Happy opening day, Phoenix!Yes, today is the start of the baseball season. The real start, not the start they’ll be celebrating in the upper Midwest next month, the one that requires parkas. It’ll be 80 degrees and sunny across the Valley as the first pitch of the year will be…
It all started on Saturday Night Live in December 2005. Midway through a so-so episode of the New York institution, we were treated to a digital short featuring Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg. The premise was simple enough: two white guys rapping about their Sunday, cupcakes, and The Chronicles of…
Today marks an important day in the vibrant history of hip-hop music. 10 years ago, Philadelphia hip-hop pioneers The Roots released their breakthrough album, Things Fall Apart. Bolstered by the strength of the irresistible single “You Got Me,” featuring the vocals of Erykah Badu,Things Fall Apart became The Roots’ most…
The British lower class has been all over the news of late thanks to that 13-year-old kid, Alfie, who apparently knocked up his girlfriend. The music blog at our sister paper in Orange County has a link to a funny video about the hot “donk” trend hitting clubs full of…
Yes, that’s right, Jimmy Eat World’s masterpiece Clarity came out on February 23, 1999. We’re writing a lot more about the record in advance of their sold-out show at the Marquee on March 7, but I wanted to mark the date. Anyone have any memories about the first time they…
Today Dan Gibson, a Phoenix-based contributor to Idolator, e-mailed me about two shows we haven’t mentioned here yet, but which are definitely worth telling you about.Leonard Cohen is coming to Dodge Theatre on April 5 (presale tickets Tuesday) and Depeche Mode is coming. We didn’t get the Depeche Mode press…
It’s one thing to have a musical career that’s lasted more than a quarter-century. Impressive? Sure. Noteworthy? Not really — plenty of popular artists have pulled it off by this point. It’s quite another thing to have a musical career of comparative anonymity that lasts more than a quarter-century. When,…
Well, that was fast! The day after Mike Meyer’s feature on them ran in our print edition, local death metal band Landmine Marathon have announced they’ve signed with Prosthetic Records, home to critically lauded (by death-metal standards) acts such as Lamb of God, Gojira, and All That Remains. They’re also…
So if you’ve been reading our news blog, Valley Fever, you probably came across a link to a story about a Tuscon punk band called The Awful Truth who’s pissed off the entire town by using a photo of a slain city policeman on the cover of their record, Kill…
Old-timey prog-rockers Yes have canceled the rest of their “In The Present Tour,” including the show scheduled for Wednesday at Dodge Theatre. Bassist Chris Squire, the only member of the band to appear on every album, underwent surgery on his leg on February 11, and says his doctor told him…
It was announced this week that SXSW will be getting yet another addition to its already fruitful lineup: Tinted Windows. The band consists of Taylor Hanson (Hanson, duh), James Iha (Smashing Pumpkins), Bun E. Carlos (Cheap Trick) and Adam Schlesinger (Fountains of Wayne). It’s an eclectic group, that’s for sure,…
The Game’s reckless, bizarre, whiny tendencies make him a wholly unique hip-hop character. Though the Compton native is among the handful of rap stars who still have platinum potential, he’s no gangsta superhero like collaborator-turned-foe 50 Cent, and he’s no drug-addled weirdo savant like Lil Wayne. His flow is much…
There are few rap songs as important to modern culture as Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power,” a rallying cry against African-American communities for their political indifference. Well, it’s been 20 years since frontman Chuck D helped scare the hell out of white America, and a black man now sits in…
Even witnessing it up-close and in person, the transformation is hard to believe. Grace Perry, a naturally pretty, soft-spoken 23-year-old college student and librarian, is about to turn into a monster. On a Thursday night in late January, the five members of Landmine Marathon are rehearsing at their small, unadorned…
After a mass backlash from its users, Facebook is trying to make nice after the Consumerist posted an item stating that the social networking Web site owns everything its users upload, even after deleting their profiles. The site will revert back to its old terms of use, according to a…
Wait, what? The Hold Steady, beloved hipster bar band, sharing a stage with unrepentant frat-rock douches Dave Matthews Band? It’s happening in St. Louis, reports our sister paper, Riverfront Times. It’s too late to call Live Nation, and the listing for Dave at Cricket Wireless doesn’t say anything about The…
As we come right smack into another Tuesday rife with new releases, I will choose to focus my energies on one particular release, N.A.S.A.’s The Spirit of Apollo. N.A.S.A. (North America/South America) is the collaboration between DJ Zegon (Ze Gonzales) and Squeak E. Clean (Sam Spiegel). Apollo has been hotly…
Or at least a sticker with their name on it did:”A bicycle with a sticker advertising a Florida punk-folk band forced the evacuation of a Memphis, Tennessee airport terminal late Monday afternoon, authorities said.A pilot alerted airport police when he saw a bike with a sticker that read “this bike…
Fresh off a three-night stint at Madison Square Garden, Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood have announced a 14-city U.S. tour beginning in June, which stops in Glendale on Friday, June 26. Tickets go on sale Monday, February 23 at 10 a.m. through LiveNation.The duo teamed up at the Chicago Crossroads…
We’ve been getting a lot of comments complaining we’re too snarky lately, so we’ll let you take care of this one yourselves. The following press release from Limp Bizkit begins with this sentence: “The original line-up of Limp Bizkit is back, do you believe in miracles?”Have at ‘er…
With The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach’s solo record, Keep It Hid, having come out last Tuesday and his protégé, Jessica Lea Mayfield coming to town tomorrow, I thought this would be a good time to share a story I wrote on Auerbach for my college paper back when his band…
It should come as no surprise to know that in today’s music scene, albums are leaked months before their release date. Ever since Napster became all the rage and the MP3 format made world domination a feasible notion in the latter half of the 90’s, bands have been seeing the…
