You know that gag in This Is Spinal Tap involving the band’s ever-rotating carousel of deceased or otherwise combusted drummers? Foghat’s Roger Earl is the living antithesis of that. For 39 years, spanning no fewer than 20 lineup changes, Earl has survived as the boogie-rock foursome’s lone constant — a…
Every schoolboy knows that singing and playing the bass is one of the most difficult multi-tasking feats in music. But what about singing and playing cello? That can’t be a walk in the harmonic park, either, what with all the vibratos and double-stops and the large bowed string instrument wedged…
“I’ve got a Benetton heart, and a fuckin’ David Duke cock,” John Mayer told Playboy magazine earlier this year. The 32-year-old singer-songwriter was attempting to justify his sexual preferences in a way that didn’t make him sound like a bigot. Later, he unleashed the “n” word and described ex-girlfriend Jessica…
With a name like Overcome, it’s gotta be one of two things: A Christian metalcore band or the latest in pharmaceutical “male enhancement.” (Rejected ad pitch: “Wanna put the zing back in your marriage? Overcome.”) Formed in the mid-’90s, the Overcome boys were the first musicians signed by Facedown Records,…
“The largest psychobilly festival in Arizona!” crows the ad for this 14-band marathon of fetish-cinema-infused, double-bass-pounding hillbilly punk. That the Southwest Psycho-Fest is quite possibly the only psychobilly festival in Arizona is beside the point — if you want to witness the rockabilly essence of the Stray Cats gangbanged by…
With a name like Overcome, it’s gotta be one of two things: A Christian metalcore band or the latest in pharmaceutical “male enhancement.” (Rejected ad pitch: “Wanna put the zing back in your marriage? Overcome.”) Formed in the mid-90s, the Overcome boys were the first musicians signed by Facedown Records,…
Is it really so hard out here for a pimp? After becoming the first and only rap group to win an Academy Award (“Triple Six Mafia: 1. Martin Scorsese: 0,” host Jon Stewart memorably cracked), the onetime Memphis crunk legends seem to have done rather nicely for themselves. First, the…
Adam Lambert has the vocal range of James Blunt and the Maybelline-boosted looks of a young Lisa Rinna. And that — combined with a man-on-man kiss here, an onstage pelvis-to-face grinding there — makes the American Idol runner-up a truly one-of-a-kind specimen in today’s hypersexualized pop music zoo. Critics have…
Is it really so hard out here for a pimp? After becoming the first and only rap group to win an Academy Award (“Triple Six Mafia: 1. Martin Scorsese: 0,” host Jon Stewart memorably cracked), the onetime Memphis crunk legends seem to have done rather nicely for themselves. First, the…
Like Baywatch, Balkan warfare and runaway Internet speculation, Lyle Lovett will always be indelibly linked to the 1990s. It was in the ’90s, after all, that the spindly country crooner won three of his four Grammy Awards, married Julia Roberts in history’s most egregious abuse of Funny-Looking-Musician Romantic Privilege, and…
Why does the lady in the tan cargo shorts have a sad look on her face? Probably because this was the weekend that Lilith Fair was supposed to come to Cricket Wireless Pavilion but didn’t. Why? Anemic ticket sales. Unless you harbor some kind of SB 1070-backlash conspiracy theory —…
Five years have passed since this darkwave dance duo released their self-titled debut album, smashing the official Guinness World Record for “Most Comparisons to Joy Division Inspired by Any Band Not Called Interpol.” Backed by the formidable Geffen publicity machine, singer/guitarist Justin Warfield and composer/multi-instrumentalist Adam Bravin enjoyed some well-deserved…
Five years have passed since this darkwave dance duo released their self-titled debut album, smashing the official Guinness World Record for “Most Comparisons to Joy Division Inspired by Any Band Not Called Interpol.” Backed by the formidable Geffen publicity machine, singer/guitarist Justin Warfield and composer/multi-instrumentalist Adam Bravin enjoyed some well-deserved…
“This place is crazy,” the tour manager tells me on the phone, and, indeed, the Clubhouse in Tempe is crazy-packed for Tuesday’s sold-out performance by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes. Before the opening act – Dawes, a folk-rock foursome that reminds me strongly, and pleasantly, of Wilco – finishes…
As the only 10-piece evangelical rock tribe in the history of the universe to publicly arouse the curiosity of Jay Z, Beyoncé Knowles, and the assorted occupants of the couple’s four-Escalade entourage, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes have some questions to answer. For starters: Who, or what, is Edward…
The way Raining and OK lead singer Trevor Tillery remembers it, making music for the first time was much like taking a leak after an all-day Pabst bender. “I felt like I had these songs in me for years, and they all burst out of me at once because I…
The way Raining and OK lead singer Trevor Tillery remembers it, making music for the first time was much like taking a leak after an all-day Pabst bender. “I felt like I had these songs in me for years, and they all burst out of me at once because I…
As the unofficial yacht-rock go-to guy at New Times, it was incumbent on me to attend the Doobie Brothers and Chicago show Tuesday night at Dodge Theatre.So I did my duty, despite the fact that I saw the Doobies play Tempe on New Years Eve (nobody needs to hear “China…
Tempe-based roots rocker Shelby James has a yen for yesteryear. The MySpace page for his band, Shelby James and the Crying Shames, is larded with grainy family snapshots and stylized faux ’50s portraits of the musician done up like Jack Kerouac’s nattier kid brother. Over at the band’s official Web…
You’re a culturally land-locked Arizonan. As such, the closest you’ve ever come to a bona fide New Orleans “second line” street band is an episode of Treme — or maybe that funny funeral scene in the voodoo-rific James Bond flick To Live and Let Die. Well, your jazz illiteracy days are…
You’re a culturally land-locked Arizonan. As such, the closest you’ve ever come to a bona fide New Orleans “second line” street band is an episode of Treme — or maybe that funny funeral scene in the voodoo-rific James Bond flick To Live and Let Die. Well, your jazz illiteracy days are…
“Mass murder makes me happy / Dead bodies make me happy / Until eternity/ We’ll always have Juggalo family.” — “Juggalo Family” (2001) by Dark Lotus Consider the preceding lyric. Savor it. Swish it in your mouth. It’s puerile, no? Vulgar, vicious, toxic, all that. But embedded within the murderous…
