Good Charlotte is one of the biggest bands in the U.S. right now, a pop-punk quintet that’s played the MTV Video Music Awards, graced the cover of Rolling Stone, and sold more than three million copies of its last disc, The Young and the Hopeless. To Good Charlotte vocalist Joel…
Dear Ms. Cooper, Over the past few weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to listen to your still-young syndicated radio show, Nights With Alice Cooper, weeknights on KDKB-FM 93.3, broadcast from deep in your underground bunker in this “toxic wonderland” I like to call the ‘Nix. First, let me say that…
The last year has been a good one for the mash-up, that DIY form of culture-mulching in which anyone with an Internet connection can download two songs plus the software to splat them together and come up with a trendy dance-floor hit in a matter of minutes. In addition to…
Blink while you’re walking down Mill Avenue and you’ll probably miss the new Swell Records. Just doors down from Fatburger, with only printed paper to mark its place, the latest incarnation of Swell sits a block north from Swell Clothing. Enter and you’ll see a post-industrial space with a few…
For a long time, I didn’t patronize the Marquee Theatre in Tempe. Hadn’t been there until I was preparing to write this column, and then it was at the insistence of my editor. At first it was simply coincidence that I didn’t visit the former Red River Opry, renamed and…
From a pop-culture standpoint, it’s always an interesting sign when quality reissues trump current releases. Thing is, that’s pretty much all the time. Marvin Gaye deluxe editions soar miles above 99.9 percent of contemporary R&B material. Roots-reggae reissue specialists like Blood + Fire and Moll-Selekta have consistently outgunned any label…
Two days of wandering in the searing desert sun can give you wild visions. But even though it was hot enough to warp time itself at this year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on May 1 and 2, sets by legendary indie pioneers The Pixies, Kraftwerk and The Cure…
Joel Morales is beginning to piss people off. Actually, person. One guy. Morales, the shaggy, pear-shaped, 28-year-old singer/guitarist of the lo-fi beauty pop quintet dios, is onstage at the House of Blues in West Hollywood, California. It’s early March, and the sun’s light is only just now fading from the…
D.R. Wilke, with gray hair, wire-rimmed glasses and an ASU alumni tee shirt, and Paul Taylor, with short curly locks and a white Izod polo, grab a balcony table at the Gordon Biersch brewery nestled atop the Mill Avenue Starbucks and are quickly greeted by a young waiter clutching four…
The last couple weeks have been sheer torture on the ears. See, this coming weekend I’m turning 30, and in an effort to ensure that I’m not losing touch with what the kids are rocking, I’ve been immersing myself in what may be the most obnoxious genre of music ever:…
Cops and white men beware: Dead Prez has secured another record deal and is ready to unleash its onslaught once again. Four years ago, the act’s debut, Let’s Get Free, criticized the government, the school system, the police force and other artists for using music to talk about nonsense. MCs…
For as much sadness and turmoil as there’s been in the Stereolab camp these past couple of years — the death of singer/keyboardist Mary Hansen following a bicycle accident in 2002; the divorce of founding members Tim Gane and Laetitia Sadier shortly before — you’d never really know it from…
You’d think Lee Burik, guitarist and co-founder of the San Francisco quintet evening, would have already gotten his fill of meeting people. Not only is he in a buzz band on the cusp of national recognition — which brings around the requisite fans, friends, friends of friends, groupies, hangers-on, stalkers,…
My job just got infinitely more difficult. See, I just got word that Freedom, the dance-music mecca in Tempe, is closing its doors at the end of May. This is a pain in my ass because I write a little feature called “Needle Exchange” spotlighting a different DJ/turntablist performance every…
The electroclash scene isn’t dead yet. Or if it is, then nobody told Felix da Housecat. Once a Chicago house DJ who was huge in Europe and barely noticed in the States, Felix arrived in 2002 with one of nouveau synth-pop’s finest platters, Kittenz and Thee Glitz. And his latest…
Ben Kweller could be America’s answer to Australia’s Ben Lee, who, like Kweller, made news in the ’90s with his teen band (Noise Addict as opposed to Kweller’s Silverchair clone, Radish). He also has a cute, moppish look, and purveys a gentle, slightly goofy, lovelorn lyricism. Except nobody knows who…
As morose and hopeless as ever, indie-rock Jesus-follower David Bazan (the key songwriter and only permanent member of Pedro the Lion) has crafted another stunning, despondent record with Achilles’ Heel. Fairly unique among indie and emo whiners, Bazan is a devout Christian. But rather than preach a clean lifestyle or…
Quannum Projects (originally called Solesides) is like the Paul Masson of hip-hop collectives (“We’ll sell no beats and rhymes before their time”). Fans of the esteemed Bay Area crew know that many moons may pass before its charter members turn out new music: Lyrics Born’s recent Later That Day …
Nobody ever said you’ll get Tempe fans handed to you on a silver platter. That’s what Emily Haines, the keyboard-playing front woman for the indie pop band Metric, found out when her group headlined the annual New Times Music Showcase on Sunday, April 18. Metric’s catchy CD came out last…
The long-vacant, two-story building at 750 Grand Avenue is a former car showroom, and there are rumors it was once owned by Bing Crosby. Now it’s open for business again, but not for auto sales. Instead, the site is home to the new Paper Heart, a multipurpose art and music…
Deerhoof seems to have found relative cohesion on Milk Man, something like the difference between a murky, half-remembered dream and a lucid one. The album makes good on the promise audible but not realized on last year’s Apple O’. Where Apple O’ was experimentally indulgent, Milk Man hangs together as…
I saw an anomaly at a Phoenix hip-hop show recently — a 58-year-old guy onstage playing classic funk 45s — no scratching, no mixing, just one song after another. Two twentysomething DJs, ChaseOne and Smite, stood by John Dixon, better known as Johnny D, nodding to the beat and looking…
