Over at my pad on a recent Sunday afternoon, DJ ChaseOne has his battery-operated portable turntable on the floor next to his metal box of seven-inches, playing cuts and talking shop about crate-digging for rare grooves — limited pressings of old funk and soul records — and the gems he’s…
It’s hard to imagine a concert that can handle 50,000 fans a day completely selling out, but that’s what happened at last year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival for the first time in the event’s brief history. And this year, with another jaw-dropping, nearly 80-band lineup that boasts headliners…
Tommy Lee’s first tattoo was of Mighty Mouse, a small, gaudy rendering of the pocket-size superhero bursting through a bass drum with sticks in his hands. Back in his early 20s, Lee identified with the cartoon underdog because he was one himself: With scrawny ostrich legs set against a pile…
Tegan Quin is happy to set the record straight about some things that have been written about her and her sister Sara. Their band, Tegan and Sara, is really a five-piece, not just a duo. Being identical twins does not make them one entity. Their sexuality is a non-issue because…
Al Singer, one of the Valley’s most prominent jazz promoters, died on March 3. He was 77 years old. Singer’s passion for jazz started in the 1930s, when movie Westerns exposed him to the sounds of swing. For Singer, it was an early stimulus for jazz, and by the 1940s,…
Ben Harris used to stare out the window of his Indiana high school, watching cattle graze outside and daydreaming about performing music onstage. When he moved to Phoenix at age 16, he started rapping after school with friends who would bust out the karaoke machine and rhyme for hours. His…
When the local bedroom producer who calls himself the Angel of Death dropped me off his demo, he made sure to point out the birth-control instructions he’d festooned the homemade CD with, which made me laugh, but not as much as the songs: choppy beats with sampled music and vocal…
The Wu-Tang Clan shouldn’t still exist. In an industry where today’s rap superstar becomes tomorrow’s MC Hammer, nine Staten Island MCs pulled off the impossible. They outlasted the three great pitfalls of modern hip-hop: ego battles, gang violence and, most important, irrelevance. Rappers worldwide would be wise to learn from…
My friend Billy used to always wear a button that said “Who Cares” on the collar of his jacket, until “some bitch” stole it off of him at a dive bar near our neighborhood. Billy was pissed, not because he’d lost some expression of apathy he was aiming at the…
Where do underage pirates go when they’re thirsty? To the soda barrr! Or at least that is where Jake Slider and Jason “Ace” McClellan hope underage music lovers will go if they’re thirsting for local music. The co-owners of Neckbeard’s Soda Bar have laid anchor in Tempe and hope their…
Her name is Annie. She’s Norwegian and beautiful, not an unusual combination. She’s big in Europe right now. And if you’ve heard “Chewing Gum,” the lead single from her debut, Annie mal, you hate her. But you can’t get her out of your head. “Oh no/Oh no/You’re not the one/You…
Though the immediacy of the first loping chords of “I Will Dare” would suggest otherwise, it’s been nearly a decade and a half since Paul Westerberg last fronted the mythically sloppy, booze-fueled Replacements. Which is longer than he was even in the group. Yep, Westerberg has been on his own…
When the award-winning Metallica documentary Some Kind of Monster was released on DVD late last month, it came bundled with a disc of bonus footage. Now fans could enjoy even more whimpering about how fucked up it is being Metallica. More of the band members telling each other off. More…
On a recent weekday afternoon, I was sitting at home flipping through the new issue of Food & Wine when Adam Jacobson, bassist and lead vocalist of the Tempe rock outfit Steppchild, dropped in to school me in his philosophy of rock ‘n’ roll. Now, I think I’m pretty well-versed…
It was bound to happen, but still took me by surprise. In the February 1 New York Post’s infamous Page Six, there was my homie Conor in the “Sightings” section. “Lou Reed backstage at Town Hall congratulating indie darling Conor Oberst on his band’s third straight sold-out show there.” As…
Phil Buckman thinks he’s awesome. It’s not hard to see why the towering 24-year-old musician from Flagstaff feels this way, since more than 200 howling fans have packed Modified Arts to witness his whacked one-man act, I Hate You When You’re Pregnant. But if Buckman needed further reassurance, he might…
Phoenix may be known for bands of the Jimmy Eat World persuasion, but for each of those, there is a Vehemence. It’s true — the Arizona metal scene is alive and well. In an attempt to start another downtown tradition, a local production company, SMUT, has dubbed the night after…
For Cheryl Olson, a registered nurse who also chairs meetings for Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, the only thing worse than having her chatterbox, musical know-it-all husband hanging around the house all day, running his quirky little Internet radio station from the den, is having to listen to all the…
When you scribble about bands for a regional publication every week like I do, it’s an occupational hazard that shitloads of crap local CDs arrive in the mail daily, destined to become coasters for cans of Budweiser. It’s rare that a local’s disc I come across is beyond lackluster, and…
It’s fitting that the band name Avail evokes the word “alive.” The best rock, like all the best art, is not some rarefied air breathable only to people who wear puffy shirts and pointy shoes. It’s music that makes everyday life feel alive. Richmond, Virginia’s Avail — perhaps the only…
When I run into Phoenix rapper Pokafase a few days before his record release party for Mastermind, the long-overdue LP he recorded back in 2002, I remind him we met several times years ago when he was in the hip-hop group Know Qwestion, back when his moniker was Cappuccino. “Shhh,…
Kyle Howard will make himself throw up for the Stiletto Formal. Dedication of that extent is rarely called for, but sure enough, on the third night of its first tour, the slender vocalist has to heave for his band. For the December show in Omaha, Nebraska, the Stiletto Formal wants…
