By Benjamin Leatherman Kimber Lanning’s Stinkweeds Record Exchange, 12 West Camelback Road, specializes in indie and alt-rock music, so it’s only natural that the store’s Top 10 best-selling albums for the week of September 15-21 feature such acts as Mogwai, Tilly and the Wall, Kimya Dawson, and Tucson’s Calexico. Here’s…
I picked this week’s flier not because it’s good, as it is certainly anything but. I picked this monstrosity because my flier of the week contest is still going on, and this should serve as a reminder of just how bad the fliers in this town have gotten.
Fuck Huey Long: Young Jeezy is the master of populism. Here’s a self-made millionaire who empathizes with the day-to-day troubles of the working class, preaches distrust of the media and authority figures, and always gets his base boiling. While he leaves the lofty rhetoric to the arugula-chomping pantywaist he endorses…
Looks like the DJ freakazoids behind Electrostatic have found a new home for their popular weekly dance night, formerly hosted at the shuttered Glam. And fittingly enough, it’s at Homme, 138 West Camelback Road, where they’ll be working the mixers every Tuesday night. While the gay-friendly lounge ain’t as swank…
Ben Folds has never strayed far from his trademark geek-pop sensibilities. He’s honed the sound even further over the past few years, playing for crowds of adoring college kids. The excitement of the live shows seems to have made an impression on the Nashville-based singer/songwriter/pianist. His new record, Way to…
After the seething, explosive brilliance of Tricky’s first two albums, 1995’s Maxinquaye and 1996’s Pre-Millennium Tension, inspiration is spreading thin. Later releases Angels with Dirty Faces, Juxtapose, and Blowback contained a recommended song or two, but as albums they were jumbled failures. Knowle West Boy doesn’t break that disappointing pattern…
Four albums in (five, if you’re an eBay-stalking obsessive), Slipknot is having an identity crisis. Frontman Corey Taylor’s side project, Stone Sour, has allowed him to unmask his sensitive singer-songwriter side, which is represented here on “Snuff” and “Dead Memories” — the former a half-acoustic ballad, the latter a slab…
Brass Knuckles is Nelly’s Thriller. I’m not kidding. Brass Knuckles is not a perfect album, but neither was Thriller. It jumped styles and was not particularly cohesive; similarly, Nelly’s fifth CD skips haphazardly from dirty South jams (“Hold Up,” featuring T.I.) to G-funk throwbacks (“L.A.,” featuring Doggs Snoop and Nate)…
Denver’s Flobots seem intent on fomenting a populist revolution — or, at least, cashing in on the sugarcoated, romanticized, anything-can-happen idea of one. Perhaps they’ve struck a chord, thanks in part to appearances on late-night TV talk shows, debut Fights with Tools is closing in on 200,000 units sold here…
Few artists have gone through more reinventions than Mexican-born guitarist Carlos Santana, going from his Latin-jam days fueled by his unforgettable appearance at Woodstock to his lackluster days in the ’80s (even though his band was still considered a top live act) to his resurgence after his multi-Grammy winner Supernatural…
When guitarist Milo Bonacci started Ra Ra Riot at Syracuse University in 2006, he was looking to put together a classical-tinged rock band that could stir up dramatic moods but also get a dance party started. On its just-released debut, The Rhumb Line, Ra Ra Riot strikes a fine balance…
I was once in a band. A hobo-themed band, actually. The Hobo Kin played our one and only show at a cemetery in Brimfield, Ohio on Halloween night 2002. We gave our fans – all girls we knew from our college paper – doughnuts.
By Lilia Menconi The Dubliner on Saturday, September 20th. It gets even better if you check the slideshow We had some pretty good luck when we hit up the North Valley a few weeks ago at Joe’s Grotto, so we thought we’d check out another neighborhood fave, The Dubliner, on…
It’s a big concert weekend with The Hives and Eagles of Death Metal in town tomorrow. If you’re looking for a more danceable show check out One’s three year anniversary show at the Ruby Room. House DJ Jay Tripwire, a Canadian DJ that makes up half of ‘The Clones’ with Chicago’s Mazi. He’s known for deep house.
For a guitar player who was behind many of the hits that helped build the successful path forged by Fleetwood Mac, Lindsey Buckingham has kept an intriguingly low profile on his own, releasing only a handful of solo records over the years — mostly because his individual projects would eventually…
Over the years, categorizers have shoved My Morning Jacket in numerous pigeonholes: jam, Southern rock, Americana, and more. Group leader Jim James doesn’t much like being labeled, though, as Evil Urges, the act’s latest disc, makes clear. The CD begins with the title track, “Touch Me I’m Going to Scream…
Call it an amendment to Godwin’s Law: As reviews of Vampire Weekend’s self-titled disc accumulate, the probability they’ll mention Paul Simon’s Graceland approaches 100 percent. It’s a lazy game of connect the dots, really. Graceland traces an MOR-shattering pilgrimage wherein Simon spent 17 days recording in South Africa, cheesing off…
Throughout its original 15-year run, Alice in Chains regularly alternated electric assaults with acoustic breathers, such as the early-’90s EPs Sap and Jar of Flies. The band’s 1996 episode of MTV Unplugged remains haunting — not least because of the visible toll that drug abuse had taken on singer Layne…
Gourmandizers of punk and rockabilly vinyl would be more than a little jealous at the sight of Nicky Flores’ record collection. Why? Probably because the 29-year-old DJ has some unique and choice wax stacked away in his accumulation of more than 1,500 platters. Like, say, an LP version of the…
By Benjamin Leatherman Classes are back in session at ASU, so its only natural that sales have been brisk lately at Tempe’s Zia Records location, 105 West University Drive (or at least that’s what they told us). Here’s a list of their top 10 bestselling albums for the week of…
By Lilia Menconi Find some more in the slideshow. It doesn’t seem like that long ago when we were on our way to a high school dance, blasting the Toadies and ripping out our voice boxes singing, “Do you wanna die?” over and over again. Well, that was a whopping…
If I was Michael Jackson’s uncle, you’d know it. No conversation would go by without me mentioning it. Seriously, I’d have business cards printed up:
Martin Cizmar
Uncle of Michael Jackson
The King of Pop
Maybe you’ve heard of him?
