The mailbag brings many things, some good, lots bad, but few things that can generate the weird mix of raging apathy that Dichromatic, the sophomore effort from Tempe’s Surf Ballistics, managed to elicit. The press kit for the self-described “high energy rock” combo — and, fair warning, there is nary…
In today’s installment, I get called a “hapless shmo” by Gawker, which I take as a huge compliment. Gawker: http://gawker.com/5256086/ted-nugent-is-the-new-mike-tyson…
It’s about 15 minutes into the conversation with local power poppers Sugar High when it starts to happen. The feeling that I’ve somehow ended up in an episode of The Monkees, or maybe even been cast in a local remake of A Hard Day’s Night. It could be singer Adrian…
As far as I know, I am not queer. And if I thought I were, nothing would change much, really. I would have a boyfriend instead of a girlfriend. Or maybe I wouldn’t. My parents might look at me with furrowed brows for a while, but they always did that…
“It’s kind of like God let us come back,” muses drummer Marnie Martin, “but only if we played together and really kicked ass!” Martin is posing a metaphysical theory that explains how the four current members of Portland’s Pinehurst Kids survived individual near-death experiences — Martin was nearly electrocuted; guitarist…
A whole day spent agonizing over three simple paragraphs. When you exhaust the better part of a day on a three-paragraph lead to a short story, you want to put a gun to your head. If I owned a gun, I can see the headline now: Neighbor Finds Dead Writer…
If Miles Davis were still alive and in need of a turntablist, it would make sense for him to hire New York native Jason Kibler, a.k.a. DJ Logic. Logic is a DJ who, like the legendary trumpeter, consistently stretches the boundaries of the musical landscape with his instrument of choice…
A 2 Live Crew show was the last place Windigo front man Matt Strangeways expected to spend his Valentine’s Day. On a day that’s supposed to be filled with hearts and flowers, Strangeways’ mood couldn’t have been blacker. It wasn’t a girl that Strangeways was pining over, but rather the…
I suppose the question on everyone’s minds with this latest Oasis opus is “how the hell are they going to survive without ‘Bonehead’?” Magically, the opaque void that was always Bonehead hasn’t been filled so much as decorated around — after all, how do you replace a presence so aggressively…
How awful it must be for all of the bands that are not Yo La Tengo. Year in, year out, the Hoboken, New Jersey, trio delivers the kind of honest, beautiful music that few groups even know exist, let alone get close to capturing. The 10th record from these indie-rock…
Talking to Ben Harper feels a lot like infringing on his personal space. Through his work — an evocative mélange of postmodern folk blues — Harper seems to divulge important parts of himself, doled out in small bits. Yet as much as he expresses through his art, in conversation he…
The driver at the Burbank International Airport opens the rear door to his cab and I hop in. He slides into the front seat, puts it into gear and pulls out. Moving toward the airport exit, I tell him the name of my hotel. We turn north and roll toward…
Remember when every year that passed was the 25th anniversary of something? The release of Sgt. Pepper. The first performance of Tommy. Jimi and Janis’ expiration dates. Then when it got to be the 25th anniversaries of “Disco Duck” and the Osmonds usurping the Jacksons on the pop charts, people…
It would be so easy to dismiss The Cure as a band that has outlived its usefulness, that exists long beyond its expiration date. Its best, or at least best-known, moments live in another time, one long since past — the 1980s, to be precise, back when “Let’s Go to…
It’s late Friday evening. The reassuring suburban quiet of this south Tempe neighborhood is broken by the noise emanating from the garage at the end of the street. Yet it’s not the shambolic strains of “garage rock,” but an ornate, almost lush sound. Inside, the space is sparsely decorated. There…
Given that this Chapel Hill, North Carolina, combo’s willful brand of anonymity-mongering ranks alongside Will Oldham’s irritating early dalliances with Palace self-obfuscation, one is tempted to level accusations of preciousness at it. Nowhere in the sleeve credits does one obtain personnel or instrumentation details, merely song titles, thank yous, and…
8T[thnson must be a patient man. It’s been six years since the last album of new The The music (and four since the all-Hank Williams covers set Hanky Panky), but he continues to sound very much like himself. As the one constant member of the band, he has collaborated with…
Rapping and scratching on an album released by Hightone — Hightone? The torch-bearing label for all roots music? What’s going on here? No, it’s not a hip-hop album, but it is something quite remarkable. Call it roots music with soul. And it may only be February, but it wouldn’t be…
Sandy Lovejoy met Tim Cole through a newspaper love-match ad. A few weeks later, they were married. About eight months after the wedding, on February 1, she was dead, a victim of cancer. In between the two events lived dreams of sailing off into faraway sunsets, of growing old together…
For the record, the members of Death Takes a Holiday don’t worship the devil, though you might be confused if you’ve only caught one of the group’s frenetic live performances. Onstage, the band rocks with a ferocity that would make Lucifer beam and bang his head. The band pumps out…
The army on the tiny Chez Nous dance floor is a microcosm of the Valley’s population, of ethnicity, age, size and gender. White, black, brown, smart, stupid, silly, happy, drunk. There are slinky strippers with moneyed suitors. There are divorcée moms going out. Cocksure gents work every angle. Snow-haired couples…
In the spring of 1962, Memphis producer Sam Phillips, ever the iconoclast, did something he hadn’t attempted in nearly a decade: He recorded a set of raw blues, the kind of stuff that boomed from the juke joints and roadhouses that dotted the flat, desolate landscape of north Mississippi. Phillips,…
