Nate “Igor” SmithNebraska, a personable and modest 22-year-old dishwasher from Lincoln, Nebraska, takes a punch.As our nation’s culture and economy continues to deteriorate, more and more people are taking an interest in watching people beat the shit out of each other. While, under normal circumstances, these events are highly promoted…
Tori Amos, wearing leather pants underneath a long flowing dress, straddled herself on the piano bench in a position that would seem uncomfortable to anyone who played the 88 keys on a regular basis. She played “Parasol” from the 2005 album The Beekeeper with her right hand on a keyboard…
Well, it was bound to happen anyway. As one Facebook commenter put it, “They were responding to a call they got in the goddamn ’90s.” I’m talking about W___ S____, a South Phoenix storage unit turned underground show space that’s been hosting shows for nearly two decades — and was…
Steve Wiley is Up on the Sun’s resident Record Store Geek. Biweekly, he shares stories of great music and wacky characters from his continuing 27 years in Valley record stores and the always-zany music biz. Generally when I tell people that I write about music, they assume I write reviews…
Life sucks. There is a multitude of reasons why, and no one has come to terms with this inescapable truth better than juggalos. Zen masters of nihilism and partying, they have become unquestionable experts at finding creative ways to cope with the unrelenting pain of reality…
Juggalo fashion generally involves great big pants and T-shirts that were possibly purchased at truck stops. Hair is best when it is braided and aloft in the style of Coolio, and everything looks better coated in a thin layer of sticky-delicious Faygo, of course…
Heads up, music lovers: If you happen to spy someone trying to hock a few gold records at a local pawn shop — particularly one for the 1977 Player hit “Baby Come Back” — better call the Phoenix Police Department, STAT. That’s because John Friesen, the former drummer for the…
So far, the most talked about band from Tucson this year is Prom Body. During the month before the release of its second album, Naughty by Natural, the band has gotten coverage from Spin and NPR, among others, and are poised for a breakthrough not seen since The Bled or…
I caught up with Jeff Klein of Austin’s My Jerusalem, excited and energized from witnessing the taping of a Nick Cave performance at Austin City Limits. Which makes sense, since My Jerusalem and its brand of self-described “Gothic Soul” falls very much in line with Cave’s oeuvre of frightening religious…
Those in the outside world tend to view the Gathering of the Juggalos as a lawless festival of debauchery, with apparently violent clowns — “gang members,” even, if you ask the U.S. government — running rampant and chaos ruling the day. In actuality, this notion is far from the truth…
Alex Nauth and I can’t seem to make it work. The Foxy Shazam horn player and I have been attempting to link up for the better part of a month, barely missing the other’s phone calls as the Cincinnati, Ohio-based glam rock band bounces between U.S. and Canadian tour dates…
Instead of bitching about the weather, like we usually do here, let’s instead think of reasons why 113-degree temperatures are actually good. After all, if you live in Phoenix during the summer, the world is your sauna, am I right? And to think some folks like to be indoors when…
This Saturday Rubber Brother Records is putting on a different type of show — a Round Robin. Rather than have a typical show where each band plays for 25 minutes, followed by the rest, a Round Robin puts five bands in the same room all set up at the same…
By Daniel Hill and Drew Ailes After a seven-year stint at Cave-In-Rock, Illinois, the Gathering of the Juggalos moves this year to Legend Valley Campground in Thornville, Ohio…
By Daniel Hill and Drew Ailes What’s different about this year’s Gathering of the Juggalos in Thornville, Ohio? Well, the cops for one thing…
Tucson-based trio Best Dog Award’s greatest asset is its ability to inspire confusion. Singer/guitarist Joel Crocco, drummer Andrew Ling, and organist Nick Mazza lay out maps that may lead to nowhere and littering their music with clues that make the puzzle more difficult to solve. “We play ‘exploitation rock,'” Crocco…
Phoenix’s the Holy Coast didn’t exactly intend for the band to have the initials THC, but the coincidence couldn’t be more fitting, says Keith Walker, the synth-drizzled trio’s maestro of beats and programming. Plus, when singer Brett Davis suggested the name after their first jam session, he slowly reached into…
Many musical offspring have faltered under the pressure of trying to live up to the level of greatness once bestowed on their popular progeny. Stephen “Raggamuffin” Marley has refreshingly bucked those odds, and has in fact, become a modern-day legend of reggae music in his own right, and has done…
There’s that saying “the more things change the more things stay the same.” In the 22 years since Tori Amos released her debut album, Little Earthquakes, the world has changed dramatically, but the singer has stayed remarkably true to herself. Of the topical and occasionally confrontational nature of her music,…
There’s a lot to love within our fiery little corner of the rock and metal industry. We’ve thelped breed some pretty legendary bands, like Sacred Reich, Flotsam and Jetsam, Job for a Cowboy, and Alice Cooper, to name a few. We have dozens of brutally talented underground bands, from melodic…
Perhaps the reason garage rock fits so well at The Trunk Space is because the venue is the size and shape of a good-sized garage. The acoustics are just perfect for it. I never realized that before and that makes me like the small venue that much more. Straight Straws…
Monica McGivernWeezer is the official band of AOL Instant Messenger. The years between 1996 and 2001, in which they went from well-reviewed one-hit-wonder to (briefly) unimpeachable generational touchstone, were peak-Buddy-List; in 2002 they demoed a song called “Private Message,” which is exactly what it sounds like. At some point every…
