There is an inherent irony in traveling a thousand miles to the world’s biggest musical festival, an internationally renowned event featuring acts from far and wide, and spending the bulk of your trip watching bands from your hometown. As the IRS can attest (after getting my 1999 return claiming $13,000…
Shamsi Ruhe, vocalist for long-lamented Tempe alt-rockers One, has spent much of the new year basking in the attentive glow of several record labels. Ruhe is reportedly in final negotiations with Palm Records, an imprint of Rykodisc. The eclectic chanteuse has been living in New York for the last few…
Can we talk? I’m almost a year into my tenure as music editor, and I feel a long-overdue clarification session is in order. The inspiration for this little heart-to-heart is the overwhelming response to my most recent column. Only a few hours after last week’s issue hit the streets, my…
The mailbag brings many things, some good, lots bad, but few things that can generate the weird mix of raging apathy that Dichromatic, the sophomore effort from Tempe’s Surf Ballistics, managed to elicit. The press kit for the self-described “high energy rock” combo — and, fair warning, there is nary…
A 2 Live Crew show was the last place Windigo front man Matt Strangeways expected to spend his Valentine’s Day. On a day that’s supposed to be filled with hearts and flowers, Strangeways’ mood couldn’t have been blacker. It wasn’t a girl that Strangeways was pining over, but rather the…
It’s late Friday evening. The reassuring suburban quiet of this south Tempe neighborhood is broken by the noise emanating from the garage at the end of the street. Yet it’s not the shambolic strains of “garage rock,” but an ornate, almost lush sound. Inside, the space is sparsely decorated. There…
It’s hard for even the most jaded and cynical of critics not to occasionally be swayed by the enthusiasm and personal charm of the artists we encounter. Such is the case with singer Mark Norman. It’s difficult to pin down exactly why he engenders such goodwill. It could be Norman’s…
Plopped into a sagging couch and framed against a wall full of signed concert fliers, DJ Radar isn’t quite the figure most would expect. Clad in baggy jeans and a sunken Kangol, the youthful, soft-spoken turntablist is a surprising study in contrast. His understated style belies an onstage persona that…
Paging through a recent issue of Rolling Stone (something we do frequently in the office when in need of a good laugh), we came upon the magazine’s annual music awards. The Rolling Stone Readers Poll, never a barometer of good taste or intelligence, was especially appalling this year as it…
As January ushers in the dead of winter — or at least our very mild Arizona version of it — the news and happenings in the local insurgent country ranks have been heating up. Here are a few morsels that found their way to our desk. Name Game: Local alt-country…
Someone once noted that if there was a local Punk Preservation Society charter, Keith Jackson would be its Chairman of the Bored. Few things, it seems, can excite the musician like the subject of his favorite rock revolutionaries. Perhaps the only thing that can generate that type of boyish exuberance…
Though we usually eschew the quick-hit news and notes format, we felt this would be a good opportunity to clean off the ol’ desk. With millennium chaos, mass hysteria and falling bullets rapidly approaching, it’s important that you keep abreast of local music happenings. Thrill-a-Minute: There’s a slew of news…
As you walk down Tempe’s Mill Avenue, somewhere past the Gap and Hooters but before you get to Abercrombie & Fitch, you’ll pass Long Wong’s, a funky bar plopped on the corner of Seventh Street. Within the shiny surroundings, it seems an architectural and cultural anachronism. It remains one of…
