“We put Vaseline on the men’s urinal so you can’t do coke off of it,” Tyler King tells me from behind the bar at the Stray Cat in Tempe, on the Wednesday after Christmas. “Cruel, but funny.” King is, of course, cracking on the reputation of certain punk DJ nights…
In April of last year, New York magazine published an article by Adam Sternbergh called “Up With Grups,” discussing the phenomenon of hipster parents. He touched on the sociological and economic nightmare we face if there is no longer a quantifiable generation gap — if parents’ habits and tastes are…
Courtney Love and Sharon Osbourne have a lot in common. They are both outspoken, headstrong women who married men who later became monstrously famous musicians. They both had plastic surgery. They are both known for throwing things — Love for hurling makeup at Madonna, Osbourne for pelting Iron Maiden with…
Young men fumbling to grasp the power of their hormones usually look to the brawny lead singers of hard-rock bands to learn machismo and sexual confidence. Unfortunately, these same impressionable teens simultaneously lap up the music’s misogyny, and so they only develop into self-pitying sexist pigs with an overactive interest…
In a couple of weeks you’ll see my column about a few of the kids that attend the Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences, one of the premier sound engineering schools in the country, located right here in Tempe and Gilbert. I’ve been hanging out with a few kids (“kids”…
Dumperfoo on the Canvas Hmmm, having two separate bomb-ass birthday parties, one in L.A., one here in the ‘Nix, seems a little bit ambitious, but if there’s one dude in town who can pull it off its Blunt Club impresario and artistic wunderkind Adam “Dumperfoo” Dumper. This post is to…
Yes, the free booze… not only do you have the always reliable One to hit up tonight for dancing and making out (this one features Rick Ramirez along with DiPadova, and upstairs at Homme Groovetribe First Fridays is popping off), but Sunday DiPadova’s launching a new night at a new…
This story, as originally conceived, was supposed to be a compilation of the year’s best boxed sets and other reissues. But then it hit us — in today’s shuffle-driven iPod world, with the pace of pop culture moving at breakneck speed, it’s pointless to make such temporal distinctions. The past…
It was, according to no less an authority than the New York Times, the year rap went regional. There was plenty of recent evidence to support this claim, beginning with the suddenly paltry record sales racked up by some of hip-hop’s heaviest weights. There was lots of historical evidence, as…
In 2006, the pop singles market continued to dominate, in no small part because the pick-to-click-driven mentality of online music stores and ring-tone sites gave consumers unparalleled freedom to Choose Their Own Musical Adventure. What suffered in the meantime, though, was the quality of pop/rock albums. These platters frequently spawned…
The criterion for this list was simple: Only the hardest, heaviest metal albums were considered. Bands that play a hybrid style of metal that is not thrash, speed, death, black metal, hardcore, grindcore, or some amalgamation thereof were not included. What follows is pure effin’ metal. Bang your head off…
Now is a bad time to be a giant music corporation, but ethically challenged music fans couldn’t ask for better days. Bootlegging has always been about catering directly to the fans, and the Internet breeds the best bootleggers yet: bigger and stronger and faster than ever before, the better to…
For nearly a decade, the giants of electronic dance music, a cold-blooded cadre mostly from northern Europe, lumbered across the Earth. Tiesto, Paul van Dyk, Paul Oakenfold, Seb Fontaine, Judge Jules, and Fatboy Slim dominated small suburban dance floors and Ibizan caverns alike with crafty disco assembled from chest-rattling bass…
Clearly, nobody needs a primer on indie rock. We all have our own idea of what it is, right? Nonetheless, why is it that so few of us can agree on who deserves such a designation? Fact is, attempting to define indie rock universally is as futile a task as…
Hey, dude. So here’s my mix tape that’s been 12 months in the making. Sorry it’s taken a while, but reality often moves at the same molten pace as a couple of the bands culled here. While the new folksters get accolades for their freaky psychedelic tendencies, there’re plenty of…
Another year, another wave of quirky British bands pouring into the States. It’s got all the makings of a new British Invasion. Well, except for one thing — the invasion. For every Bloc Party and Franz Ferdinand that succeeds in North America, there are dozens more that barely make it…
Recordings of DJ mixes have been multiplying like e-mail spam over the past decade. The sheer volume of said releases is overwhelming, and it makes one wonder: Who the hell is buying them? There must be a demand if labels keep issuing the things as if the music industry has…
Latin/Anglo Crossover is what Latin American artists have always dreamed of and what American artists are starting to realize they need to pull big sales numbers out of a shrinking market. Crossover success means jackpots in both concert tickets and CD sales, so expanding a fan base across genres, countries…
The Nashville way of making music is unlike any other, comparable only to the studio system of Hollywood’s golden age — a closed system of songwriters, producers, record labels and artists that creates most of the sounds you don’t want to admit you listen to on the radio when no…
the Brothers Bell Today I’m talking with brothers Mike and Jared Bell, aka the Lymbyc Systym. The duo’s on the verge of releasing its first LP for Mush Records, already home to avant-weirdos and ethereal experimentation from artists like Clouddead, Her Space Holiday, Aesop Rock and more. The LP, which…
The Three Adams I’m actually pretty relieved that ’06 is in the books now; it was a pain in the ass year that I spent with a pain in the ass girl (who’s history as well) and I’d just as soon pretend it didn’t happen. In celebration of its ending,…
deep fried squid For the last couple of months – since this blog began, really – I’ve been harassing my fellow hard-drinker Tony Patino of Attack of the Giant Squid to leak me some preview tracks from the as-yet-untitled album the band’s been working on. If you don’t know, the…
