Most casual music fans have that one person in their life they turn to before they buy new music, a guru who keeps up with the trends, reads the mags, goes to the shows, surfs the ‘Net, and has taste that aligns with theirs. It could be a friend, a…
It’s not a new phenomenon, but lately the perceptions of what punk rock is and is not have irritated the hell out of me. Do three chords, a faux-hawk, and a 14-year-old’s snotty voice make a band punk rock? Is there a formula? Does it have to be loud and…
Hello, Dan Quayle here. As the 44th Vice President of the United States of America, I all but coined the phrase “family values” back in 1992, when I famously criticized Murphy Brown for having a child out of wedlock. Sure, it was a fictional character, and yes, I was roundly…
No matter how bad some things are for people, they cannot resist. You know you should watch your cholesterol, but every once in a while, McDonald’s sounds terrific. You really oughta turn off the TV and hit the gym, but, hey, you’re kinda tired and maybe there’s something good on…
How come every time you see a NOFX picture, someone in the band is wearing an Adolescents shirt? Because The Ads friggin’ wrote the book on old-school, Orange County agit-punk, that’s why. And talk about living fast: The band was signed to Frontier Records, recorded its now-classic self-titled album (better…
On a quiet stretch of Old Litchfield Road in Litchfield Park, a jazz group called the Energy Trio is warming up at Park Wines, an unassuming wine bar that usually features straight-ahead, traditional jazz. But these band members look about as much like a typical jazz band as they sound…
Corey Busboom’s house is a gloriously ginormous mess. Quite frankly, it looks like a thrift store exploded inside the cluttered confines of the 27-year-old’s central Phoenix residence, as almost every inch of floor space is choked with a collection of castoff items, including colorful kids’ toys, vintage home electronics, bygone…
On a summer afternoon in Los Angeles, Dodger Stadium radiates heat that feels a lot like what hits you in the face when you open an oven two hours into a roast. Welcome to Van’s Warped Tour, where several thousand fans of punk music have gathered to pay $4.25 for…
When Matt Sharp started plotting the real-life return of the Rentals after seven years of focusing on other things, he didn’t want to get all hung up on bringing in people who’d actually been in the Rentals on either Return of the Rentals or Seven More Minutes. He was more…
Michael (a.k.a. MYKELL) Geyman, 40, former drummer of Phoenix retro glam band Psycho Gypsy, was found dead August 1 in Iowa, where he relocated in 2000 to become a pig farmer. He had been missing for four days since leaving a party at a Zearing campsite, reportedly in good spirits…
I’m sitting in a Tempe Starbucks with Abby and Mark Covert, the former owners of defunct rock club Nita’s Hideaway, discussing Mark’s need for a liver transplant, when Abby hands me a folder that contains, among articles about liver disease, an excerpt of her diary of Mark’s illness. “He hallucinates…
The story you are about to read is basically true. The names have been changed because, shit, that’s what rappers do. It’s Sunday, July 23, and I’m wondering just how much of The Society of Invisibles’ veil of secrecy is for effect. Having two or three aliases per crew member…
Remember that movie Blast From the Past, where Christopher Walken barricades himself and Sissy Spacek in a backyard bunker, believing their home has been hit by a nuclear missile from Cuba? And then, after 35 years of eating Sissy’s meat loaf and raising that doofus from George of the Jungle,…
I don’t know about you, but I’ve always detested that heart-pentagram image that silly H.I.M. band uses as its logo. Hearts and Satan? I don’t get it. Nothing against heart logos; I just think that particular shit is stupid. If you want to see a good heart logo, check out…
When L.A. hip-hop outfit Jurassic 5 emerged in the mid-’90s with an alternative vision to gangsta rap, the group was among the decade’s biggest indie-to-major label success stories. Today, Jurassic 5 DJ Nu-Mark admits that he can’t think of any indie rap groups he likes. “I don’t know anything about…
My dearest Kelly Clarkson, We’ve been meaning to write you for quite some time now, but it’s taken us a while to put our fingers on just what it is about you, my love, that irks us so damn much. Is it your soaring voice? Nope. Your girl-next-door appeal? Loving…
We wish we could tell you that Rude Boy — to be released Tuesday, August 1, on Sony/Legacy DVD for the very first time in America — is a good movie, but we can’t. It isn’t. Billed as a “fictional documentary” set in a socially turbulent, pre-Thatcher Britain, the film…
Sometimes, with music, you’re lucky enough to be present to watch the first time that a collaboration among artists becomes greater than the sum of its parts. That happened to me recently when I saw the first four-piece practice of a country band that now calls itself the Rock Ridge…
On August 8, thrash metal legends Slayer will unleash Christ Illusion, a blistering, brutal atom bomb of an album that some critics are calling the band’s heaviest audio assault since the cataclysmic 1986 classic Reign in Blood. The record is also Slayer’s first studio album in 16 years to feature…
Singer/guitarist Nathan “Naybob” Shineywater and singer/Rhodes pianist Rachael “Raybob” Hughes form the core of anodyne groovers Brightblack Morning Light, whose new, self-titled Matador Records debut fuses the spaced-out shoegazer-gospel of Spiritualized, the mellow country-rock of Acetone, and the heavenly vocal harmonies of Mojave 3 together to create a stunningly hypnotic…
Like Donny Osmond, South Carolina singer-songwriter Edwin McCain is a little bit country, and a little bit rock ‘n’ roll. He’s a whole lot of heartthrob, too, penning some of the most poetic tunes ever to make the women in the trailer parks swoon. Over the course of seven albums…
It’s laughable how many Valley bands still insist on using a “rising from the ashes like a phoenix” analogy in their bios when all they’ve struggled with is the climate change from the living room to the garage to the gig. But in the case of the Walnuts, it’s totally…
