Blood On The Dance Floor Nile Theater Thursday, April 5, 2012 It’s “Holy Week,” and this week I accepted a challenge not to criticize or gossip. I’ve been doing pretty well, reserving judgment on others, but I think it’s okay to put all of that on pause for work. Besides,…
Dick Dale Rhythm Room Thursday, April 5, 2012 Driving to the Dick Dale concert Thursday night at the Rhythm Room it seemed, in retrospect, fitting to have Little Barrie on the stereo cranking out the title track from his new album, King of the Waves. “You’re not gonna be saved,…
Kyle UnfugUnfug is the morning show co-host with Johnjay and Rich on 104.7 KISS-FM. When you put your key in the ignition and turn on the radio, what station would play right now? 104.7, baby! What’s the first album you bought? Salt-n-Pepa! The album with “Shoop” on it (Very Necessary)! Still know…
In this week’s print edition we profile rapper Childish Gambino. Of course, if you don’t recognize the name you might better know him as Troy Barnes on NBC’s Thursday night comedy Community. Childish Gambino is just one of many up-and-coming talents who are breaking the hip-hop mold, and a big…
Arguably one of the best things to come out of last night’s American Idol episode was the emergence of a video on Yahoo! that Jennifer Lopez beau Casper Smart appeared in back in 2009. The loose-limbed dancer starred as a dancing bee in the Haagen-Dazs produced video in an effort…
Turntablists of Arizona, you’d better start practicing. A little more than two weeks from now, one of the biggest DJ contests ever will be bringing its regional battle to Phoenix and your shit better be tight. The DMC World DJ Championships, widely considered to be the most premier turntablist contests…
See also: Jackalope Ranch’s Five Other Books We’d Like to Smoke Move over Gene Simmons — the Snoop Dee-oh-double G is poised to eclipse you in terms of marketing gimmicks. You know all those times you’ve been chillin’, wishing you could toke up using mock-handwritten lyric sheets of Snoop Dogg…
Tempe’s Flying Scorpion might still be a young band, but that doesn’t mean they’re new to music. As the one-year-old hard rockers release their first three-track disc, Z, at Yucca Tap Room this Saturday, they bring years of experience from former and current local bands like Mourning Maxwell, Slowpoke, Meet Corpse,…
I couldn’t have asked for a better time to hear about the Summerland Tour. While waiting for a coffee in Venice Beach, California, I was browsing Up On The Sun on my phone and saw that Everclear was coming. I knew what I had to listen to, because I rolled…
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. Who are the hottest women in metal? Want to hear exclusive music from Isaac Brock of…
Donald Glover has it all wrong. At least from a historical perspective, anyway. How many times does the actor-turned-musician thing work? Eddie Murphy’s “Party All the Time,” anybody? But for the most part, Glover doesn’t fit the mold. Though he is best known for his role as Troy Barnes on…
Reggae certainly has changed since Steel Pulse began in the mid-1970s. Back then, roots reggae ruled the roost. Dancehall, lovers rock, and reggaton were distant visions; dub was spacing outside mainstream circles. With a blend of tightly knit song structures packing pop hooks and sociopolitical lyrics, Steel Pulse gradually took…
It used to be no big deal for Phoenix/Chicago-based folk punks Andrew Jackson Jihad to play the Trunk Space. In fact, it seems it used to happen a couple of times a week. It wasn’t the first place I saw the band (that would’ve been at The Palace of No…
You’d never know it if you took their black T-shirts, black hair and, well, black outlook at face value, but metalheads have no problem laughing at their own darkness. Cartoon Network’s late-night Adult Swim block capitalized on this with Metalocalypse, a show about a cartoon metal band that simultaneously celebrates…
It’s common for a song lyric to mean one thing to the audience and a very different thing to the performer. Not sure what Led Zeppelin is babbling about specifically? It’s probably something horny and fantastical. Other times, nonsensical lyrics end up illustrating some deep insight. “I Am the Walrus,”…
The idea that the album — as a unified, complete statement from a musician — is finished has been the subject of many great think pieces and essays over the past couple of years. Until now, the release of his debut LP, Checkognize, Abelardo Gil III, who raps, sings, and…
Call us crazy, but it seems some DJs or EDM artists are so prodigiously talented that their skill set may have been born of some supernatural power, like maybe even The Force. It seems a fitting — if not slightly geeky — explanation as any for the keen abilities wielded…
John Gourley feels good. Tired, but really good. His band, Portugal. The Man, is chilling in El Paso following a rollercoaster ride of TV appearances, festival stops, a tour supporting the ultra-hot Black Keys, a jaunt to Alaska, a crusade across Europe, and a seemingly endless series of club dates…
Thursday 5 16th Street Bar & Grill: Kickback Thursdays with DJ Cedric Ceballos (hip-hop, classics, neo-soul, reggae, R&B, Top 40, old school) Afterlife: Beat the Scene Thursdays (electronica, dance, remixes) Bar Smith: Double Vision Thursday with DJ Kyko, DJ Idenaty, & DJ Dario (Latin, hip-hop) Bobby Q’s: DJ Phlava, MC…
You don’t need us to tell you that Ashton Kutcher is kind of a knucklehead, but country star Miranda Lambert apparently needs a reminder after the television goofballs on-stage attempt at country crooning. Kutcher presented Lambert with the Female Vocalist of the Year award at the Academy of Country Music…
Listening to other crate diggers stories of amazing scores might be the only thing vinyl nerds love as much as collecting records. Jealously inducing tales of that time you found “that rare 45, for, like, 50 cents.” It’s at once infuriating and inspiring, a little more fuel for the fire…
It’s easy to imagine the sounds of Tempe in the ’90s dominated by jangle, over-driven amps cranked, and melodic singers crooning a Mill Ave export that would crack into the mainstream. But listening to Half String, a Tempe-based band that featured Brandon Capps, Tim Patterson, Matt Kruse, and Kimber Lanning…
