It’s safe to say there has been some fairly disheartening news about our state in the past few years. For all the racial and political tension we’ve seen, there still are certain kinds of people who remain optimistic about our future. The artistic community, for one, thinks there’s room to…
Daron Sutton Sutton is a broadcaster for the Arizona Diamondbacks. His 7th Annual Sutton’s Strokes for Little Folks will be held on Thursday, May 10, at Arizona Grand Resort. Proceeds benefit the Southwest Autism Research and Resource Center. Find more info at Suttongolf.org. When you put your key in the…
Curious what’s going on around town this weekend? Need some suggestions as to how to rock, dance, or krump in the Valley of the Sun? Don’t fret: These are our Five Shows to See This Weekend. Looking for even more Cinco action? Check out our Valley Cinco de Mayo guide…
Hip-hop superstar Nicki Minaj is bringing her “Pink Friday” tour to Phoenix on Tuesday, August 7, at Comerica Theatre. The 14-date North American tour finds her skipping some pretty big cities (L.A. and Philadelphia get radio shows) on her first headlining tour, but returning to Phoenix after supporting Britney Spears…
Local rapper Jaron Ikner has a varied palate when it comes to musical tastes, but it’s a little-known fact that the man who calls himself Black One has roots in turntablism and EDM. Ikner released a new track Wednesday called “Turning Out the Lights.” The song which he says is…
We’ve been having fun examining various one-hit wonders and FM curiosities of the ’90s each week with our Throwback Thursday columns, but now it’s time to get serious and examine one of the biggest records on the ’90s: Dookie by Green Day. Dookie was a game-changer, both for young millennials…
See also: Colorstore Brings Film and Rock Together at FilmBar With a Little Help From Their Friends Colorstore’s “My Life As a Beaver” starts with a fuzzy guitar, just like “Revolution” by The Beatles, then erupts into a blown-speaker pop opus. Whatever you do, don’t snicker at the title, though…
This week, New Times ran a list in our print publication highlighting some of the most interesting posts published at Up on the Sun over the past week. Here are links to those posts. Does Phoenix need a heavy metal strip club? How did the “Real Coachella” festival compare to…
“Hiatus” is a tricky word. More often than not, when a band tosses the term out there, it’s shorthand for “we’re breaking up, guys.” Dustin Kensrue of influential post-hardcore, post-metalcore, post-pop punk, post-pretty much everything O.C. rock band Thrice insists this isn’t the case when it comes to the band’s…
From the late ’90s through the early ’00s, modern-rock radio was ruled by Creed, with singles like “Torn,” “One” and “With Arms Wide Open.” Three straight albums, My Own Prison, Human Clay, and Weathered, sold millions upon millions of copies each. They were labeled a Christian band even as they…
If you stopped by new dance venue Monarch Theatre during its soft opening in late April and thought the place was pretty fly, we’ve got some news: It’s gonna get even better, considering it ain’t even half-done. Co-owner Pete “SuperMix” Salaz, who runs the joint along with Edson Madrigal and…
Hanging out with the guys from ENOVA is a lot like being inside a kick drum: There’s excitement and tension; limits are stretched. It’s a constant shift of high and low energy frequencies, just like the insistent force on a drum’s tightly drawn skin. Let’s call it a challenge. The…
The phrase “big in Japan” is rife with negative connotations for American musicians. What does it mean when another nation is crazy for a band that remains a lesser-known act in their homeland? In the case of Phoenix indie-rock band Knesset, it simply means that the Japanese are ahead of…
Analog obsessives and audiophiles may bemoan the inevitable digitalization of music on the grounds that MP3s lack the sound quality of vinyl, but there’s been no greater victim of the download revolution than the album cover. Think about it — would those Frank Frazetta-painted Molly Hatchet records scream thunderous menace…
Looking back, it’s safe to say that the hyperbolic fervor surrounding the early 2000s’ “rock revival” was embarrassingly misplaced. Jack White certainly built a black-and-red empire, but The Strokes have been battling skepticism for their past three albums and The Vines barely made it out of the starting gate. In…
Thursday 3 16th Street Bar & Grill: Kickback Thursdays with DJ Cedric Ceballos (hip-hop, classics, neo-soul, reggae, R&B, Top 40, old school) Azucar Cuban Lounge: Latin Night with DJ Los & DJ Yoshi (cumbia, reggaeton, bachata, rock en Español, old school, funk) Bar Smith: Double Vision Thursday with DJ Kyko,…
Although Cinco de Mayo is a more celebrated holiday in the United States than it is in Mexico, nothing marks the occasion like a little mariachi music. A traditional mariachi band combines trumpets, violins, a large five-string guitar called a jarana, a smaller guitar called a vilhuela, and the guitarrón,…
Entrance Band, Amen Dunes, and Wooden Indian Chasers Bar and Night Club Tuesday, May 1, 2012 See also: Amen Dunes on Living a Million Musical Lives I’m sitting at a table with Paz Lenchantin a few hours before her heavy psych-blues outfit, Entrance Band, decimates the stage at Chasers in…
As a recent graduate from Arizona State University, I can attest to the student showcases the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication regularly hosts. The second floor of the school’s downtown building houses the First Amendment Forum, where CNN constantly airs. The public space normally is used as…
Brian Jonestown Massacre Crescent Ballroom Tuesday, May 1, 2012 See also: Tripping with the Brian Jonestown Massacre I have a serious question for diehard Brian Jonestown Massacre fans: Is frontman Anton Newcombe a perfectionist or just an asshole? I’m no BJM scholar — I haven’t seen DIG!, the documentary that…
Fans of ultra-bizarre DJ collective/party crew Sadisco* have probably jonesing for fix of industrial music and mayhem lately. After all, it’s been more than nine months since Fight Club Sadisco*, their most recent event, took place last June. The drought, however, is about to come to an end. The Sadisco*…
How’s this for a depressing statistic? According to 2012’s Quality Counts report, as presented by K-12 education newspaper Education Week, Arizona ranks 44th out of 51 states (including Washington, D.C.) in public education. Plus, our desert state got a mere D+ when it came to school finance and an F…
