“Thank goodness it’s basketball season” is a line that every single Arizona State Sun Devils fan never thought would be included in his or her vernacular. Get used to it. Reason being, the football team seems to be permanently on the fritz while fifth-year ASU Men’s Basketball head coach Herb…
Derrick Rose needs an alarm clock. A couple of weeks ago, the Chicago Bulls’ star point guard no-showed a scheduled cameo appearance on the CBS drama The Good Wife because he overslept. The incident is a fitting analogy for Chi-town’s 2010-11 season. A Bulls team that was supposed to contend…
Editor’s note: This is the third piece in an occasional series about Van Buren Street. I have been to the bughouse. It’s not nice to call it that, of course. It’s confusing, too. Each time I mentioned to friends that I was visiting the bughouse, they assumed I was planning…
Canadian psych-rockers Black Mountain may be best known for their Black Sabbath-like choogle, the folky rootsy-ness that sounds descended from the Appalachians. Catchy guitar hooks still meet up with those velvety male/female vocals, but their latest, Wilderness Heart, digs deeper into the classic rook love-in started on 2008’s In The…
Sometimes you can go home again. To wit: über-punks Tyler King and DJ Johnny Volume are reviving their old BANNED in Tempe night for one evening only at its original location at the Stray Cat. King will resume his role slinging drinks alongside Joe Furbah, while Volume will spins up…
The Wednesday Morning Interludes series continues with a free recital by ASU faculty member and pianist Walter Cosand. Wed., Nov. 24, 10:30 a.m., 2010…
The latest edition of this ongoing classical music series, which features members of the Phoenix Symphony and other local orchestras, coincides with Legend City’s annual “Chaos Theory” exhibit and will feature music from Shostakovich, Schulhoff, Copland, and other composers. Sat., Nov. 20, 8 p.m.; Sun., Nov. 21, 8 p.m., 2010…
It helps to have friends in high places. Just ask This Century, a Phoenix pop-rock band that, thanks to its pals in another local pop-rock group, The Maine, recently scored a record deal with a Warner Bros. subsidiary. The Maine, which released its 2010 album, Black & White, on Sire…
Though he studied criminology in college, singer-songwriter Tom Russell has traversed continents and musical styles during his 30-year career — sometimes aiming for hard honky-tonk, sometimes for conceptual folk dreamscapes. But his muse always leads him back to the convicts and the gamblers, the laborers and the drifters, the immigrants…
“The gigs are the most righteous manifestations of the forces behind Watain, and we will always see them as a kind of ritual, where the inner spiritual darkness is channeled. Everyone who attends a Watain gig must expect nothing but blood, fire, and blackest death!” That’s Watain frontman—principal flagellant and…
In the wake of the surviving Led Zeppelin members’ reuniting in late 2007 for a one-off performance to honor the late Atlantic Records head Ahmet Ertegun, many believed that a full-scale reunion was imminent. Drummer Jason Bonham, son of late Zep skinsman John Bonham, played behind his dad’s old crew…
When the promo for Dane Cook’s 2009 Comedy Central special, Isolated Incident, promises “a Dane Cook you’ve never seen before,” it sounds more like an assurance than a boast. Cook has been crowned a cultural demagogue, in large part due to the considerable virulence of his vanity-drenched movie roles in…
Hailing from the birthplace of the now archaic Route 66 (Springfield, MO), Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin are a bit of a relic of a forgotten era as well, hearkening back to a time before terms like “post-grunge” and “blogosphere” were inescapable. Still young (as far as bands go),…
Other people besides James Franco appear in 127 Hours, but as they’re unimportant, they will not be mentioned in this review. Danny Boyle’s film — based on the story of Aron Ralston, who in 2003 cut off his own arm after being stuck for five days under a rock in…
I have to say that photographs of the paintings of Fausto Fernandez, now on display in “The Virtue of Wisdom” at Gebert Contemporary on Scottsdale’s Main Street, really do not accurately depict them. You have to see the paintings in the flesh, so to speak, in order to get any…
It’s summer, obviously, and barely anything sounds good to drink. Not chilled wine, totally false on beer, and definitely negatory on the whiskey flask that’s hibernating in a sports-coat pocket. The only thing that sounds appetizing is a chilled martini, but that’s serious damage to the bank account. Except on…
There are cowboys all up in this piece of late. The 2009-established Latino Artists of America recently debuted “Mexican Cowboys & Charros” featuring new southwest-inspired art pieces by the national group. The work can be seen through December 19 at the Arizona Latino Arts and Cultural Center. Nov. 9-Dec. 19,…
We all know at least one person that constantly laments having left some other city behind. Whether they weep over their favorite regional food or miss the hustle and bustle of bigger metropolises, they should really meet Ed Mabrey. Before Mabrey found himself transplanted here earlier this year, his Black…
Bet you didn’t know the beginnings of American rock ‘n’ roll were more than just black and white (white artists ripping off black artists, that is). “American Sabor: Latinos in U.S. Popular Music” is the first traveling exhibition at north Phoenix’s Musical Instrument Museum (MIM). The show celebrates Latino culture’s…
“What if we choose to exist solely in a reality of our own making?” asks Pittsburgh community college lit professor John Brennan (Russell Crowe) rhetorically during a discussion of Don Quixote in The Next Three Days, Paul Haggis’s fourth effort as director. Like his lumpy protagonist, Haggis, who also scripted…
Last week was much better. In the bleakest of moments, a flood of excuses pours into my mind. What good is writing 50,000 words when they aren’t 50,000 good words? Should I not focus on writing well rather than upchucking prose in order to fulfill a self-imposed quota? And that…
Cocktails and jewelry shopping…could there be a better combination?The Heard Museum North is hosting a trunk show with New Mexican Jewelers David and Wayne Nez Gaussoin tomorrow evening, Thursday, November 18.The two will be selling their dramatic wearable art pieces. And did we mention there’ll be cocktails?…
