romp” about five college girls trying to survive sorority rush week. Henschen’s participated…
Almost as wide as he is tall, with a round but unremarkable face, Schultze doesn’t look like a rebel. Truth to tell, he looks like Curly of Three Stooges fame, or, less kindly, a mass murderer (well, he does bear a passing but disturbing resemblance to John Wayne Gacy). Schultze…
Last year, the Simmons family of Needham, Massachusetts, just outside Boston, sent Christmas cards for the first time in more than 20 years. “We send out Xmas cards about as often as the Red Sox win the World Series,” the card very cleverly proclaimed. This movie is for them. In…
Everyone with a TV remembers President Bush in the flight suit, landing on that aircraft carrier, standing in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner, and triumphantly declaring that major combat operations in Iraq were over. Two years on, many feel like asking exactly what he meant by that. Gunner Palace…
This Thursday, April 7, local artist and impresario Dumperfoo moves his long-running Blunt Club hip-hop night to a new location, Hollywood Alley, 2610 West Baseline Road in Mesa (northeast corner of Price and Baseline roads). Along with the usual bag of tricks — live art, b-boys and b-girls, resident DJs…
Beck Hansen’s finest year was unquestionably 1994, when Los Angeles’ most talented high school dropout served up three great records — an indie-folk trawl (One Foot in the Grave); the multigenre, major-label mash-up that made his name (Mellow Gold); and a whacked, lo-fi sampler of just about every style of…
Moby sold millions of copies of his 1999 sample-savvy dance mosaic record Play, with virtually no radio airplay. “The Iggy Pop of electronica,” as Penthouse dubbed the eccentric artist, licensed all of the songs off the album for television advertising. And people were actually going, “Wow! Who does that Bailey’s…
Zombies, mummies and vampires populate local trio Calabrese’s first full-length, 13 Halloweens, the follow-up to the three brothers’ much-hyped EP Midnight Spookshow. Some Spookshow tracks are revisited here, but these 13 horror-rock songs (hence the title), in the vein of the Misfits and the Ramones, show a fleshed-out, slickly produced,…
Punk is urban folk, born of suburban mediocrity and conformity. But the onetime vehicle for protest is now just another marketing niche for songs about girls. Springing into that vacuum is MDC. Along with the Dead Kennedys and Suicidal Tendencies, the band helped forge the American hardcore movement, mixing raw,…
If soul is the teacher and punk is the preacher, the BellRays are working a double shift. Combining Detroit’s twin musical heritages, Motown and garage rock, the Riverside, California, foursome specializes in a unique brand of primal, big-lunged gospel fury — one that showcases the woefully underrated and formidable pipes…
Most of the songs The Reflection plays end in the same raucous fashion: with the howl of two overamped guitars, loudly reverberating on the same chord, holding the tone like a musical staring contest between the players until one of them blinks and the pitch veers off in unpredictable and…
You need look no further than a John Hughes movie (or your own adolescence) to realize that jocks and freaks don’t really mix. But occasionally, the seemingly disparate paths of pro athletes and musicians do cross, from jocks trying to be rockers (Jack McDowell, Scott Radinsky) to rockers honoring jocks…
Childsplay’s Romeo and Juliet is not just for kids. Thanks to crafty staging and a talented cast, all of them able to play persuasively any age or gender, it’s an edifying and even entertaining production of this oft-told love story. At a Sunday matinee populated mostly by underdressed tweens, I…
“What do ya think?” asks Nick, my 74-year-old stepdad, as we watch the same Casino Arizona commercial on the television for the zillionth time. You know, the one with the Showstoppers Live bit. “The fuckin’ Blues Brothers rule,” I tell him. “You wanna go check them out?” he asks. I…
It’s the witching hour at Sadisco, and the bisexual Brittany Murphy and I are watching a Victorian snuff-play done to throbbing industrial music that sounds like rusty steel grinding against broken glass. One by one, women dressed like Heather Graham’s whore buddies in From Hell are chased onto center stage…
The Arizona Legislature has the rare opportunity this session to strike a powerful blow to the heart of the fundamentalist Mormon polygamist cult that has dominated life in the isolated communities north of the Grand Canyon for more than 70 years. Lawmakers are debating legislation that would allow the state…
THU 7 We’re amazed — and subsequently quite pleased — that the über-structured hierarchy of Arizona State University continues to keep the scattered and beautiful mind of Chris Danowski on its payroll as a theater professor. So we won’t be greedy and lobby for a raise for the guy, but…
Thursday 7 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: DJ MCB (hip-hop, dance) Big Fish Pub: Reggae Thursdays with Selector J-Cut & DJ Blackstar (reggae, dance hall) Dos Gringos –…
1. Beck, Guero (Geffen) 2. The Decemberists, Picaresque (Kill Rock Stars) 3. Bloc Party, Silent Alarm (Atlantic) 4. Yo La Tengo, Prisoners of Love: A Smattering of Scintillating Senescent Songs: 1985-2003 (Matador) 5. Prefuse 73, Surrounded by Silence (Warp Records) 6. The Kills, No Wow (RCA/Rough Trade) 7. Nick Cave…
