50 Cent wasn’t in the club but the grocery store in Phoenix last night, as he partied not with Bacardi but with vodka — Effen Vodka, the brand the rapper invested in last year. The rapper, with the help of the Phoenix Suns dancers, helped sell $10,000 in vodka at…
Even if you don’t know the synth-pop stylings of MS MR, make sure to shake the hands of Lizzy Plapinger or Max Hershenow if you see them around town — it’s likely that you indirectly owe them something if you’ve turned on a pop radio station in the past three…
Mitchell Hillman listens to more local music than just about anyone in the Valley. He presents his picks for best new music in his column, Right Hear, Right Now. Sunset Voodoo -“Sweet Release” Last year I was pretty enamored with Sunset Voodoo’s sophomore EP Strange Things and it seems they…
You’ve probably read numerous articles over the years that talk about the different pre-show rituals of popular musicians. For instance, Coldplay doesn’t take the stage without having a group hug (yes, you can gag if you want to). Others, who eat before performing, have specific things they like to ingest…
Saints and The Hellions – “Goodbye My Sorrow” Saints and The Hellions just released their debut EP Brave Words and Bloody Knuckles online and in record stores over the last few weeks and it’s a solid four-song punk rock affair from beginning to end. Saints and The Hellions are a…
March always brings a packed calendar of events to the Valley of the Sun — we have Spring Training, which brings more than 100 baseball games spread across a dozen fields, lots of outdoor festivals, and the calm before the 100 degree days. The spring also prompts bands out to…
After the carnage that was January 2016 when we lost David Bowie AND Glenn Frey and two members of the Jefferson Airplane on the same day, media outlets felt it was their duty to tell us that since they ain’t making classic rock musicians anymore, we’d better get used to losing…
Love him or hate, you cannot deny the artistic impact of Kanye West. Since his debut album, The College Dropout, came out in 2004, West has managed to influence and sculpt the hip-hop world, whether is through the speed-up soul sampling of his early days to his avant-garde, auto tune-heavy sound of…
Lita Ford picked up the guitar when she was 11 and has been shredding the hell out of it ever since. As a kid, she was inspired by classic rock and spent hours learning her favorite songs, and jamming with other musicians in her California ‘hood. In 1975, at age…
Punk rock music blares from a scrappy classroom inside the Phoenix Center for the Arts, but inside isn’t a pierced, tatted-up group of Kurt Cobain-looking rockers, but a group of adolescent girls. On February 27, Girls Rock! Phoenix hosted it’s first official rock and roll camp. Girls Rock is a…
Think the idea of a Donald Trump as president is the absolute worst? As repugnant as the billionaire blowhard and bigot might seem, however, he ain’t got nothing on the late Andrew Jackson. Our country’s seventh president was an all-around vile bastard and tyrant who gladly endorsed slavery, locked up…
The FORM Arcosanti festival is back for its third year, and the organizers released the lineup today. The festival is eschewing “headliners” in the traditional sense, but there are some pretty big names slotted for the festivities, which will take place Friday, May 13, through Sunday, May 15, at the…
The city of Albuquerque, New Mexico is often associated with the popular cable TV shows Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. When Brandon Dooley, member of Phoenix-based band The Iris, gazed upon the empty trailer they rented to carry their music equipment, a completely different television program came to his…
All the Haymarket Squares cofounders Marc Oxborrow and Mark Sunman were trying to do seven years ago was start a band so that they could perform at local watering holes for their friends. Now, they are on the cusp of releasing their fourth full-length record, Light It Up, and playing…
Recently, there has been considerable effort to determine the best thrash metal albums of all time. There has been a list in the paper and the lists of some internationally famous dudes. In the course of our research for the story, we asked 17 people, of local, national, and international acclaim,…
Looks like the Rebel Lounge will re-open ahead of schedule today, according to an email sent out by organizers. The central Phoenix concert venue closed after a Saturday night concert by the rockabilly band Three Bad Jacks. The lead singer lit a fire in front of the stage, setting off…
Jazz singer Kurt Elling is an artist in constant forward motion. A master vocalist with virtuoso chops and a deep appreciation of the genre, his career began in the jazz clubs of Chicago, where two of the scene’s elder statesmen provided Elling with guidance and encouragement necessary to grow into…
Calling all beer drinkers and party people with a competitive spirit. New Times’ third annual Beer Olympics has your name on it. On Friday, April 22, from 8 to 11 p.m., Tempe Marketplace will become the proving grounds for the Valley’s finest drinking games competitors, who will face off in…
Writing a top ten list vacillates between easy and hard faster than the questions in a typical Trivia Crack game. Sometimes, the lists flow right out and you nail it. Others, though, you stew on and cross things off, add them back, and cross them off again while the little…
There is no doubt that rapping dominates hip-hop. No matter how good a beat is, for the casual hip-hop fan, the bars being spit over it will almost always be more important. Even a mega-producer like Kanye West didn’t ascend to superstar status until he released The College Dropout and…
Three Bad Jacks, the band that started the fire at Rebel Lounge that triggered the venue’s sprinkler systems, posted about the incident on Facebook Monday evening. The band called the Saturday night accident an “unfortunate situation.” Instagram user evilchavo posted a pair of videos that showed bandleader Elvis Suissa starting a…
Phoenix is a musical hotbed for a lot of things: there’s an amazing indie scene here, folk is stronger than ever, the heat had bred some insanely talented metal bands, but choral music’s prevalence is not high on the average concertgoer’s list. However, tonight marked the third time that Phoenix…
