Al Singer, one of the Valley’s most prominent jazz promoters, died on March 3. He was 77 years old. Singer’s passion for jazz started in the 1930s, when movie Westerns exposed him to the sounds of swing. For Singer, it was an early stimulus for jazz, and by the 1940s,…
FRI 3/4 Last fall, renowned African-American choreographer Alonzo King took up residence at the White Oak Plantation in Yulee, Florida, where Mikhail Baryshnikov’s Dance Studio hosts artists for the development of new works. Apparently, the stay did King some good. His San Francisco-based LINES Ballet, founded in 1982, shows off…
SAT 3/5 If your pooch’s flabby paunch is starting to rival your beer gut, it’s time to get that mutt some exercise. Take a hike with your canine companion on Saturday, March 5, when local no-kill animal organizations Paw Placement and For the Luv of Dogz, along with the Canine…
FRI 3/4 Phoenix hasn’t exactly been a hotbed of the gothic club scene. For one thing, it’s too sunny here (honest, it is!) for any “vampire” to survive; and for another, it’s too damn hot to wear black all the time — not to mention the fact that the Valley…
The back of Koko Taylor’s 1978 record The Earthshaker shows a black-and-white photo of the blues belter and her band in a smoke-filled bar, seated around a table that’s packed with bottles of booze, loose $10 bills, and Pall Mall cigarettes. Taylor is looking at the camera, disheveled hair falling…
Eroticide learned not to wave dildos in front of children the hard way. After one of the band’s sexually explicit shows, which include all manner of lewd, homemade props, sex toys, and simulated sexual slashings, the City of Mesa slapped the hardcore band with a number of obscenity charges. Then…
Goodbye Blue Monday might sound like a nod to ’80s New Wave pioneers New Order. But GBM, a San Diego quartet whose name actually references Kurt Vonnegut’s seminal Breakfast of Champions, has no desire to imitate either the Manchester Invasion (despite citing The Cure as a major influence) or the…
SAT 2/26 It seems that KTAR personality Gayle Bass really knows how to shake it. And by “it,” we mean a martini — which also, it just so happens, serves as her moneymaker, when Bass and more than a dozen other local luminaries serve as wanna-be mixologists during the Celebrity…
2/26-2/27 Stereotypes are an awful blight, which is why the Scottish are such an inspiringly indefinable people. Any group that counts among its sports the Hammer Throw, Weight Toss, and Standing Stone Put are on the high side of macho. Yet those same people are just as likely to be…
FRI 2/25 So many people still shudder at the “F” word: Feminism, that is. The Guerrilla Girls don’t understand that — after all, they’ve been trying to reinvent the word since 1985, adopting the names of dead women artists as pseudonyms, donning gorilla masks, and using “facts, humor and fake…
Before you say “Snottsdale” again to refer to the Valley’s most affluent city, check out Faking Fabulous, a television show pilot written by longtime Scottsdale residents Brian Davis and Carrie Severson (pictured). The sitcom explains some things. “It’s about twentysomethings in Scottsdale, mimicking the older generation’s success and fashion, but…
The guys in Vistalance will be watching eBay for their stolen instruments, since some asshole stole their van (with all of their equipment inside) back in November. The local metal band’s losses totaled roughly $12,000 including the van, which has since been recovered, riddled with miles and reeking of piss…
Few bands take up as much space on MySpace.com as Sunrise Elementary. The Glendale “pop/synth/piano/rock” quintet lists more than 130 bands as “influences,” from the audible (Reggie and the Full Effect, Hello Goodbye, The Postal Service, The Ataris) to the abstract (Dido, James Taylor, Vivaldi, REO Speedwagon). Sunrise Elementary’s litany…
The Hacienda Brothers are scheduled to perform on
Tuesday, March 1, at the Rhythm Room.
THU 2/17 Something fishy this way comes, when the Tuna Helpers flop onto the stage at the Emerald Lounge, 1514 North Seventh Avenue on Thursday, February 17. The female trio call themselves a “pop-goth, performance art, puppet-wielding band,” and intersperse their own songs with performances by homemade puppets, some of…
MON 2/21 The words of American soldiers in Iraq are officially “Rated R” by the Motion Picture Association of America. Michael Tucker’s appealing that rating, because he feels his documentary Gunner Palace, about the U.S. Army’s 2/3 Field Artillery unit housed in Uday Hussein’s former Azimiya Palace, needs to be…
SAT 2/19 It’s been said that the hardest thing to do in sports is hit a baseball. Those selling that tired line, however, are most certainly blocking out painful childhood Wiffle memories. Making contact with a perforated ball possessed of the ability to move up, down, and sideways seemingly all…
2/17-2/20 If you think all black movies have to include the words “phat,” “dope” or “fly” in the dialogue, prepare to be schooled at the Arizona Black Film Showcase, which runs from Thursday, February 17, through Sunday, February 20, at South Mountain Community College, 7050 South 24th Street. “This event…
2/11-3/11 Get your drink on, get your freak on, and get your strap-on, because the 22nd annual Exotic Art Show is back again. “People who like to dress crazy and sexy can come here, and nobody gives them a problem,” says Baron Dixon, one of 60-plus artists exhibiting work in…
Mathematicians believe there’s a formula for everything. Apparently, Mic Devious does, too. The Phoenix-based MC’s rhymes aren’t bad, but his song themes (how he’s the best MC and everybody else sucks, how he’s bangin’ the bomb-ass betties and don’t give a fuck about them beeyotches, how his dad abandoned him…
SAT 2/12 The tough chicks of Arizona Roller Derby aren’t your typical suckers for Valentine’s Day. In fact, give a Roller girl a rose, and she might just crush your heart. No, really, she might just rip the pulsing muscle out of your chest and blade right over it –…
SAT 2/12 She can flex her rippled six-pack one pop at a time. She wrote a book titled The Gut Book! Learn How to Lose Weight and Flaunt a Waist Like Mine!. But Nakarát (née Jennifer Gerhardt) isn’t a fitness instructor. She’s a teacher and performer of “Raks Sharqi” (“Dance…
