Ch-ch-ch-changes! Always in favor of mixing things up, the local punk/dub genre-blenders of Authority Zero are all about switching gears lately. In a chat with New Times, Authority Zero guitarist Bill Marcks drops the skinny on AZ’s move from Lava/Atlantic, its new acoustic CD, and its ballooning DIY plans for…
The 2004 presidential election was accompanied by an almost universal outcry from the music industry for the dethroning of George W. Bush, but no one embodied this sentiment better than Green Day, with its punk-opera masterpiece American Idiot. That wasn’t the only band with something to say, though, as ska-punk…
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“Um, we better use Charlie,” Rob Kistler tells me when I ask how I should address him when referring to the country-rock band he fronts under the pseudonym Charlie Shooter, which just released its first CD a couple of weekends ago. Kistler finally capitulated to the cascade of advice suggesting…
Try to explain the depraved ethos behind films like Eli Roth’s new grindhouse pic Hostel to anyone other than a fan of the horror genre, and you’ll most likely elicit a series of concerned looks. The same goes for explaining hardcore death metal. Some people just don’t get it. And…
Loyal patrons of Neckbeard’s Soda Bar, the pirate-themed non-alcoholic music venue in Tempe that catered to teenage screamo and hardcore fans, have expressed a collective “Blimey!” since their beloved hole-in-the-wall was deep-sixed on January 10. While dozens of his former customers play the blame game on the message board of…
“I want to break into ‘Tiny Dancer’ right in the middle of one of our songs and just weird everybody out,” Andrew Pringle, pianist and vocalist for the Rescue Plan, tells me after one of the band’s practices. Elton John seems a bit incongruous an influence for the five-piece screamo…
If you didn’t look at the track title on the Treme Brass Band’s demo CD, you’d assume it was party music: jaunty tuba gets a jump on a buoyant melody filled in with trombone, trumpet and sax. The swaying rhythm is hand-clappin’, foot-stompin’, old-time New Orleans jazz — the sound…
When it comes to rap legends, few rhymers are more legendary than Tupac Shakur, but no one is more exploited. Controversial and often contradictory while alive, he has become universally loved since his still-unsolved murder in 1996, even by those who used to hate him. Stars from Ja Rule to…
As Curtis Armstrong’s Miles tells Tom Cruise’s Joel in the 1983 smash-hit comedy Risky Business, sometimes you just gotta say, “What the fuck.” In Joel’s case, this phrase is employed with a shrug of the shoulders and a sly smile: “What the fuck, let’s go for it.” In mine, as…
In 2005, pop music was rock music. Between Kelly Clarkson’s tarted-up “Since U Been Gone,” Ashlee Simpson’s raspy, Courtney Love-after-a-bender vocals and Hilary Duff’s collabs with her Good Charlotte boy toy Joel Madden, even the biggest Top 40 starlets liked their guitars cranked up to a sassy 11. Elsewhere, rockers…
If hip-hop had a theme song in 2005, it wasn’t “Gold Digger” or “Lose Control” or “Candy Shop,” or any tune that contained Mike Jones’ phone number. Instead, it was that old standard by the Original Rapper himself, Lou Reed: “I’m Waiting for the Man” — the man in this…
On the surface, 2005 was another banner year for hip-hop. There were at least a couple of classic albums (Beanie Sigel’s The B.Coming and Kanye West’s Late Registration), a slew of great ones (Madlib’s The Further Adventures of Lord Quas, Young Jeezy’s Let’s Get It: Thug Motivation 101, and The…
My undying love for Dudes With Guitars Who Think Way Too Much About Girls is now a critical liability, as Rockism has recently become grounds for public execution. I can only hope my final hours (before I am personally decapitated by Missy Elliott) are as graceful, poignant, and unabashedly melodramatic…
When it comes to heavy metal, 2005 will be remembered as the year the promising Sounds of the Underground tour debuted, metalcore dominated the scene popularity-wise, and Iron Maiden got egged at Ozzfest. There weren’t a lot of big hits (only nü-metal holdovers Disturbed and Mudvayne cracked the Billboard Top…
In 2005, Nashville hunks-in-arms like Toby Keith tuned down their jingoist jingles, the Muzik Mafia treaded water, and most of alt-country’s best contenders simply looked back. But as these 10 albums from country’s mainstream and underground demonstrate, these quiet scenes were still full of ferment beneath the surface. Only the…
2005 was a year of exploration and expansion in urban music. Against a Matrix-like background of corporate-controlled radio and TV, iPod-enabled consumers demanded more musical choices, and were rewarded by indie labels that stepped in to provide an alternative to mainstream mediocrity once again. For every lackluster commercial effort (like…
Listening to every single thing that comes across my desk is by and large a painful if not soul-killing experience, but it does occasionally land a few diamonds in my lap that wouldn’t get there any other way. Most of these CDs are by artists you’ve likely never heard of…
As far as music goes, I am not a tribal person. I am not prodded by Pitchfork, nor narcotized by Relix, nor are my spirits lifted by No Depression. Not to say that those media sources are entirely flawed — indeed, each has its virtues. But each of these influential…
So barefoot-boogie hippies rub you the wrong way. Or maybe you’re more open-minded than the typical cranky-pants, scene-sucking elitist. Either way, hopefully you’re savvy enough to realize that shortcut labels like “jam band” and “indie rock” better describe a band’s business approach and fan base than its sound. This past…
While hip-hop continued to get mo’ live in ’05, and indie rock further honed post-punk/emo’s affectations into something more genuinely affecting, the arch-paradigms from the past 12 months of electronic composition seemed more concerned with looking in than locking in. For the most part, top producers haven’t seemed as worried…
It’s rare to find anybody over 20 inside the noisy arcade castle at Mesa’s Golfland during the Saturday morning $8 Video Game Blowout. Never mind anybody over 60. That’s why the gray-haired dude on the Guitar Freaks V machine sticks out like a sore joystick-jamming thumb. Eyes squinted Clint Eastwood-like,…
