My job just got infinitely more difficult. See, I just got word that Freedom, the dance-music mecca in Tempe, is closing its doors at the end of May. This is a pain in my ass because I write a little feature called “Needle Exchange” spotlighting a different DJ/turntablist performance every…

I saw an anomaly at a Phoenix hip-hop show recently — a 58-year-old guy onstage playing classic funk 45s — no scratching, no mixing, just one song after another. Two twentysomething DJs, ChaseOne and Smite, stood by John Dixon, better known as Johnny D, nodding to the beat and looking…

When I was 17, I worked at a skateboard shop in Anchorage, Alaska, called G&B, the first skate shop in the state. Growing up in Alaska doesn’t afford one much exposure to underground music — you have to dig for it. Luckily, beneath the glass front counter at G&B, there…

Ten songs into what was supposed to be a nine-song set, on a lawn between two of Arizona State University’s freshman dorms, Greeley Estates singer Ryan Zimmerman is obviously spent. He keeps spitting behind the PA, trying to clear his throat to finish screaming the lyrics to “Not Alone,” the…

Someone tagged the plywood where the mirror used to hang in the men’s room at Long Wong’s: “Where do we go now? Tempe dies April 3, 2004.” Last Saturday was, in fact, the Tempe desert-rock institution’s last day open. But the tagger had it all wrong. Tempe died a long…

At this year’s South by Southwest music conference, I unexpectedly witnessed the invention of a brand new musical genre — honkycrunk. I didn’t discover the honkycrunk at any officially sanctioned event, or even onstage, but rather at an impromptu “showcase” I threw in my room at the Austin Hilton 48…

Hip-hop has always been populated by eccentrics — Public Enemy’s Flavor Flav, with his nasal voice, oversize clock necklaces and unfortunate crack habit; Wu-Tang’s Ol’ Dirty Bastard, a.k.a. Big Baby Jesus, a.k.a. Dirt McGirt, whose hoarse rhymes rarely go a verse without mentioning pussy; and then there’s Kool Keith, a.k.a…

What is it about Joe Arpaio? That guy can breathe life into a non-story better than any public relations expert around. More than six weeks after Arpaio made headlines with the news that he’d persuaded Tower Records to pull a rap CD that “takes on” Maricopa County’s sheriff, the story…

On a drag queen night at a downtown Phoenix gay-boy watering hole not long ago, four biological females walked in the door, dressed in leather and fishnets with multicolored hair and studded belts. As they passed the makeshift stage inside Amsterdam, a tall African-American queen in a shrink-wrapped-on dress named…

Over the last several months, I’ve noticed an alarming trend. I can’t look at TV or the newsstand without seeing the word “emo.” Major record retailers are advertising albums on MTV pimping them simultaneously as “emo” and “the next big thing.” There’s a recently published book by Andy Greenwald, senior…

It’s shaping up to be a stellar year to see touring indie acts in metro Phoenix, and it couldn’t have happened soon enough for our atrophied live music scene. Just in the next month we have NYC’s Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Canadian twee popsters Stars shortly afterward. Hold on, wait…

Ryan Breen is best known locally as the guitarist for Chronic Future, the young, progressive rap-rock band whose first Interscope album is scheduled to drop in April. But in his latest musical endeavor, Back Ted N-Ted, Breen doesn’t touch a guitar. If you hit up a Back Ted N-Ted show,…

If you weren’t at last Saturday’s D-Styles show at the Old Brickhouse, you missed several of the country’s best scratch DJs: D-Styles, Ricci Rucker, Mike Boo, and the Valley’s own DJ Radar. A lineup this solid hasn’t hit town in ages. It’s about time some top-tier turntablists started coming through…

Maybe it was a sign from God. In June 2002, the owners of Nita’s Hideaway were fighting for the club’s life. About to be booted from their longtime location near Rio Salado, owners Mark and Abby Covert fought hard to move to a much larger vacant building at Price and…

Last week, after pouring my tortured relationship with pornography into print in anticipation of the SuicideGirls Burlesque show (“Suicide Squeeze,” January 8), I walked out of the show pissed because there was no chance of seeing the ladies, models from the SuicideGirls.com punk rock pinup site, over the mass of…

The advertisements are meant to fool you. “The Last Real Record Store.” That’s what Zia Record Exchange proclaims itself on TV commercials and banners, as if there were still some fiery independent spirit fueling the company like there was before founder Brad Singer died. After Singer’s sudden death in 1998,…

The venue for the Suicide Girls Burlesque Tour has changed. The show is now scheduled for the Big Fish Pub, 1954 E. University in Tempe on the same date, Monday, January 12. Call 480-861-5010 for more information. Coming of age as a punk-rock kid in the early ’90s was an…