Choose Your Own Adventure #296: Papa Roach You are in a rap-rock band from California. You hit it big in 2000 with your multi-platinum album Infest, and its smash single, “Last Resort,” but your 2002 follow-up, lovehatetragedy, tanked amid the decline and fall of nü-metal. You want to keep the…
My eyelids fluttered open, and there, peering down at me, was a six-foot-tall platypus wearing a paisley vest, a monocle, and a mischievous smile. “Wh-wh-where am I?” I stammered, sitting up in the purple grass and gazing at the grove of marshmallow trees in front of me. “Now, now, my…
It’s understandable that much sophisticated ink has been spent on Q and Not U’s context, rather than its music. The band does, after all, come complete with its share of buzzy reference points, including (try not to get nauseous) “dance punk,” “DC-core” and “emo.” But let’s pretend we’re blissfully unschooled…
1. Beck, Guero (Geffen) 2. Jack Johnson, In Between Dreams (Universal) 3. Mae, The Everglow (Tooth & Nail) 4. Mars Volta, Frances the Mute (Universal) 5. The Bravery, The Bravery (Island) 6. Queens of the Stone Age, Lullabies to Paralyze (Interscope) 7. Thrice, If We Could Only See Us Now…
For most of the last year, Mark Oliver Everett, a.k.a. E, the singular talent behind the Eels, has been in his basement studio working on Blinking Lights, a two-CD set crammed with 33 tracks — more than an hour and a half of music. A few high-profile names pop up…
As legions of local music geeks know already, Steven Reker and Eddy Crichton are the real deal. Their band Reindeer Tiger Team is based on a simple premise: Reker sings and plays guitar while Crichton pounds and clicks away on the drums. It’s a mix of heartfelt songwriting and post-punk…
When Dave Ramsey decided to start a local indie record label 10 years ago, he helped spawn the cult of Flathead. The beloved Tempe rig-rock trio released its debut seven-inch (“Alcohaulin’,” still a crowd favorite at the band’s shows) on Ramsey’s Truxton Records, and later cemented its stature as the…
Here’s something for a future episode of Behind the Music: the alt-scene diehards of Fishbone. The band’s certainly followed the show’s patented “career roller coaster”: At SoCal’s Hale Junior High in 1979, spastic saxophonist Angelo Moore joined five cohorts and began pumping out a concoction of funk, metal-laced punk, and…
Da Nutz — Power 92’s afternoon disc jockey personalities Joey Boy (the right nut) and J. Philla (the left nut) — have become an airwave institution here in the ‘Nix, not only bumpin’ the hottest commercial hip-hop and R&B, but making legions of listeners piss their pants with laughter on…
If you find the haughty high jinks of British pop bands — Pulp, Oasis, Blur, et al. — overly bothersome, it stands to reason you’d be annoyed by the pomposity of Brandon Flowers, front man for the Las Vegas-based indie outfit The Killers. But somehow, it’s possible to look past…
Go ahead and schedule some time with a chiropractor, because after Metal Devastation Fest’s intense headbanging session, your neck will be misaligned. The folks from the “most Satanic brutal store” in the Valley have recruited great death- and grind-metal bands to pummel Phoenix on April 8 and 9. The lineup’s…
I have a dream of a day when there are no longer formats, no longer genres. A day when hipsters, geeks, hillbillies, hip-hoppers, punkers and metalheads all see shows together, thanks to the continued miscegenation of musical styles. And if there’s evidence of progress toward that day, it’s the music…
With some 25 years of hindsight, the work of X sounds more and more like folk music “turned up to 11,” to plagiarize a phrase. These musicians may have been extreme in their attitude and energy, but their intelligent lyrics and acidic humor marked them as populists as well as…
When Kele Okereke and Russell Lissack put an ad in the NME for a bass player in 2000, the two Brits listed their influences as Sonic Youth, the Pixies, Joy Division, and DJ Shadow. That does a good job of describing Bloc Party’s subsequent sound, although it doesn’t hurt to…
If you think the theme of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll has been played out, a single listen to Gogol Bordello will restore your faith in the power of music to jolt you out of complacency. Gogol’s lead singer, songwriter and chief maniac, Eugene Hutz, and his cohorts continue…
1. Beck, Guero (Geffen) 2. The Decemberists, Picaresque (Kill Rock Stars) 3. Bloc Party, Silent Alarm (Atlantic) 4. Yo La Tengo, Prisoners of Love: A Smattering of Scintillating Senescent Songs: 1985-2003 (Matador) 5. Prefuse 73, Surrounded by Silence (Warp Records) 6. The Kills, No Wow (RCA/Rough Trade) 7. Nick Cave…
If soul is the teacher and punk is the preacher, the BellRays are working a double shift. Combining Detroit’s twin musical heritages, Motown and garage rock, the Riverside, California, foursome specializes in a unique brand of primal, big-lunged gospel fury — one that showcases the woefully underrated and formidable pipes…
Punk is urban folk, born of suburban mediocrity and conformity. But the onetime vehicle for protest is now just another marketing niche for songs about girls. Springing into that vacuum is MDC. Along with the Dead Kennedys and Suicidal Tendencies, the band helped forge the American hardcore movement, mixing raw,…
Zombies, mummies and vampires populate local trio Calabrese’s first full-length, 13 Halloweens, the follow-up to the three brothers’ much-hyped EP Midnight Spookshow. Some Spookshow tracks are revisited here, but these 13 horror-rock songs (hence the title), in the vein of the Misfits and the Ramones, show a fleshed-out, slickly produced,…
Moby sold millions of copies of his 1999 sample-savvy dance mosaic record Play, with virtually no radio airplay. “The Iggy Pop of electronica,” as Penthouse dubbed the eccentric artist, licensed all of the songs off the album for television advertising. And people were actually going, “Wow! Who does that Bailey’s…
Beck Hansen’s finest year was unquestionably 1994, when Los Angeles’ most talented high school dropout served up three great records — an indie-folk trawl (One Foot in the Grave); the multigenre, major-label mash-up that made his name (Mellow Gold); and a whacked, lo-fi sampler of just about every style of…
This Thursday, April 7, local artist and impresario Dumperfoo moves his long-running Blunt Club hip-hop night to a new location, Hollywood Alley, 2610 West Baseline Road in Mesa (northeast corner of Price and Baseline roads). Along with the usual bag of tricks — live art, b-boys and b-girls, resident DJs…
