Glass Heroes The spot to be tonight is at the Clubhouse, to see longtime local rawkers the Glass Heroes open up for UK punkers Vice Squad, which has been around in various forms since freakin’ 1979. You want some old school punk rock authenticity, this is the show for you…
courtesy of Bryan Sandell of AZPunk.com Don’t Piss this Dude Off Tomorrow, 11/2, I dig into the trouble magnet that is Danny Marianino of the North Side Kings, and scope out the local hardcore legends’ (the dude beat down Danzig, that certifies him as a rock legend) new album, Suburban…
Elmo Kirkwood There’s been rumors flying since mid-summer that we’d soon see a reunion of the ‘Nix’s weirdest rock legends, Curt & Cris Kirkwood’s Meat Puppets, with Primus drummer Tim Alexander joining the brothers. After years of estrangement and Cris suffering drug and a prison sentence (you may remember a…
The members of Psychostick are explaining how they came to pack a CD as crushingly heavy as We Couldn’t Think of A Title with lyrics weighing in on everything from itchy balls to beer and diarrhea when guitarist Josh “Special J” Keys comes clean about his deep respect for “Weird…
There is a street in Omaha called Happy Hollow. But the characters who live in Cursive’s Happy Hollow are fictional Middle Americans dealing with actual Middle American dramas in a tiny rural town where people aren’t particularly bright or wealthy. And because Tim Kasher grew up Catholic in a small…
XrayOk was one of the most promising indie rock/electronica groups in the Valley. Formed in Phoenix in December 2002, the band’s self-released first album, Reflex, debuted at No. 158 on the CMJ Music Charts and stayed there for three weeks. At the time, it looked like XrayOk was going to…
In the last week of September, an odd thing happened: A Phoenix rap group managed to light up controversy all over the nation via an article that appeared on the front page of the Los Angeles Times by staff writer Chris Lee. The article, titled “Rap’s Captive Audience,” was about…
Face it, drummers don’t get much respect. There’s an overabundance of easily quoted jokes illustrating this fact, usually underlining surly sentiments about how skinbeaters are viewed as useless and interchangeable, including one oft-quoted barb asking, “What do you call someone who hangs around with musicians?” (A drummer.) But for local…
Self-described “redneck woman” Gretchen Wilson rose from poverty in western Illinois to become a country music superstar, winning critical and popular acclaim for her 2004 debut CD, Here for the Party, and for her sophomore effort, All Jacked Up, released last year. A firebrand singer and crafty balladeer, she writes…
Let’s get it out of the way up front: KMFDM stands for “Kein Mitleid Für Die Mehrheit,” a German phrase that translates literally to “no pity for the majority.” But KMFDM founder Sascha Konietzko is perfectly okay with the popular theory that his industrial dance band’s name stands for “Kill…
Just a few Fridays ago, in the broad lobby of U.S. Airways Center, I, along with another hundred or so other people, got to witness the latest fusion of turntablism and classical instrumentation envisioned by DJ Radar and his longtime composer and collaborator, Raul Yañez. This time, unlike the Concerto…
If, as he suggests with the title of his new CD And Now That I’m in Your Shadow, Damien Jurado stands behind his whisper-voiced folk brethren like Sufjan Stevens and Iron & Wine’s Sam Beam, he undoubtedly moves front and center when it comes to delivering the somber smackdown. Jurado’s…
In the opening track of What the Toll Tells, Adam Stephens of San Francisco’s Two Gallants plays the role of a murderer facing the gallows, yowling like a tortured young Black Francis over country-punk guitars while keeping counsel with the dead. He’s shot his wife and dumped her body in…
Alfred Weisberg-Roberts, a.k.a. Daedelus, looks like a man from another time. He adheres to a style he calls “Victorian dandyism,” and sometimes he wears clothes that make him look like an 19th-century British gentleman. He grows his sideburns thick and long to accentuate his appearance. He calls himself a romantic…
“Wicked!” Richard Winn exclaims as he stands on Seattle Center’s Broad Street Lawn during Bumbershoot, expressing appreciation for the French band Nouvelle Vague. “That’s weird — I got goose bumps on that one.” He pulls up the sleeve of his blue sweat jacket to prove it. The bubbly 42-year-old British…
Woe betide the child who springs singing from the loins of a rock star. Sure, it might be nice to have Drew Barrymore and R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe for godparents, like Frances Bean Cobain. Or to have received your first guitar from KISS’ Gene Simmons, like Cher and Gregg Allman’s son…
Should a plumber receive a royalty check every time a toilet he’s installed is flushed? It’s an interesting question, posed by Led Zeppelin biographer Alan Clayson as he mounts a defense of what others have characterized as outright theft in the Led Zeppelin: The Origin of the Species DVD (released…
“This ain’t no history lesson,” snarls the opening line to the liner notes of Rockin’ Bones: 1950s Punk & Rockabilly (Rhino/Wea), an excellent four-CD boxed set. “It’s about attitude! This is where punk rock began!” To me, the first and last of those bold declarations are exactly wrong. Rockin’ Bones…
Spend one of your Sunday nights, as I did recently, at the Yucca Tap Room in Tempe, and you’re likely to see what will at first seem like an anomaly — a pretty, diminutive, 30-year-old woman named Dana Armstrong sitting behind two turntables playing classic country songs from the ’60s…
Karen O, the focal point of any Yeah Yeah Yeahs show, works the stage like Iggy Pop in fishnets, a force of unnatural nature overdoing every gesture, every post-“Rock Lobster” vocal tic, until you’d have to be a fool to turn away. She’s part train wreck as performance art, part…
Shane MacGowan’s continued existence on the planet is nothing short of a miracle that would test the resolve of even the most determined atheist. I’ve personally witnessed the notorious Pogues front man — who’ll turn 49 on Christmas Day — ingest an incomprehensible amount of booze and illicit substances, then…
Six years ago, Jonny Lang faced a crossroads in his music career and personal life. Too much underage drinking, cigarette smoking and drugs, plus an obsession with witchcraft, threatened to ruin his career and create havoc in his personal life. A revelation gave rise to his current sobriety and new…
