Top 5 Must-See Phoenix Shows This Weekend

The weekend before Thanksgiving can’t help but disappoint you. It’s trying as hard as it can, and it’s perfectly happy to remind you that you’ve got a short week coming up, but really the only positive you can take from it is that you won’t get trampled chasing down a…

Pearl Jam – Jobing.com Arena, Glendale – 11/19/13

Pearl Jam concerts are different. It’s not just a bunch of guys on stage cranking out rock songs; even in Jobing.com Arena, it’s an intimate, more personal affair. Artists talk about the energy that flows between audience and stage, and that’s what’s so obvious here. The bands cares; the fans…

Drake – US Airways Center – 11/16/2013

Drake’s songs can sometimes make him sound like someone who spends a lot of time sitting in front of a window, watching rain and dialing up exes. That vulnerable side of the performer, if it exists, stayed in the recording studio when he played US Airways Center Saturday night. Drake…

Mergence and Black Carl Take Music Under the Mill

The city of Tempe opened the grassy area beneath the Hayden Flour Mill for a concert Friday night by two of the Valley’s biggest acts, Black Carl and Mergence. Up-and-comers The Prowling Kind and Bears of Manitou opened. With the old mill right beside the stage, the string lights overhead,…

Top 5 Must-See Phoenix Shows This Week

Every Pearl Jam joke has been made. Every Eddie Vedder impression has been performed, and some of them were very funny, although others were just enormous successes on the Modern Rock chart. All that’s left is to just see Pearl Jam, and listen to Eddie Vedder say “Ah’m still alive”…

Grant Ferguson – The Rhythm Room – 11/16/2013

I was introduced to guitar virtuoso Grant Ferguson’s music a couple of years ago and have been a fan of his instrumental work ever since. His shows seem to work best in small, intimate venues, as he brings up guest vocalists and interacts with the crowd quite often. So his…

Lee Brice – Comerica Theatre – 11/14/2013

When Lee Brice finished his hour and a half long set and walked off of the stage at Comerica Theatre, the roar and the cheers from the crowd, along with the standing ovation, were as loud and lasted as long as I can recall in recent memory. Brice fed off…

Nik Turner’s Hawkwind – Rhythm Room – 11/14/13

Hot damn. Last night the Rhythm Room was the vessel for a full-on, motherlovin’ space jam starring Nik Turner’s Hawkwind. Turner is one of the co-founders of Hawkwind, a band that formed at the end of the 1960’s and helped to define the space rock sound. Hawkwind is still an…

King Khan and the Shrines – Crescent Ballroom – 11/13/13

Did you feel the ground around downtown (Phoenix) move last night? Those good vibrations oozing from the cracks of Crescent Ballroom were created by a whole lot of fans who couldn’t help but move to the garage-rockin’, soulful, funky, psychedelic sounds of none other than King Khan and the Shrines,…

Black Carl and Mergence Trade Mill Ave for The Mill

Tempe is running out of venues. The Clubhouse disintegrated in 2012 following a gang-related shooting; Rocky Point Cantina disappeared after a bad reality show trip; most recently the Stray Cat closed suddenly, announcing the bad news on its last day in business. Which is not to say that’s why Valley…

Melt-Banana – Last Exit Live – 11/12/13

By Aaron Thompson For 20 years, Japan’s Melt-Banana has been one of those overseas acts that is nearly impossible to accurately label. With a scant discography, given their tenure, but an influential footprint on everything from grindcore and power violence to math rock, noise, and even space rock, Melt-Banana’s secret…

Nik Turner: We’re Trying to Make Shows Into Healing Experiences

An evening with Nik Turner on his “Space Ritual” tour promises to be both a learning and — according to Nik himself — a “healing” experience. In fact, Turner told Up on the Sun, “The energy that we’re putting into [this tour] sort of transcends what the thing is about…

King Khan: “Somehow I Guess Lou Reed Was My Evil Mother”

“Somehow I guess Lou Reed was my evil mother.” In the wake of Lou Reed’s death, Arish Ahmad Khan couldn’t help but shade his stories – that span from his juvenile delinquency to the years that went into making his latest record – with memories of the rock poet who…

Audacity “Wanted to Go to More Extremes” on Butter Knife

Audacity’s third album finds the band pushing in opposite directions at the same time. The Fullerton, California, garage-punk quartet plays with a homemade, youthful, and defiant style that makes the most out of its chaotic and unpredictable twists, all served up with an endless stream of hooks. Butter Knife, released…

Top 5 Must-See Phoenix Shows This Week

Easy mode is making a Boris Yeltsin joke when Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin comes to town. Hard mode is not making a Boris Yeltsin joke. Really hard mode is not making a Boris Yeltsin joke even though you think you’ve got a great one. Because it’s probably not…

Bill Callahan Keeps His Wits While Forwarding Dream River

Bill Callahan picks his words carefully. If one thing defines his recent work – pastoral, grooving, and far removed from his noisier days recording under the name Smog – it’s the way he selects his words. “The only words I’ve said today are beer and thank you,” he croons on…

Terakaft – Rhythm Room – 11/7/2013

There are few places in the world where Touaregs-Malian Bedouin nomads can feel at home, but the Arizona desert is one of them. “This caravan started in the desert of Mali, but we ended up in the United States,” bandleader Liya Ag Ablil told the small but enthusiastic Rhythm Room…

Janet Weiss: Quasi’s Music Needs No Explanation

Portland’s Quasi will be visiting the Rhythm Room on Monday in support of their excellent new double-album, Mole City. The band, which turned 20, features two accomplished vets of the Northwest scene, Sam Coomes (guitar/vox/keyboards) and Janet Weiss (drums/vox); when they aren’t devoting their time to Quasi, both have played…

Top 5 Must-See Phoenix Shows This Weekend

You’ve got less than a month of shopping days until you think about doing Black Friday for a minute and then just decide to go closer to Christmas instead. In the meantime, consider giving yourself the gift of any of these five must-see Phoenix shows…