“Here, put this on.” Nearly everyone you met in 2003 came with a personal soundtrack. From the little middle school “sevvie” in your car pool who carried a personal mix CD in her backpack to the businessman in front of you at the ATM playing Dido just a little too…
12/26-1/11 “It’s intimidating when you play anybody who’s lived a life,” says actress Joan Pringle (best known for playing Sybil Buchanan in the 1980s TV series The White Shadow) about playing Billie Holiday. The role is also daunting, she says, because she has to sing Billie Holiday. “I’ve been trying…
Wed 12/31 Ding! The biggest showdown this week isn’t Ohio State against Kansas State, but Tempe versus Scottsdale in the battle of the New Year’s block parties. The Tempe Tostitos Fiesta Bowl Block Party is the incumbent, named one of the top 10 places to ring in the New Year…
Sun 12/21 Several of the religious holidays celebrated worldwide during December are linked to the first day of winter and shortest day of the year, better known as the winter solstice. Jazz music, being a religion of its own — and Windham Hill Records the temple at which many aficionados…
12/18-12/21 So the seasonal blues aren’t confined to the Whos — and Christmas isn’t the only holiday to suffer a Grinch. A grisly gang of goblins snuffs out the Festival of Lights in Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins, a stage musical based on the award-winning children’s book by Eric Kimmel…
Sat 12/13 Contemporary dance is taking an abstract leap forward in Phoenix, with the presentation of Dancing in C by Crossing 32nd Street, the musical ensemble-in-residence at Paradise Valley Community College and Scorpius Dance Theatre, a contemporary dance company. The collection of pieces combines ethnic and improvised music with choreographed…
Sat 12/13 Short attention span? Meet your match this Saturday, December 13, when the Phoenix Indieclub rolls its first short film festival. The local branch of the international independent filmmakers club is set to screen selections from seven Arizona filmmakers; fare ranges from war drama to documentary to claymation. Hatched…
“Here, go ahead and light this joint, man, let me tell you my idea . . .” Flick, flick . . . puff, inhale, hold it, eyes bug out, holding it, exhale, coughing fit . . . “Okay, we got a screenwriter with a pretty good feature film under his…
Fri 12/5 “I’m sure a lot of people used to fantasize about Cris [Kirkwood] or [Derrick] Bostrom as a woman, so no, I don’t think it’ll be a stark departure,” Curt Kirkwood says of his former Meat Puppets bandmates, comparing his new project with singer/guitarist Lisa Newmyer to the local…
Sat 11/29 Willie Nelson. Call him the original musical road warrior or the silver-throated pirate of the highways, his tour bus cutting through the night as he moves from city to city, gig to gig. And while Nelson roams the highways and byways, various labels have been busy reissuing a…
Sun 11/30 Keeping up appearances is a must in the sports world, a universe where a franchise is nothing without a shiny new building to call home. Naming rights, signage and concessions represent the pot of gold waiting for owners at the end of the sports rainbow, but in the…
Travis Graves, a.k.a. Mt. Egypt, has friends in high places, which is the only explanation for his fledgling act’s phenomenal luck at performing alongside legends of both rock and country. Mt. Egypt, whose first LP, Battening the Hatches, was released this past summer, experienced its inaugural tour (with Mr. Graves…
Sat 11/22 “I’ve been to the ER more times in the past three months than I have in the past three years,” Smashley Adams says of her preparation for the upcoming inaugural Arizona Roller Derby season. Adams, who plays for the Smash Squad (whose only current rival is the Bruisers),…
11/13-11/122 The Brazilian art form/dance/martial art Capoeira has been described as “a conversation between two bodies in motion,” a succinct description that doesn’t quite convey the complexity and historical significance of the art. Capoeira was invented in Brazil 400 years ago by African slaves as a method of expression and…
is 3, at. Come Out Swingin’
11/8-11/23 In the shadow of the Cold War, a round of redbaiting in 1950s Hollywood produced a “blacklist” of film professionals banned from the industry. When the Arizona Jewish Theatre Company’s production of The Value of Names begins, the scene is set in 1981, and blacklisted comic Benny Silverman has…
The Furious Styles Crew, Arizona’s preeminent break-dancing crew, knows how to throw a birthday party. This year is the 10th anniversary of the crew’s inception — and the seventh year it has celebrated with an anniversary party. “For the 10th year, we wanted to really make it as involved as…
One of the more under-reported aspects of Hitler’s march through Europe in the 1930s and ’40s is the destructive effect it had on culture — art, science, literature and music. Wherever their regime spread, the Nazis took pains to erase the societal contributions of Jews, and a generation of vital…
“Yeah, I jumped off a cliff, but let’s talk about something else,” Elliott Smith told me in 1997. It was shortly after the release of his breakthrough album on Kill Rock Stars, Either/Or, and Smith had recently attempted suicide by throwing himself off a cliff, suffering only minor injuries. Long…
11/5-11/9 The nuptial mood can go to hell in about two seconds when the bride’s ex is in the honeymoon suite next door, as in Noel Coward’s play Private Lives. “It’s what I call quaint comedy,” says actress Maren Maclean. “It’s not slapstick or falling-down funny, it’s intelligent, witty humor.”…
10/30-11/2 They call it “the 14th Annual Arizona Classic Jazz Festival,” and by “classic,” they primarily mean Dixieland, ragtime and swing: the three faces of pre-World War II jazz that rocked your grandparents’ world.As Dick Knutson — a featured musician and husband of fest director Jeanne Knutson — puts it,…
10/23-10/26 Darkness falls across the land/ The midnight hour is close at hand/ Creatures crawl in search of blood/ To terrorize yawl’s neighborhood . . . Michael Jackson — not just the king of pop, but also the king of freaky — isn’t the only one with the 411 on…
