There’s a shitload going down tonight at joints around the Valley, including the AZPunk compilation release party at the Sets. If you’re not making it down to that, here’s a couple of other options to sate your thirst for the live music thing. Heather Rae and Shannon of the Moonshine…
Army of Robots Way back in February of 2005, I wrote a column saying that Army of Robots had succeeded Tucson’s The Bled as the best band in Arizona (in my opinion, of course), and that they’d “fucked up the whole paradigm and established a new gold standard for Arizona.”…
Saki Photography Violet Wild A while back I wrote a column about Violet Wild, the band put together from remnants of the Black Moods (guitarist Josh Kennedy) and Mink Rebellion (singer Bobby Scott). Along with bassist Paul Fenix and drummer Joey Schwegler, the boys were working on an album that’s…
“Know any banjo jokes?” my roommate asks me when I tell him I’m going to see local bluegrass purveyors The Breadwinners on a recent Tuesday night. I don’t, but my roomie does. “What’s the difference between a banjo and a vacuum cleaner? A vacuum cleaner has to be plugged in…
It’s the Fourth of July at Cricket Pavilion, and kids wearing tee shirts that pledge their allegiance to every band from Anti-Flag to Less Than Jake are pressed against a makeshift stage at this year’s local Warped Tour stop to see a star their parents may, in fact, have pressed…
Paris, Milan, New York. . . Scottsdale? Okay, so maybe we aren’t top billing for fashion hot spots, but with the ever-increasing flow of higher fashion retail possibilities pouring into the Valley, we may get there someday, dammit. And if you happened to be in Scottsdale on Friday, November 3,…
As you read this, the National Security Agency has probably been monitoring your phone calls, while the Department of Homeland Security peruses your e-mail, and agents from the Central Intelligence Agency torture detainees in the War on Terror. A decade ago, long before 9/11, terrifyingly Orwellian-style occurrences such as these…
Glenn Weyant’s The Anta Project — a single, 54-minute track created by playing the steel walls and barbed-wire fences along the U.S.-Mexico border using a cello bow and modified chopsticks — puts a musical face on illegal immigration under the guise of creative improvisation. Where mere mention of the hot-button…
The Harry Smith Project: Anthology of American Folk Music Revisited (Shout Factory) is an all-star, boxed-set tribute to artist and folk music anthologist Harry Smith, whose 1952 Anthology of American Folk Music helped set off the folk music revival of the next two decades. This four-disc set captures more than…
Anyone with a dog-eared copy of the Flying Burrito Brothers’ debut The Gilded Palace of Sin knows the concept of old-school R&B played by a traditional country-and-western band is nothing new. But Tucson’s Hacienda Brothers don’t have to wage an awareness campaign for country-rock like the Burritos did, leaving them…
Over the course of a 30-year career, Joni Mitchell went from being a distinctive folk singer to a pompous artiste drowning in highfalutin orchestral arrangements. Whether Mitchell was her model or not, Joanna Newsom seems to have followed the same ill-advised path, but in only two years. Returning after her…
Pete Townshend’s clearly playing to the school of thought that says Who’s Next is better than The Who Sell Out here. And it goes beyond the way he “re-investigates” the oscillating synth riff of “Baba O’Riley” in the first few seconds of The Who’s first album in 24 years. This…
While purists continue splitting hairs over “true” heavy-metal style, Danava combs the genre into a weave of fantastic art-rock wizardry that leaves the shtick straight by the wayside. For its full-length debut, Kemado Records’ dark horse moves between kohl-cloaked glam and by-the-misty-bog Zeppelin hallucination fantasies; gargantuan stoner rhythms and high…
At 75, Ike Turner is still one mean motherfucker. Risin’ With the Blues, his first release of new material in three years, is as tough and weathered as the man himself, full of searing guitar work and his ever-prevalent tough-guy persona. Mixing half a dozen quality originals (including the signature…
Tucson may seem like an unlikely home for a French man who plays jazzy, eclectic pop-folk, but Parisian transplant Naim Amor is a man of many flavors. While his own melancholy music is filled with dreamy, soft instrumentation and his smoky-voiced accent, he considers everyone from the Sex Pistols to…
Roots-rockers the Damnwells may have had their first taste of major-label compromise when Epic Records blanked out the title to their debut’s 41-second leadoff track, “Assholes.” Come on, Epic — is that really still a bad word? Anyway, the band reprised the song in full, fleshed-out glory for last year’s…
Don’t let those could-be-Finnish song titles fool you. Anathallo hails from Michigan, its name draws reference from a Japanese folktale, and its debut, Floating World, bears little resemblance to any of the zillion CD-Rs recorded in recent years by Avarus or Avarus-associated concerns. This five-years-running septet fuses the reeling, jet-stream…
Damn, Diosa’s sure got some mad DJ skills. The punky female turntablist, who got into the scratching-and-spinning biz after witnessing a “life-altering” performance by Z-Trip in 2000, is not only a member of such she-jay collectives as Females Wit Funk, but she’s also been featured in the pages of Sonik…
If Las Vegas can have its homegrown Britpop, why not Tucson? The Killers acclimated us to Yanks and synths again, but The Year of Acceleration is here to say, “What about surliness and passionate songs about the sun never shining and prescription medicine, then?” This is no ironic re-creation of…
The last time you encountered Native American music, you were probably in the middle of a deep-tissue massage. Long Winter Nights, on the other hand, should be blazing over the PA at a bustling pub. This is round dance music — raw, joyous drum and chant, far from the sedative…
Thursday 9 AZ 88: Mr. P-Body (synth pop, electro) Bunkhouse Lounge: DJ Doom (dance) Chilly Bombers: DJ Statik (hip-hop, dance) The Door: DJ J. Nasty (hip-hop, Motown, Top 40) e4: “Passport” with DJ Tranzl8r (hip-hop mash-ups) E-Lounge: DJ Domenica (hip-hop, house) Grilled Expedition: DJs Playboy & JeX (Top 40) Hollywood…
The Breadwinners In tomorrow’s new ish of the paper, I hang out with the Breadwinners, a four-piece traditional bluegrass group that plays at the Loft in Tempe every Tuesday night. There ain’t much bluegrass in these parts, but these four bring it with an authenticity you can’t find anywhere else…
