4/5-4/12 While bicycle commuting seems like such an ecological, politically correct practice, here in the Valley, any thought of pedaling through the duress of summer is just impractical. So what better time for fair-weather environmentalists to make a point than just before the Arizona heat launches its offensive?Valley Bike Week…
Carlton Enoch, executive producer and creative force behind the locally filmed cable variety show Off the Hook, is a man of big dreams and stalwart confidence. “A whole lot of faith,” he laughs, is what motivates a visionary with grand plans for his entertainment product to launch from of all…
Down in the nether regions of southern Arizona, where the Santa Cruz River nourishes the land and the grass grows waist high, lies the San Rafael Ranch, now a state park, where Tucson-based country troubadour Andy Hersey worked as a real-life cowboy and shoed horses just over a decade ago…
You might be tempted to feel a touch of pity for World Wrestling Entertainment honcho Vince McMahon. About the same time his lame football league bit the dust, the wrestling tycoon got spanked in a British courtroom by the World Wildlife Fund regarding his corporate acronym. McMahon complied by renaming…
No, sports fans, Santa won’t grant your fondest wish and bring you an actual NFL-caliber team in place of the hapless Arizona Cardinals, whose season, thankfully, ends this Sunday in Denver. But football fanatics still have plenty to look forward to as the Valley hosts a terrific college bowl game…
Hip-hop thespians Wu-Tang Clan might want to put their litigation counsel on retainer; the real monks of Shaolin Temple, from whom Wu-Tang borrows extensive imagery, have been on the swarm this year fighting the appropriation of their sacred Shaolin name. Across the globe, companies have used the Shaolin tag as…
In a converted stand-alone garage in the backyard of a midtown Phoenix home, an artist saunters in to his 20-year retrospective exhibition. The exterior of the garage-cum-gallery is painted eclectically in hundreds of exploding colors by the artist — an eerily omniscient eyeball, a village of leaning buildings, three-dimensional arrows…
Hot Hot Heat, a foppish quartet from the tiny island city of Victoria, British Columbia, finds itself riding the wave of rock ‘n’ roll resurgence t hat thrust the Strokes and the White Stripes into mass consciousness. With a new LP, Make Up the Breakdown, released on the fabled Sub…
As a rule in Arizona, club nights — those wittily monikered weekly or monthly dance events (or non-events) — have the staying power and life span of a box of Krispy Kremes at an AA meeting. That’s what makes the longevity of Kind, the up-with-people-themed Friday-night DJ extravaganza at Freedom…
On March 7, 2001, Valley virtuosos DJ Radar and Raul Yanez pulled off one of Arizona’s few great historical events in music history, the performance of the first movement of their classical composition Concerto for Turntable. On the stage at ASU’s Gammage Auditorium and accompanied by ASU’s symphony orchestra, Radar…
The Valley is teeming with unsung comedic talent, like the huckster satirists who staked “Vote Mormon” signs next to Matt Salmon’s gubernatorial street corner ads and “Vote Gay” next to Janet Napolitano’s. All these anonymous jolly-makers and piss-takers oughta be lining up to compete in the Funniest Person in the…
Hey, Mom and Dad, is your teenage son exhibiting any of the following behavioral symptoms: showing a sullen and angry demeanor, bottle-bleaching his hair, excessively utilizing headphones, mumbling epithets about Tipper Gore and Lynne Cheney? Yeah? Blame it on Marshall Mathers, a.k.a. Eminem — he’s dying to take credit for…
Ethan, Will and others who were there still talk about the scene that night. Two girls — a stripper and her friend — walked arm in arm through the living room of a villa at an East Valley resort hotel. Braless in matching bright halter tops, the girls wove their…
In the past year, many independent record labels have been battling a phenomenon we like to call “emo-profiling.” This sinister cousin of racial profiling involves the assumption by the record buying public and the media that, because a couple of bands on a label sing nothing but breakup songs or…
You would think that in a sprawling megatropolis like the Valley of the Sun, with its high concentration of Chicano residents, some elements of modern Chicano popular music — alternative, punk rock, metal — would filter into the public consciousness at least to a nominal degree. Doesn’t seem to be…
Russel Simmons is hip-hop’s O.G. mogul — he was running the game before P. Diddy and Master P were outta diapers. Twenty-five years ago, Simmons began his extremely lucrative relationship with rap music, managing, producing, and releasing records by artists like Run-D.M.C. (of which baby brother Joseph “Reverend Run” Simmons…
Modest Mouse front man Isaac Brock has never been reticent about his psychoses. He’ll freely talk of the demons in his head that speak to him, and allude to his confrontations with the devil. He’s something of a neurotic visionary, clinically sane compared to notorious alt-rock weirdoes Daniel Johnston or…
It’s about noon in Lawrence, Kansas, on a recent Monday — the day before the Get Up Kids release their first new album in three years, On a Wire. Get Up drummer Ryan Pope is not long out of bed, tousling his hair, bumping Dre’s Chronic 2001 and casually blabbing…
Phoenix has long held the title of “speed capital of the West,” though not for reasons that make any of us proud. Thankfully, some people are trying to lend new meaning to that label. Racing sports such as NASCAR, Supercross and motorcycle road-racing are becoming more popular nationwide, even meriting…
David Bazan has always been a soul searcher. As the driving force behind Pedro the Lion, Bazan has made a career of examining the intricacies and shifting dynamics of relationships — between men and women, parent and child, God and man, siblings, and all points between. Initially a stripped-down, acoustic…
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Spring is quickly melting into summer in the Valley, and armchair sports fans are settling in, sticking their sweaty thighs to leather La-Z-Boys for the NBA and NHL playoffs and the return of the D-Backs. In contrast, the climb to hellish temperatures bodes ill for participatory sports enthusiasts, who look…
