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…
Speed metal or thrash metal? The consensus seems to be that the terms are interchangeable and probably not even applicable in 2016, although the term “thrash” metal doesn’t elicit the groans that “speed” metal does when experts on the subject are asked. In fact, this list of the best speed/thrash…
An incident Saturday night has damaged central Phoenix club Rebel Lounge to the point that the club must close until Wendesday. The Los Angeles band Three Bad Jacks had a show scheduled Saturday night. It’s unclear at this point what happened, but the Arizona Republic is reporting that there was…
It’s not often that a video game nerd is also an indie rock musician. It’s rarer still when that person is dragged to a rave that, in turn, heavily influences the music he makes. For these reasons and his fatalist lyrics that contemplate life as a predetermined journey, Robert DeLong…
The Mason Jar holds a special place in the minds of longtime rock fans in the Valley. Now, you can take a piece of the now-defunct legendary music venue home with you. Auction Nation is hosting almost 200 lots of memorabilia from the Mason Jar, including everything from unused concert…
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. Wolvves – “Ivory Drive” Around this time last year, Wolvves released its debut full-length debut album and upon doing so, immediately…
Phoenix Afrobeat Orchesta produces some of the most cohesive, full-bodied, and smooth grooves in the Valley. This is known. Looks like the rest of the country is starting to find out. The organizers of NPR’s much-watched Tiny Desk Contest have chosen Phoenix Afrobeat Orchestra as to compete against five other…
As he puts down his instrument case, we ask Tempe musician Daniel Suber, better known as MC/DC, if there are a lot of punk trombonists. “Not that I know of,” he responds with a laugh. “Everybody is like, ‘Play in my jazz band,’ and I don’t know how to do…
Supposedly, there is a war on Christmas, and Thanksgiving might bring about your family’s dark, alcoholic side. But no holiday divides the nation quite as bitterly as Valentine’s Day. In the red corner, you have those who must reluctantly conjure up greeting-card-style devotion to their indifferent significant other. And in…
