Live shows by touring bands are quite a rarity so close to the holidays. Musicians are people, too, and they would rather return to their hometowns to stay closer to the ones they love. No one can fault them for that. A band like Authority Zero, born out of Mesa’s…
Simultaneously familiar and otherworldly, the Soweto Gospel Choir is the right group performing at the right time. While so much of our fragile planet is being torn apart by social and political divisiveness, this glorious, 26-member choir is on a quest to lift our spirits through the amazing-yet-simple joy of…
Downtown Phoenix’s art scene is hard to exactly quantify in some respects, with creativity running amok across multiple genres and mediums. Hyphenates abound as musicians, DJs, painters, and other talented types collaborate and feed off each other’s muses. So it’s apropos that one of the art scene’s more pre-eminent bands,…
If you’re feeling the need to bump your hump to some hip-hop, R&B, or Top 40 dance jams, a few off-the-hook urban dance parties will be happening over the next 48 hours that you’ll definitely wanna check out. The Bay Area’s DJ Swift Rock will be hanging and banging over…
You’d probably expect a band with a song called “Sheriff Joe” (refrain: “Fuck you, Sheriff Joe, fuck you, Sheriff Joe”) to find a sympathetic ear here at Phoenix New Times. And, honestly, The Video Nasties do get some credit for calling out Maricopa County’s most evil man, even if it’s…
Carlos Coy (a.k.a. South Park Mexican): Sentenced to spend the the next four decades or so in the pokey. The life of Texas rapper Carlos Coy (a.k.a. South Park Mexican) is a tale of triumph, terror, and tragedy. As John Nova Lomax, current staff writer and former music editor for…
For more of this charming man, check the slideshow.What can we say about a DJ night with Andy Rourke of the Smiths that this guy didn’t? Well, for one, we didn’t spill a drink on him and make total asses of ourselves. Instead, we actually maintained some semblance of self…
The Daddy of Rock ‘N’ Roll (1963-2003)The late Wesley Shabazz Willis was one of the coolest mofos in music. The schizophrenic African-American musician (who refered to his psychotic episodes as “hellrides”) sung howling songs set to keyboard music usually about such disparate subjects as McDonalds, Alanis Morrisette, and Spider-Man. If…
This one comes from the “leave your number at the beginning of any voice mail you leave me” file: I got a call from the front man of Glass Heroes yesterday about the Joe Strummer benefit and memorial the band is hosting this Saturday at George and Dragon downtown. His…
Like an ambitious chef, Fear Before has attempted a new recipe with each of its four releases. The Colorado quintet’s 2003 debut, Odd How People Shake, raged with clamorous hardcore before graduating to a more spastic, experimental mathcore approach, for 2004’s Art Damage. It toned down the noisy, frenetic rumble…
Honky-tonk renegade Junior Brown is the consummate misfit. Beating the hell out of his one-of-a-kind guit-steel ax (custom-built after it appeared to him in a dream), roaring lyrics with coarse, chainsaw-toned vocals, and displaying the sort of nimble-fingered facility that makes guitar geeks around the world go limp, the Arizona-born,…
With their golden-age comic book costumes, silly supervillains, and absurd song titles, The Aquabats are punk rawk’s answer to GWAR. Only instead of promising the destruction of the known universe through copious bodily fluids, the ‘Bats are out to protect it. The superhero rock brigade got its start in 1994…
Transitioning from over-hyped buzz generator to perpetual powerhouse ain’t easy, even for figures as charismatic as the men of Bloc Party, and the strain shows on Intimacy, the Brits’ third LP. “Ares” is the sound of a band trying too hard, albeit with assists from some pretty interesting elements: screaming…
Neo-honky-tonker Wayne Hancock’s nickname is “The Train,” and though it may appear convenient to give the native Texan the moniker simply because of the Dr. Seuss-style rhyme one can play with his first name, Hancock has earned an allegiance with perhaps country music’s greatest symbol of both heartbreak and freedom…
One of the grooviest things about the Valley’s EDM scene is that DJ/dance events seemingly spring up in the unlikeliest of places. An all-night rave can take place in the middle of the forested mountains up near Camp Verde, for instance. Or some local turntablism collective will put on a…
Tractor Pull DivasLove Songs for (Insert Your Name Here)(Self released)I haven’t been overly enamored of local alt-country bands since I started doing You Asked For It back in September. The New Westerns had a nice sound, but spotty vocals, and suffer from occasional self-indulgence. Instant Hobo won points for being hobo-themed, but…
You know who ends up getting a lot of Flier of the Week love? Local industrial bands. But, really, as much as I’d like to spread the attention around, I have to share fliers like this. This flier for 30 Fathom Grave’s show at The Ruby Room is pretty great…
The central appeal of the Isobel Campbell-Mark Lanegan pairing is simple. Their contrasting singing styles — hers is soft and sweet; his is gruff and gravelly — mesh with surprisingly effective results, like olive oil and vinegar or MSNBC pundits Rachel Maddow and Pat Buchanan. What Sunday at Devil Dirt…
Back in 2000, Scotland’s Travis had a hit stateside with “Why Does It Always Rain on Me?” It was a pretty, catchy song clearly influenced by The Bends-era Radiohead. Also in 2000, fellow latter-day Brit-poppers Coldplay had a big American hit, “Yellow,” a pretty, catchy song clearly . . …
When a rapper like David Banner decides to name an album The Greatest Story Ever Told, you’re not gonna split hairs with the dude — at least not to his face. Like the mortal whose fury turned him into The Hulk, this bulky Banner also uses his temper to fuel…
On Dressy Bessy’s new album Holler and Stomp, the group finally has its sound to where the band always claimed it was. While they’ve been marketing themselves since they formed almost 10 years ago as punk with an edge of adorable, or adorable with an edge of punk (depending on…
The Partridge Family notwithstanding, sometimes music is a “Family Affair” as shown by Sly & the Family Stone, the brothers Avett, Allman, and Everly, and Chapin Sisters. It hasn’t been scientifically proven that genetics can help a band’s sound (the Everlys, for example, have a fractious relationship), but, hey, it…
