These days, punk and even so-called alternative music seems to be cut-and-dried. But it doesn’t have to be that way — just ask JJCnV, the Mesa trio who has been releasing some of the strangest tunes in the Valley for nearly a decade. Their crass sense of humor has spanned…
It’s easy to find new and interesting music these days. All we have to do is pull up an app on our smartphone, and in seconds we can find a song that will hopefully move, motivate, or make us feel that special something in the gray matter between our headphones…
Musically, Phoenix doesn’t have a ton to brag about. Sure,, we’ve had some locals make noise in the national circuit like Jimmy Eat World, Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington, not to mention people like Rob Halford and Stevie Nicks, who have had homes in the Valley at one point or another…
Searching for the perfect gift for that music lover in your life isn’t so difficult. However, trying to find the perfect gift for a metalhead is a bit more daunting. It’s not that we’re picky — we just don’t particularly value the commercialized side of our beloved genre. Therefore, the…
It’s getting toward closing time during The Blunt Club Thursday night at Tempe’s Yucca Tap Room and it looks like no one’s in the mood to call it quits. The main bar is glowing with Christmas lights and busy with activity as DJ Reflekshin drops slow jams in between classic…
There are plenty of things we’ve come to expect around the holiday season. Crazy shoppers, long lines, snowbirds, traffic, and Alice Cooper’s Christmas Pudding. Now if you’ve been living under a rock for the past decade, Christmas Pudding isn’t a holiday dessert your grandmother force feeds you after dinner, it’s…
Painting, to paraphrase the late Jackson Pollock, is an act of self-discovery whereby every good artist paints what he is and what he knows. And local painter Deon Doughty would certainty agree, since he’s spent the last three-and-a-half years doing just that. The 43-year-old artist is one of the biggest…
Naked Pizza was the brainchild of eccentric Phoenix-based saxophone player “The Artist Formerly Known as Austin Rickert,” as he requested he be called, and just like Rickert … it was really weird. They were a ska band that would play in crazy costumes looking more like theme camp at Burning…
Being an active member of the local music “community,” I often contemplate what “community” actually means. I believe community to be a tightly knit place of love, acceptance, forgiveness, and focus. Living and working as a musician by day, and being a regular “night owl” in the artist world by…
If you’ve ever wondered about the meaning or history of a specific online trend or concept –Doge, Bitcoin, Slender Man, or that creepy Nicolas Cage face — a remedy exists at Know Your Meme (www.knowyourmeme.com). The site dedicates thousands of pages to explaining the significance of famous Internet ideas, fads,…
Vocalist and guitarist Leighton Antelman’s musical career started early, when he and some friends from Gilbert’s Greenfield Junior High School got together and formed a band called Rolo 15. That band went through some changes, and ultimately it was Antelman and guitarist Steve McGraw who stayed together to create music,…
Rock music and annoying egos go hand-in-hand. In fact, the pairing is almost as guaranteed as headbanging and mosh pits. Groupies and tour buses. Dimebag and a Black Tooth Grin shots. Revolting disgust and the Kardashian clan. You get the picture. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a huge national act,…
Phoenix is on the cusp of something great, musically speaking. New festivals are popping up every year with big concepts and bigger headliners. As time progresses and the bands on top of the scene either blow up or fade away, it will be the younger acts out there stepping up…
O.T. Genasis’ “CoCo” is one of those songs that blows up, and no one really knows why. It’s a somewhat repetitive beat with a dumbed-down chorus that somehow worms its way into your ear a takes up permanent residence. For every song like “CoCo” that makes it big, there are…
So, how was your November? You probably did the Thanksgiving thing with the family, watched tons of football, and got into it with other Black Friday shoppers in order to nab the biggest deals. As for the Club Candids crew, they spent the past month celebrating Day of the Dead,…
Blues will help kids and needy parents during the seventh annual Toy and Diaper Drive Sunday, December 7 at Rhythm Room in Phoenix. Bluesman Mike Anderson and the Blues Review Band will head up an all-star cast that includes Lucius Parr, the Sugar Thieves, Paul Cruize and Blues Crew, Sir…
In 2008, a video surfaced of four Portland residents, clad in chain mail and medieval armor made solely of beer cans, going head-to-head with live-action role players. In 2011, the same four Portlanders appeared again, blowing a record label advance check on a beatup station wagon and a plethora of…
The concept of living a Kerouac-inspired lifestyle will, at some point, seem attractive to even the most jaded readers of On the Road, a tome that extolls the virtues and pitfalls of years spent doing just that. For Chris Rutledge of Antique Scream, this nomadic spirit is less a passing…
According to Harry Nilsson, one is the loneliest number. But for singer-songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Keller Williams, one is more than enough. Unlike one-man bands of old, Williams doesn’t have cymbals on his knees, horns under his arms, taps on his toes, or a drum on his back. Rather, Williams has propelled the…
Members of the legendary punk band X will never “walk on down the road yelling hurry up” to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to be enshrined in its hallowed halls. It has never been their style to self-aggrandize, and yet while bands like the Clash, The Ramones, Talking…
It’s that time of year where I get to say “‘Tis the season to be metal.” The temperatures have finally fallen, and some of our favorite metal band’s touring schedules are still in full swing. It’s that time of year where we can leave those sweaty mosh pits and emerge…
Local blues harmonica player — and Rhythm Room owner — Bob Corritore could not have picked a better title for his latest release. That Taboo is an all-instrumental album is rare enough these days in the blues world, but one fronted by a harp blower makes the outing even rarer…
