Some musicians get into the game for the instant gratification of sex, drugs, and money. The RPM Challenge is clearly not for those kind of musicians. You actually have to love doing the work so much that you are willing to record a whole album from start to finish, in…
Islands Crescent Ballroom Wednesday, February 15, 2012 It felt a lot like a high school dance: On stage, this cool Canadian indie pop band played a good mix of fast and slow tunes, perfectly suited for dancing, yet most of the crowd sat still. Apparently some sort of Footloose-esque “no…
You guys sure like those Young the Giant guys: Their gig tonight at Crescent Ballroom sold out so quickly they added a second date tomorrow. And it’s sold out, too. But we’ve got a pair of tickets to giveaway courtesy of Cincinnati popsters Walk the Moon. The quartet (name nicked…
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. What inspired Pickster One, Z-Trip, and LL Cool J’s “Super Baller”? What five singers should team…
You expect the typical rock ‘n’ roll drama when a band takes to the studio to tackle its sophomore album: band fights, creative control struggles, and gigantic egos. But it wasn’t any of that stuff that caused the four year gap between Source Victoria’s The Fast Escape and their airtight…
Resident rapper Jaron Ikner, better known as Black One, may call Phoenix his home, but his heart still lives in his hometown. Tucson. Fresh off of his first full-length album, Black Sun Rising, Ikner looked to T-Town for a lot of the material that comprise the 14-track record. Only two…
The road to Austin’s SxSW music and arts festival is a long and arduous one. A total of 1,006 miles to be exact. (Well, according to Google Maps anyhow.) One of the many Valley acts making the trek in March include local Latin reggae rockers, Fayuca. Last week the trio…
If David Bowie and Ian Curtis were to have an illegitimate love-child, he might sound a little like Shawn Foree, the Yuma native better known as Digital Leather. He earned a degree in 19th-century American literature, but the lure of synthesizers, four-track home tape recorders, and tripping balls led him…
Austin’s location means there’s considerable twang in its rock, and it’s close enough to the Mississippi Delta that there’s plenty of blues in its roll. And like most things Texan, fiery one-man band Scott H. Biram engages in good-natured self-aggrandizement and self-mythologizing — he’s maybe joking around a bit, but…
Despite the genre’s radical roots, there’s something about modern reggae that makes it difficult for fans of classic reggae to fully embrace. Perhaps because it’s so easy to denigrate modern reggae as passionless music for stoners — smoke weed, tinker with a guitar, and become a rock star. Mix the…
It doesn’t take long for “La Verite,” the opening track on Michelle Blades’ new record, Mariana, to assert itself as new territory for the singer/songwriter. With its swelling strings (courtesy of violinist Tobie Milford), galloping drums, sprightly keyboards (both played by members of Blades’ post-punk outfit North Dakota), the song…
This scene invariably has played out in every musician’s life — the point when one band member informs another he just proposed to his girlfriend. Following a stretch of confused ground inspection before resuming eye contact, instead of offering congratulations, his friend says something along the lines of, “Well, I…
You don’t know the meaning of “poignant” until Glen Campbell, sitting two feet from you, starts to sing “Ghost on the Canvas,” the title track of his new — and final — album. The country great, who’s going through the early stages of Alzheimer’s, sometimes forgets which family member once…
When The Darkness entered the spotlight in 2003, the parenthetical question was: “Are these guys for real?” Glam rock long had given up for dead. So, did these guys really and truly love all things ’70s and ’80s rock, or were the spandex unitards, feather boas, long hair, lavish stage…
There are parties, and then there are epic parties. And then there are Quincy parties, where excess is the norm, inhibitions are loosened, and time has absolutely no meaning. The namesake bashes of artist Quincy Ross are the stuff of local legend and require plenty of stamina for those in…
Thursday 16 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: Ladies Night with DJ Idenaty, DJ EC Rock, & DJ Oh-Jezus (various) Bobby Q’s: Capricorn B-Day Bash with…
Bon Iver is the new Arcade Fire of the Grammy Awards. In classic “Who is…” Tumblr fashion, a plethora of people have taken to the interwebs to express their disdain for Justin Vernon and co. because they won the Best New Artist and Best Alternative Album awards, simply because they…
Both Valentine’s Day and Singles Awareness Day are overrated. Regardless of what you’re celebrating, with the exception of Arizona’s Centennial, you were probably setting yourself up for disappointment on the 14th. Obscura smartly hosted its Hearts of Darkness Anti-Valentine’s Bash a few days before the actual holiday. Couples could innocently…
Road trip anyone? The Beach Boys — you know, those old dudes in funny hats who played with Foster the People and the certified cool guy and totally-not-the-worst Adam Levin-fronted Maroon 5 at the Grammy’s — are coming to Arizona, but they are skipping Phoenix in favor of launching their…
If the Grammy’s taught us anything, it’s that despite Dave Grohl’s apparent objections, electronic dance music, or EDM, has stepped boldly into the spotlight, with artists like Skrillex and Deadmau5 leading the charge toward the mainstream. Director Amir Bar Lev’s RE:GENERATION Music Project, a documentary produced in part by the…
Editor’s Note: An abridged version of this article appears in this week’s issue, featuring 100 Songs that Defined Arizona. In celebration of Arizona’s centennial, we’ve rounded up sound clips for (almost) everything featured in our list, and will be rolling them out over the course of the week. “I just…
One of the great faces of Motown, Smokey Robinson, will be visiting the Valley of the Sun soon.Get ready to hear some of the best crooning that Hitsville, USA ever had to offer.Smokey Robinson, Kris Kristofferson, Maná and other artists will be visiting Phoenix in the coming weeks. The rest…
