It’s that time of the year again: State Fair time. What’s not to like? It provides three weeks of opportunities for Valley folks of every variety to congregate and yuck it up within the confines of the Arizona State Fairgrounds, get their fill of uncomfortable white-knuckle-inspiring rides, fried food that…
I don’t think anyone will be shocked by this admission, but I’ll make it: I don’t like Britney Spears or Miley Cyrus very much. (Aside from that Notorious B.I.G. mashup from a few years ago.) They are not really gyrating in my demographic’s direction. But Britney Spears has a new…
I’ve stood and watched guys and girls play (mostly guys, mostly guitar), and wondered what it would be like to make an instrument talk… to connect with a crowd… to say something with lyrics. But lately, I’m not so sure. Maybe I wouldn’t want to be a musician. Maybe just…
I admit I have an issue with mainstream heavy metal. Some of the musicians possess undeniably impressive technical prowess, but they appear determined to adhere to strict marketing regulations or to develop a meathead attitude, further perpetuating the stereotype known as “jock metal.” A first glance at the bill for…
Future Loves Past’s debut album gives “polish” a good name. “Disco,” too. That’s not the only musical jargon the Tempe natives rehabilitate on All the Luscious Plants, but they’re the first ones you’ll have to confront when you listen to it. This is a polished, dance-y, slick — that’s another…
A band that repeats the phrase “you will always be a loser” toward the end of a five-minute song may come off as misanthropic, but suffering through the put-downs pays off in the end. Titus Andronicus finishes its magnum opus “No Future Part Three: Escape from No Future” by singing…
Carly Rae Jepsen seems worried about me. At the moment, she doesn’t seem to care about the 13 million copies sold of her omnipresent “Call Me Maybe,” her meteoric ascent, nor even the slightest mention of the stadium show she’s about to play in Cape Cod, a stop on her Summer Kiss stadium tour.
Good luck finding much of anyone using the term “nostalgic” as a compliment nowadays, but I wonder if we might revise our position based on Okkervil River’s latest, The Silver Gymnasium, released on ATO Records (their first for the label, after years with Jagjaguwar) just last Tuesday. To be sure,…
Eminem has always explicitly played a character on his records, so I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that he’s playing one on TV now that he’s re-dyed his hair and dumped his earnest Recovery/Chrysler commercial persona. Based on the reaction to his bizarre “high” ESPN interview with Brent Musburger and…
Mac Lethal is very, very excitable. The Kansas City, MO rapper, label owner, and former Rhymesayers artist has good reason to be, however — he’s still in the wondrous honeymoon stage of fatherhood with his six-month-old son, he’s recently authored his first book, and he’s one of the Midwest’s most…
A few weeks ago, in a little ditty called Five Signs That You Might Be a Music Junkie, I mentioned that I never deliberately listen to the same song more than once a day. That’s right, no “play it again, Sam” for this geek. (Note: That quote is from Casablanca…
One man installs a recording studio in a house or a storefront, starts an independent record label, signs a roster of artists, and boom, a music factory is born. It’s the stuff that fills whole display cases in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Berry Gordy with Motown Records…
One man installs a recording studio in a house or a storefront, starts an independent record label, signs a roster of artists, and — boom — a music factory is born. It’s the stuff that fills whole display cases in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. With minor variations,…
Summer of 2013 can more or less be summed up with three songs–Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines,” Icona Pop’s “I Love It” and Lana Del Rey’s “Summertime Sadness.” All three tunes are a little grim–“Blurred Lines” can be interpreted as glorifying rape, Icona Pop has no problem with trashing her car,…
They may not be active anymore, but you can currently hear four Arizona bands from the ’80s in a film-worthy setting. Nicolas Cage and John Cusack’s new film The Frozen Ground is set in 1980s Alaska, and classic AZ groups including New Wave band The Jetzons and power poppers Blue Shoes…
One Direction: This Is Us made $18 million over the Labor Day weekend. That means the One Direction movie did better than the Katy Perry movie and significantly worse than the Justin Bieber movie, which–fanbase-wise–seems intuitively right to me. But it’s not a lot of money for a movie. It’s…
People from Phoenix treat the summer like the zombie apocalypse. I realize this every time I stare out of a car window at people groaning and lifelessly shuffling in the heat. I think about how I would never dare go out there, for fear of being infected…
Remember Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill? Yeah, so does Eminem. If you doubt it, take one listen to the absolutely inessential “Berzerk” single from the forthcoming Marshall Mathers LP II, where he makes the emphatic case that we ought to “take it back to straight hip-hop.” It’s not terrible advice,…
When you are a certified music junkie like I am, you tend to weave music in and out of life. It influences every area of your existence. Does that mean music is part of my parental philosophy? Of course. It’s one of my greatest tools. In fact, I find that…
Perhaps you’ve read the weirdly fawning praise of Bob Dylan’s tenth installment in his famed Bootleg Series, Another Self Portrait 1969-1971. (“One of the most important, coherent and fulfilling Bob Dylan albums ever released,” some buffoon for Rolling Stone just claimed!) Perhaps, while in your collecting-every-Dylan-record phase, you presumed that…
When I first heard “Blurred Lines,” I was driving in my car. I knew I’d heard it before, but I couldn’t place the song. So I Shazamed it. Still nothing. I didn’t recognize the title. About a half-an-hour later . . . Abracadabra! I remembered Marvin Gaye’s extended groove, “Got…
“With low expectations it’s very easy to surprise people.” You’ll never guess who said that. No, not Norman Vincent Peale — Pamela Anderson said that! See how this low expectations thing works? On a night when loathing everything came easy and liking anything new seemed doubtful, I caught The Prowling…
