Given summer’s burning heat, there’s always room for another event based on beer consumption. The latest addition to the brew circuit is the Real, Wild, and Woody Beer Festival. Presented by the Arizona Craft Brewers Guild as a “more intimate” offshoot of the annual Strong Beer Festival, the focus here…
There’s a reason the Weather Channel is the most watched channel (true!): People are fascinated by weather. There’s no denying the scary, heart-racing thrill of watching tornadoes or hurricanes along their destructive paths. Of course, that’s on TV. Closer to home come storms of a different nature, which is the…
Thus Owls’ is the result of the marriage of two people, but also the two countries they hail from. Husband and wife team of Simon and Erika Angell, from Canada and Sweden, respectively, each forged careers — he on guitar, she as a vocalist — that would one day intersect…
Ice-T admitted to “mailing it in” for his band Body Count’s 2006 album Murder 4 Hire. The rapper was knee-deep in being a full-time actor at the time and didn’t have the time or energy to give it his all, especially in the wake of the death of founding member…
It’s been slightly more than eight years since Body Count’s last speed/thrash metal assault on the world’s eardrums. The lengthy delay doesn’t come from a lack of desire, but rather the day job that keeps founder and frontman Ice-T out of the recording studio and on the production set. “I’ve…
What’s a kid to do when caught between the world’s of psychedelic rock, surf music, bebop, rhythm and blues, and Cha Cha? If you’re Poncho Sanchez, you combine them in giant soul stew on the way to becoming the leading purveyor of funky, grooving music with a deeply soulful edge…
Some events get better with age, including the Tempe Town Lake Festival featuring Tempe’s 63rd annual fireworks display over Tempe Town Lake on July 4. Tempe’s fireworks, shot from the Mill Street Bridge, may not be the prettiest or biggest in the valley on this evening, but it is hard…
When reached by phone, Matt Holmen immediately tells Up on the Sun that he’s super busy. “I’m here for 36 hours. I’m trying to put my life in a box,” he says. The PHOX guitarist is in his adopted hometown of Madison, Wisconsin, gearing up for the band’s biggest tour…
Thanks to a cutesy movie currently in favor with most young kids—Legos are again all the rage among the pre-teen set. However, as “Build! Toy Brick Art” an ongoing exhibit (through September 28) at the Heard Museum reveals, Legos are hardly child’s play anymore. The display includes dozens of works…
They say life is a cabaret, my friend, but in this modern time, is that really the case? Really, life is a rave, my tripping buddy; or a death metal concert, my headbanger; or wasted hours on Facebook, my followers. Yet, for some, it seems the idea of a cabaret…
Bruce Cockburn has to be the most hot-cold songwriter operating today. On one hand, there are songs about sunrises, horses running across golden plains, the mysteries of life, and spiritual awakening. And on the other, Cockburn fires off songs about narco-politics, human rights, religious flaws, and environmental degradation, offering such…
An ability to play an instrument doesn’t mean you can bowl. Still, a bevy of local musicians will be doing just that at the fourth “somewhat annual” Phoenix Independents Bowl bowling tournament hosted by Psyko Steve Presents’ Steve Chilton, who created the event upon discovering how few local artists actually…
Don’t let the name fool you. Or the bluegrass pedigree developed playing in the traveling band that was her family. No, Jessica Lea Mayfield is an out and out rocker, owing as much to the Foo Fighters and Stone Temple Pilots as she does Bill Monroe. While her first two…
You can blame Phish, but covering another band’s album in its entirety has become a cool and popular thing to do. Three Phoenix acts break from their normal routines in a benefit concert for the Lupus Foundation of Southern Arizona. Phoenix Afrobeat Orchestra will perform Portishead’s Dummy, There Is Danger…
It seems likely that, back in 1968 when James Taylor signed to Apple records for his first album as an aspiring singer-songwriter, he would have happily — willfully — consented to an interview with any publication that would have him. Ah, what good old days those must have been, because…
Editor’s note: Check out a Q-and-A with the band here. “Stoner rock” has yet to gain entry in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, so for the definition of the phrase, look no further than Fu Manchu. Yet, like so many genres, the name hardly fits the sound. Pink Floyd is stoner rock,…
Looking at Tim Allen is enough to make one laugh. It’s easy to see why he was picked to portray a dog in The Shaggy Dog and Santa in The Santa Clause film series. Though also the voice of Buzz Lightyear in the Toy Story series, Home Improvement’s main man,…
“Stoner rock” has yet to gain entry in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, but few bands define the genre better than Fu Manchu. Yet, like so many genres, the name hardly fits the sound. Pink Floyd is stoner rock, while Fu Manchu storms in all heavy, sludgy, psychedelic and fuzzy with plenty…
Will the real Pink Floyd please stand up? Actually, the real one has decided to sit it out for the foreseeable future, but in its place stands the live spectacle known as Brit Floyd, perhaps the closest thing to the real McCoy. With a syncopated psychedelic light show complete with…
Saxophonist Maceo Parker calls his band “the tightest little funk orchestra on Earth.” It should be. Parker was schooled in tightness as the bandleader for James Brown in the 1960s. Brown was notorious for his demanding ways, but Parker, despite not being a hard-ass, still knows exactly how to keep…
Buffalo Killers, at the very least, seem to hail from another time, which makes them perfect for right now. This four piece Ohio-based band adheres to that old balls-to-the-wall rock and roll credo when music was all about style and substance as well as simply piling on the heavy…
Every year someone hugs a cactus for all the wrong reasons. A Tucson man last year was “hugged” to death by a falling saguaro, and a cyclist was observed dutifully removing spines from his rear after a missed corner landed him in prickly hell. But there’s another kind of “Cactus…
