Soulive McDowell Mountain Music Festival at Compound GrillSunday, April 15 Groove is what you make of it, and Soulive makes plenty of groovin’ music. This trio from New York City–brothers Neal and Alan Evans, on Hammond B-3 organ and drums, respectively, and guitarist Eric Krasno–draw inspiration from mid-1960s soul jazz…
The Travelin’ McCourys featuring Keller Williams McDowell Mountain Music Festival at Compound GrillSunday, April 15This unexpected pairing of bluegrass royalty and one man band loop master looks from the outside to be an awkward marriage of convenience, with the McCourys ambling in for Williams’ latest whim of making a bluegrass record…
See also: All Hail Jim Marshall’s Black Wall See also: The Ten Hottest Chicks in Metal By now most of you have seen the video from the Golden God Awards of Marilyn Manson (unfortunately sounding like shit) performing “Sweet Dreams” with Johnny Depp as a surprise guest. And while Depp…
See also: Download: Nite Jewel’s Sultry, Direct Song “In the Dark” Chairlift, Nite Jewel, and Bell Crescent Ballroom Saturday, April 14 Watching the trio of on-the-rise bands at Crescent, I saw three very different approaches to both stage presence and synth-driven pop. Headliners Chairlift struck a very entertaining balance between…
See also: Coachella: Radiohead’s Weekend 1 Set Has No Alarms and No Surprises See also: Coachella: The Black Lips’ Cole Alexander Goes Full Monty, Plays Guitar With His Ding-Dong See also: Best of Coachella Weekend One: Friday, April 13 Everyone was ready to shit their pants for Radiohead, but there…
See also: A Look at the Creamy Radio Stage at McDowell Mountain Music Festival See also: Galactic’s Robert Mercurio on Carnivale Electricos See also: Ozomatli, Galactic, and More at McDowell Mountain Music Festival Dark Star Orchestra McDowell Mountain Music Festival at Compound Grill Saturday, April 14 A good part of…
See also: Big & Rich and Jake Owen at Country Thunder in Florence, 4/13/12 Country Thunder Caynon Moon Ranch in Florence, Arizona Saturday, April 14, 2012 After Friday’s fraught and frightful driving experience to Country Thunder, I shut off the GPS and drove from memory. All went smoothly and I…
Andrew Youssef/OC Weekly Radiohead Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, Indio April 14, 2012 By Adam Lovinus Radiohead might have a problem. They are so consistently great that an elite performance, such as the one turned in Saturday night at Coachella, could be seen as missing that element of surprise…
See also: *The Best Of Coachella: Day One *”What My Spirit Hood Means To Me”: Coachella-Goers Explain *Coachella Preview 2012: Everything You Need to Know About the Performers By Kai Flanders The Black Lips started off Saturday at Coachella with a bang. The flower-punk band from Atlanta, Georgia decided to…
Gabrielle CanonSee also: *Spirit Hoods: The Weirdest Fashion Startup Ever *Expected Fashion Trends at Coachella By Gabrielle Canon Spirit Hoods are back! At Coachella this year these fuzzy animal-themed head gears resembling furs (but not!) have returned with a vengeance; one’s instinct remains, as always, to mock them, but this…
Day one of The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival brought something more unusual than ironic outfits or that poor guy who couldn’t get his flip flops on for the life of him: this year there was rain. The festival held in the Southern California desert is known for scorching, sometimes three-digit…
See also: The Five People You Will Meet at Country Thunder Country Thunder Canyon Moon Ranch in Florence, Arizona Friday, April 13, 2012 I’m not superstitious, but it’s hard to brush off the supreme bad luck I had on Friday the 13th, attempting to drive my Nissian Maxima to Day…
See also: A Look at the Creamy Radio Stage at McDowell Mountain Music Festival See also: Galactic’s Robert Mercurio on Carnivale Electricos McDowell Mountain Music Festival Outside of The Compound Grill Friday, April 13, 2012 Dark ominous clouds, chilly 70-degree weather, and one of the most superstitious days of the…
Local spinster Rodrick Mullins typically performs under the spinster moniker DJ Babel (which is an acronym for Beyond All Beliefs Entertain Life). Frankly, he might as well change his nickname to DJ Jungle Boy, since the 34-year-old has a major yen for wild and chaotic variant of drum ‘n’ bass…
What music critic prophet could have predicted that in 2012 hip, indie songwriters like Los Angeles-based Ramona Gonzalez, who records haunting, danceable pop as Nite Jewel, would be compared to acts like Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam or Sade? But here we are, the year the Mayan calendar ends, and…
With a voice that has withstood the test of time (20 years of rock and roll to be exact), Eddie Vedder is still one of the greatest singers of our day. One thing we particularly love about him is his ability to make it big as a crossover artist in…
Aaron Dontez Yates, better known to the world as Tech N9ne, is not a big fan of the typical. “How many black dudes do you see painting their faces and coming out with bishop robes on the stage?” he asks me, speaking from his tour bus “somewhere in New Mexico.”…
Two years ago, yours truly embarked on finding a real country experience that didn’t lead me into the backwoods of some quaint southern town, but rather out into a barren field in Florence. I was alone. I was scared. I was wearing flip flops, at the risk of getting my…
William Fucking ReedReed deejays Sticky Fingers every Friday night at Bar Smith. For more info, visit Sticky Fingers’ official website. When you put your key in the ignition and turn on the radio, what station would play right now? Currently, my car radio defaults to KWSS 106.7-FM, which hosts my Friday/Saturday…
If there’s ever been a weekend you don’t have to scramble for musical options, this is it. You’ve got a quadruple threat: Country Thunder in Florence, McDowell Mountain Music Fest in Phoenix, Way Out West Fest in Tucson, and that big party in Indio called Coachella. But are you not…
See also: fIREHOSE’s Ed Crawford: “It Was Our Job. We F**kin’ Showed Up Every Day.” M. Ward has slowly and sturdily built himself up as a songwriter and producer over the past decade, with a string of hushed folk, country, blues, and pop inflected records that don’t cry out for…
Childish Gambino The Venue Scottsdale Wednesday, April 11, 2012 Judd Apatow and Paul Feig’s Freaks and Geeks was one of those shows that seemed too good to exist — and indeed it didn’t for very long. NBC cancelled it after one season (they didn’t even originally air all the episodes…
