Ryan Adams had the best quote of the year for elitist tastemakers. “I spent the ’80s looking for alternatives to what was already happening,” he said, atoning for his late-blooming love of Madonna singles and John Hughes flicks. “And now I’m going back and putting together the pieces of what…
Tank top, $15, by Calvin Klein. Platinum-rivet jeans, $450, by Armani. Baseball bat, $180, by Louisville Slugger. . . . Dante “Akil” Givens, one of four rappers in tag-team hip-hop crew Jurassic 5 — the in-favor crew of the moment on college campuses — thumbs through the stack of magazines…
John Doe shudders at the scenario. It’s the first night on X’s unofficial reunion tour, the seminal L.A. punk band’s boldest attempt at a bona fide comeback in seven years. And somehow, Doe’s asked to imagine, the anarchistic fans his band used to play for have been replaced by what…
Having just turned 19 in July, Michelle Branch hardly looks the part of an elder statesperson in a rock ‘n’ roll movement. But having scored the earliest success with a formula that’s already been copied by a string of other young-chicks-with-instruments, Branch has become to the Avrils and Vanessas what…
Her oldest brother, Justin, is the heartthrob of the group. With the perfectly tousled, blond-streaked hair, the model’s eyes and the fashionably pierced earlobes, he’s the one in the foreground of all the photo shoots. The principal songwriter, lead singer and guitarist of the band whose unfortunately pun-intended name appropriates…
The hair isn’t quite as big as it was back in the late ’80s, when moussed metal monsters like Jerry Dixon’s band Warrant ruled the airwaves and the concert circuit. “I think we look similar to the way we used to, just a little more hip,” Dixon, 34, insists. “You…
Pharrell Williams wasn’t supposed to be at the MTV Video Music Awards on August 29. According to his busy itinerary, Williams and the other members of the rock band N*E*R*D, the super-successful producer’s ambitious little side project, were supposed to be enjoying a day off between their Holmdel, New Jersey,…
It’s like a wacked-out comedy sketch from an All That episode. The four hot young hunks of R&B boy band sensation B2K are hanging out backstage after their set in London, clowning around in their matching electric-blue tracksuits, exchanging high-fives. Onstage, headliner and special guest Destiny’s Child is finishing up…
Here’s a dating tip for every guy surfing Amor@AOL for a hot Latina mujer. If, after “musica favorita,” she lists, simply, “salsa,” there are three hard and fast commandments you must absolutely heed, lest you risk settling for yet another night alone with your Paulina Rubio CD cover. Number one:…
If Bryan Nesbitt — the super-hot Phoenix-born car designer who gave the world the PT Cruiser before being wooed away from Chrysler by a bigger paycheck from Chevy — had defected instead to Blue Note Records, he might have designed Norah Jones. Like Nesbitt’s instantly iconic car, Jones is a…
Imagine, for an instant, that you’ve been granted a wish to vault back in time to that mortifying moment back in middle school when you finally got up enough guts to ask that hottie in Social Studies to your first school dance. Only this time, instead of mumbling some lame…
It’s a sound that’s swiftly showing up everywhere, like a suddenly trendy drink embraced by the masses as the perfect tonic for the times. A bracing mix of tough and tender, sweet but street, that somehow makes everybody feel ar-right in these strange, uncertain post-9/11 days. Switch on the radio,…
Signing up as a tonosPRO member at Tonos.com — the music biz professional’s hook-up site whose ad banners tease “Got the hit? Tonos has the access!” — is a little like hitmaking as a Blizzard massively multiplayer online game. First, you create your player — in the form of your…
Every rising pop star who manages to forge a distinctive personality on the radio and MTV inherits them seemingly overnight. Hundreds of thousands of like-minded — and sometimes like-dressed — individuals are suddenly drawn out of their shells through their instant identification with this larger-than-life representation of their secret, inner…
If 2001 was a maddening, schizophrenic year for America, that goes double for the music that bubbled to the surface in the last 12 months. For most of the year, bland frivolity and mindless chest-thumping ruled the airwaves. Then, as the World Trade Center went down in a monumental pile…
The 110 famed lunchboxes sit neatly organized in a special collector’s shrine in Robin Wilson’s Mesa home — just like the gold and platinum record awards the singer accumulated during his glory days with the Gin Blossoms, inarguably the most successful band Arizona produced in the ’90s and the quintet…
The sound comes popping and stuttering out of tinny-tiny speakers from all around, and underfoot. Glitchy, itchy beats blare from little HitClips micro boom boxes key-chained to bicycle handlebars and school backpacks. Chunky guitar rhythms and airy, kittenish vocal harmonies ring out on bright translucent pocket CD players, scooter radios…
Sometimes it seems the path to teen-pop stardom is traveled by supersonic space rocket. Drawing from our nation’s apparently abundant pool of singing and dancing dream prom queens, new Mandys, Krystals and Christinas are discovered, groomed, prepped and launched into the pop music limelight faster than George Jetson carpooling daughter…
Run-D.M.C. created the perfect dramatization of what can happen when rap and heavy metal collide in their landmark 1986 video for “Walk This Way.” The now-classic image of Aerosmith’s Steve Tyler and Joe Perry crashing through the wall of D.M.C.’s rehearsal studio to discover a parallel universe of tough attitude…
“This is where we do it,” Survivalist’s most garrulous MC, Preacha, welcomes you upon your arrival at Fo’ Life Records, the tiny independent record label from west Phoenix that has somehow produced a Top 5 song on Billboard’s Hot Rap Singles chart, Survivalist’s laid-back, catchy “Bounce.” If there were an…
Beyoncé Knowles’ eye-seizing image flashes from the arsenal of giant video screens towering above the briefly vacant stage. And 10,000 mostly young, mostly female concertgoers, all decked out for the last big summer concert before heading back to school, erupt in a spirited siren of “Whoo!”s worthy of MTV’s Total…
Vince Welnick was never cut out to be a Deadhead. While the young “beautiful people” of the Sixties were hitching rides to San Francisco, wearing flowers in their hair, Vince was cruising Phoenix’s Central Avenue with his older twin brothers, packing a tear-gas pistol in his belt. Sure, he had…
