Estéban has taken the classical guitar further than anyone ought to be able to nowadays. Even he admits that. “Not many people listen to classical music, let’s face it,” says the Valley lounge icon from his business office in Long Island, New York. “But I’ve always loved jazz, and I’m…

Roger Clyne says if there’s no music scene in Phoenix today, it may be partially his fault. Clyne led the sensationally quirky Refreshments in the mid-’90s at the zenith of what some locals refer to as the “Mill Avenue conspiracy,” when talented jangle-pop musicians ruled the bars of Tempe. “Everybody…

Last week marked the return of Mardi Gras to New Orleans, as well as the crawfish, beads and liquor being poured in bar after bar along Bourbon Street. It also meant a musical palette of the region’s wonderful blend of zydeco, soul, funk and blues, and five successive nights of…

Chan Marshall, known to the rock ‘n’ roll world as Cat Power, is a painfully shy woman with a lot to say. You Are Free, her new album and first since 2001’s bleak The Covers Record, is the least self-assured-sounding self-assured record in ages. “Don’t be in love with the…

Two recent developments have me thinking about the Davids of the music industry and whether they have any chance going up against Goliaths, both local and national. First, two local promoters have joined forces, and you can blame it, at least partially, on the Format. The local pop duo scored…

Life was cool for Brendan Benson back in 1996. He had a record deal with Virgin Records. His connections enabled him to write and record with Jason Falkner, bandleader of sweet-pop revivalists Jellyfish. He lived in San Francisco just as the Internet was booming and twentysomethings were fancying themselves as…

Pokafase knows he’s in for a geographic challenge in the coming months — and relishes it. “I blew from Phoenix/Only shit harder than that/Is leaving the club without getting martyred and back,” rhymes the local rapper on “Gangsta Alone,” a vintage West Coast G-Funk track from Mastermind, his major-label debut…

“We’re the Blare Bitch Project and we don’t give a fuck!” proclaims this band of pissed-off women, fronted by Blare N. Bitch of the beautifully obnoxious female metal band Betty Blowtorch, as it roars through the songs on its self-titled EP with the restraint of a dragon. The songs are…

That’s not a skip on your CD. That series of harp notes, which tiptoe erratically and are disrupted by odd pauses, is just the weird programming that kicks off Neon Golden, a critical import fave by the Notwist soon to hit the States. The Notwist is a band of tricky…

Adam Jacobson is a big man. His goal is just as big to subvert the sourpuss patrol that controls modern rock ‘n’ roll and pump a little fun back into its veins with Steppchild, the viscerally enjoyable Tempe band for which he plays bass and sings. “It’s like the huge,…

Shakira is intellectually fascinating. No, that’s not a pathetic last-call pickup line, nor is it a disingenuous way of disguising lust for the Colombian pop goddess (though that’s an entirely appealing separate discussion). For years a superstar in her native country, the young singer-songwriter refused to release a crossover pop…

Now, I’ve never been one to share. But I’m an only child who became a music editor for a good reason. I like to be left alone, stand around at concerts like a potted plant, listen to records in private and then tell you why I think Bon Jovi and…

Fatigo is a very young Valley band, having only formed a year ago. It has one self-released record to its name and is slowly building a reputation for its eclectic nature in small clubs now. But it has sold enough of its debut CD, Pero los Chivos!, locally and out…

Evidently, a healthy single and a few well-placed guest turns are enough to spark a full tour these days. Erykah Badu, whose late 2000 album Mama’s Gun is a brilliant old-school soul turn but by now is very, very outdated, is coming to Club Rio in Tempe, ostensibly on the…

The Grammys must not much like Arizona. The nominations for the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences’ (NARAS) 45th annual musical awards shindig were announced last week, and the nominations revealed that the academy still struggles with its own relevance. A stated commitment to open-mindedness made by former NARAS…

DJ Mark Farina can’t talk too long. He has to go pick up his soundboard. “It’s been in the shop for two or three weeks,” says Farina, one of San Francisco’s top electronic artists. “It needed all this rewiring or something. I’ve had it for a few years and it’s…

Nas runs, it seems, on two themes loss and the reclamation of former glory. With God’s Son, the Queens rapper plagued by a lack of focus for years makes those themes indistinguishable, finally meeting the challenge of Illmatic, his 1994 masterpiece and albatross as he struggled through mediocrity. Conceptually, the…

Halfway through a party thrown by Waylon Jennings’ family at the Rhythm Room in Phoenix last week, I swear the old man’s honky-tonk spirit appeared. Jessi Colter, Jennings’ widow, sat at a white piano. She played Elvis Presley’s achy-breaky blues number “One Night.” “One night with you/Is what I’m praying…

Mook rock may now have its own Smash Mouth a marginal band armed with buffalo-butt riffs and urban attitude that somehow outlives one-hit wonder and sticks to the roof of radio’s mouth like peanut butter. Crazy Town burst into modern-rock playlist permanence two years ago with “Butterfly,” catchier than any…

Like fellow punk forebears the Ramones last year, the Clash, which dissolved amid drug abuse and splintering musical agendas in the mid-1980s, found itself among the list of 2003 inductees for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. As part of the March induction, Joe Strummer, his long-estranged songwriter partner…

Nashville Pussy named itself after obscene stage banter from a Ted Nugent live record and actually titled an album Let Them Eat Pussy. The Georgia quartet features two sleazy-looking dudes and two really sleazy-looking chicks, including one whose breasts perpetually threaten to explode from her blouse. Basically, the group looks…

I was raised by parents who loved middle-of-the-road pop. You know, Melissa Manchester, Boz Scaggs, Chicago, Country Joe and the Fish, Don McLean, Barbra Streisand, Linda Ronstadt, the Eagles . . . and so on. As I grew, so, too, did I wince. I’ll give Mom and Dad credit, though,…