In the post-punk days of the early 1980s, the music world and press got sucked into the vacuum that was new wave and its futuristic synthesized beats. Artists who fell under this broad and eclectic new genre differentiated themselves as much by their futuristic fashion (non)sense as by their actual…
Leave it to the Arizona State Fair to bring in a consistently entertaining concert lineup each year. Last year, the fair hosted Queens of the Stone Age, Weezer, an d Wiz Khalifa. At one point, Nirvana played the fair. The fair announced this year’s lineup today, and Meat Loaf, Flo…
My Favorite 15 (Songs of All Time): AZ Record Label Edition – Monday, August 10 – Crescent Ballroom This cool concept night at Crescent Ballroom brings together five representatives from local record labels and asks them to curate a playlist of their 15 favorite songs. On the bill will be…
Do you know the secret language of hair flips? Ally Brooke Hernandez, Normani Kordei, Dinah Jane Hansen, Camila Cabello, and Lauren Jauregui — the five ladies of Fifth Harmony — have the same length of locks. They reach just short of halfway down their backs. Most girls recognize this as…
Fifth Harmony – Friday, August 7 – Comerica Theatre Fifth Harmony began when all five members auditioned on X Factor, and the five ladies have since taken the pop music world by the throat. The group’s debut album, Reflection, sold more than any girl group since the Pussycat Dolls released…
Rodney Carrington – Saturday, August 8 – Wild Horse Pass Hotel & Casino Rodney Carrington takes blue collar comedy and adds a cowboy hat and a thick Southern drawl to create his uniquely “hick-and-proud” comedy and country music routine. For those who aren’t familiar with the boyish-faced standup star and…
Steff Koeppen sits in a sun-drenched alcove of Hotel Congress in her native Tucson, explaining her latest motives in the late afternoon light, a hour shy of a blanketing summer monsoon. Koeppen is the bandleader of Steff & the Articles, her art-pop four-piece that tends to frequent Phoenix as much…
Grace Potter has been known as the guitar-wielding, gravel-and-satin-voiced frontwoman of blues rock group Grace Potter and the Nocturnals for the past 13 years. Though the Vermont band earned its success slowly, Potter has always demonstrated a commanding onstage presence, whether it’s alongside the Nocturnals, the Rolling Stones, or country…
Developing the rootsy edge that inhabits Jackie Greene’s latest album — and first in five years — Back to Birth, has been a long time coming. Though Greene was once hailed as the “New Dylan” for his acoustic guitar/harmonica soirées during the coffeehouse period that informed much of his teenage…
August 21. The hottest day of the year everywhere — especially Phoenix. But hey? Guess what? We have a ton of awesome metal shows to look forward to this month. And since it’s waaay to hot to figure out the best shows to attend, we do it for you. This…
Steve Miller is one of the best songwriters ever. For my money, he doesn’t get the credit he deserves. His show last night at the pool at Talking Stick Casino and Resort was way more entertaining than I thought it would be, and that is not to say I was…
Today’s Billboard charts are populated with an endless list of performers whose fame comes as much from their shared personal lives via social media as much as the success of their music. For many, their fame is fleeting. The term legend has come pretty cheaply in recent time, and yet…
After opener Carlene Carter’s set ended at Comerica Theatre last night and the stagehands began setting for headliner John Mellencamp, a beer vendor walked through the aisles of the grand theater, shouting out to the crowd as if it were a ballgame and not a seated event at one of…
What Jamie xx is trying to create and what he’s handed are often at odds. Jamie xx is best known as a member of acclaimed English trio the xx, purveyors of minimalist, somber pop-rock. Outside of the band, he’s also a sought-after DJ and producer who has worked with everyone…
Fresh off the announcement yesterday of a new album and visually stunning music video, Puscifer is announcing its only live date so far this year. Puscifer will play Tempe Beach Park on Sunday, November 1, as part of Lucky Man’s Monster Mash concert festival. Frontman Maynard James Keenan is showing…
In 1990, Mike Ness had the foresight to realize that as much as he loved playing punk rock music, if he was to sustain a durable career with his brash young Fullerton, California, group, he needed to put all of his influences to work, and add some depth to his…
As one of the prominent vegan, straight-metal bands in early ’90s hardcore, Chokehold made a name for itself during its short tenure for writing tight, aggressive songs about radical left causes, including GLBTQ rights, reproductive rights, police brutality, and others. So when this year the band’s label, A389 Recordings, reissued…
Jerry Lawson has led a long, full life. At 71, the soul singer with a voice that could make a blind man see has released 24 albums with his a cappella group the Persuasions, appeared on national television, rubbed elbows with some of the greatest singers in history, got drunk,…
LVL UP, a New York quartet that mines its sound from ’70s power-pop, ’80s punk, and ’90s alternative rock, began as a happy accident. Having met as students at SUNY Purchase, Mike Caridi, Dave Benton, and Nick Corbo got their start working on what was supposed to be a split…
From Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s explosive beginnings — the band’s first single, “Ffunny FFrends,” went viral a mere six days after its posting — to its present-day musings on love’s boundaries, the indie “dreamfunk” quartet is a band that continues to reinvent itself. The group’s third album, Multi-Love, exposes a more…
For Diego’s Umbrella, defining the band’s music has always been a frustrating and painful chore. There’s the onslaught of borderline-nonsense hybrid terms – urban gringo mariachi, pirate polka – and descriptions of the band’s typically wild live show, but Diego’s Umbrella is the sort of band you have to see…
Rush’s concert at US Airways Center began at 7:45 p.m. and ended about three hours later, after 26 songs, a number of video animations and skits, and thousands of notes worth of guitar solos. It was a night for the hardcore Rush fan — four of seven parts of “2112,”…
