“Bwian,” I say to my pal Brian — because of the Monty Python film Life of Brian, but who I really like to call Emerald Brian since I know so many damn Brians — “who all is playing again?” “Smut Muffin, Shark Pants, Dirty Babies, and other punk-rock bands,” replies…
The Michael Jackson jury has been selected, and, not unlike Jackson himself, it’s two-thirds female and mostly white. And if this jury doesn’t help convict Jackson of the child-molestation charges brought against him in Santa Barbara County, California, he’d better watch his back — because Dorothy M. Neddermeyer, Ph.D., is…
Jason Rudolph Peña, 26, is the PHX’s kick-back Gustav Klimt. The soft-spoken iconoclast is known for his live paintings of ethereal women with large, dreamy eyes. Like Klimt’s women, Peña’s are idealized creatures, highly feminine and unobtainable. He’s exhibited at monOrchid, Thought Crime, Amsterdam, and House Studios, and has a…
Trouble is, now I’ll never be able to collect that $21,000 that Hunter S. Thompson’s owed me for going on 20 years. Not that I ever had expected to see a bloody nickel of the money that the son of a bitch had avoided coughing up until he recently blew…
You don’t fool me for a minute. You’re admiring that Jeff Falk painting, maybe even whispering to your companion about Jeff’s confident use of tempura and his canny allusions to Marc Chagall, but I know what you’re really thinking. You’re thinking about the turkey and Brie sandwich at My Florist…
What began as a quiet gallery stroll is approaching full-blown street fair now that thousands of regulars clog Roosevelt Street on the first Friday of even the hottest Phoenix month. Walking a block can take strategy and patience, because the art isn’t just in the crowded galleries anymore. Recently, countless…
It’s probably been terribly tough getting ahold of your artist friends lately. Don’t worry, that monolithic mixed-media piece of theirs hasn’t toppled over and pinned them helplessly. Chances are, your pals’ve been furiously focused with putting final flourishes on their contributions to this year’s Art Detour. After all, they’ve gotta…
Designers are maligned as the pragmatists of the art world, the art majors who were employable instead of outrageous, responsible instead of romantic. Unlike artists, designers don’t do glamorous acts of audacity like lop off their ears, marry ex-porn stars or drape Central Park in sheets of plastic. Designers make…
THU 3 Objects, the Biltmore’s newest men’s and women’s clothing and home furnishings boutique, is already known for its global thinking, snatching up apparel and merchandise from around the world, including Africa and southeast Asia. And now it’s acting locally, with the “Bella Notte” charity gala to benefit the American…
Thursday 3 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) Elixir: DJ Lego…
1. Iron & Wine, Woman King (Sub Pop) 2. Low, The Great Destroyer (Sub Pop) 3. Matt Sweeney and Bonnie Prince Billy, Superwolf (Drag City/Caroline) 4. Death Cab for Cutie, John Byrd EP (Barsuk) 5. M. Ward, Transistor Radio (Merge) 6. Mogwai, Government Commissions: BBC Sessions 1996-2003 (Matador) 7. The…
Los Lobos exploded out of the barrios of Los Angeles in 1983 with and a time to dance, a seven-song mini-album that meshed Mexican folk music, blues, rock and R&B into a unique sound, long before the terms “Americana” and “roots rock” were standard music lingo. In the early ’90s,…
The back of Koko Taylor’s 1978 record The Earthshaker shows a black-and-white photo of the blues belter and her band in a smoke-filled bar, seated around a table that’s packed with bottles of booze, loose $10 bills, and Pall Mall cigarettes. Taylor is looking at the camera, disheveled hair falling…
Eroticide learned not to wave dildos in front of children the hard way. After one of the band’s sexually explicit shows, which include all manner of lewd, homemade props, sex toys, and simulated sexual slashings, the City of Mesa slapped the hardcore band with a number of obscenity charges. Then…
Bullet Train to Moscow is back with a spankin’ new self-titled disc, and fans will surely be pleased to have it in their hands. Bullet Train blasts through 14 songs that are everything you’d expect from this local five-piece: fast, fun, and a little funny. Billing itself as an “every…
On A Healthy Distrust, rapper Sage Francis’ solo debut for Epitaph, a predominantly punk label, the New England native teams up with producer Dangermouse (of Grey Album fame) for “Gunz Yo,” the first song to address hip-hop’s firearms fixation in academic terms. On it, Francis lambastes “a homophobic rapper/Unaware of…
If you were driving cross-country in the ’50s and ’60s, you prayed for sundown, because after dark, you picked up the signals of outlaw Mexican radio giants XERB, XEG and XERF. Long before the FM revolution, the X stations played an eclectic mix of honky-tonk, blues, Texas swing, norteño, and…
A band had better have a double keg of chutzpah on hand when its idol and main influence is in the room. Luckily for the Yuppie Pricks, Jello Biafra has a sense of humor — one that the band has appropriated, along with the grubby urgency of the Dead Kennedys’…
Tato Caraveo at The Lost Leaf: Some guys have all the luck. Besides serving as the bassist for the jazz trio Sonorous, turns out Adaupto “Tato” Caraveo is a talented surrealist painter to boot. His stunning 15-piece untitled oeuvre features touches of the inanity of Salvador Dali (an admitted influence)…
Maybe I’m not laughing as much at zombie flicks these days because I got a huge hole in my gut that’s leaking blood and stuff all over the house, but still . . . Last night I stayed home with my stepdad, Nick, who is here visiting me from New…
Let Us Prey Two lives devastated: I just finished reading Robert Nelson’s article regarding Dale Fushek (“Cross to Bare,” February 24). Nelson did a wonderful job. I have to say that when I began reading and I saw my and Jim Partsch’s names, my heart started racing. I don’t know…
It’s midnight at Sadisco’s monthly ball of glorious, gutter depravity, and the debauch is in full swing. Some industrial joint is screeching from the speakers, and the TVs are screening the grisly serial-killer pic Saw. There’s trash on the floor and bloodstains on the checkerboard pattern pasted all over Jugheads,…
