A disembodied voice comes out of the smoky darkness of the Emerald Lounge as Soul Trax winds down the last number of its first set. Someone is heckling the band. At first, it seems the heckler is counting off a beat or commenting on one of the musicians’ timing. But…
It’s a bitch trying to get a giant stuffed grizzly across international borders these days. “We have a big bear. He’s been coming onstage with us lately,” Hamilton explains in a British accent thicker than a London phone book. “We’d like to bring our bear, but he’s not allowed through…
Like many Mexicans who are thriving against the odds in the United States, Francisco Gomez cannot believe his good luck. Akwid, the rap duo featuring him and his older brother Sergio, was in the Top 20 of the Billboard Latin album chart for dozens of weeks, and Proyecto Akwid was…
Fans of the last several albums by Radiohead have been equally vocal in their praise of Thom Yorke’s songs and their admiration of the relatively abstruse sounds that have surrounded and sometimes enveloped them. Indeed, by the hyperbolic standards of select Kid A reviews, you’d think folks would be just…
Gerardo Montenegro, who owns a strip mall mom-and-pop death metal shop called Metal Devastation here in Phoenix, says his goal is to approach underground perfection. The storefront sign promises, after all, that his shop specializes in “only real death/black metal” and “extreme and obscure musical art.” In other words, if…
Few of us will ever know the joy of invention, devising something of dual capability that not only fills the needs of the many but gets to touch millions of ladies’ breasts. Paxton Quigley, inventor of the Super-Bra, is one such person. This crafty miss recently designed a brassiere that…
Over the last several months, I’ve noticed an alarming trend. I can’t look at TV or the newsstand without seeing the word “emo.” Major record retailers are advertising albums on MTV pimping them simultaneously as “emo” and “the next big thing.” There’s a recently published book by Andy Greenwald, senior…
What if the Smiths had been our little secret — not a worldwide phenomenon whose appeal crossed cultural barriers with breathless ease, but a closely guarded icon whose worshipers shared in the unique communion of the secret cause? We would feel the ugly satisfaction that comes from being in on…
Although prefab teen pop is no longer a dominant force in the cultural Zeitgeist, the idea of authenticity still overshadows the popular canon. Are shaggy hipster bands really starving Lower East Side garage rats, or does Daddy bankroll their bohemian, post-liberal arts lifestyle? Do pretty girls still validate the whines…
We laughed at your tales of hazing former bassist Jason Newsted. We screamed when you cut your hair and helped shut down Napster. But now it’s time for us to be wholly and quietly attentive for the official “Very Special Episode” in the long-running heavy metal series you call Metallica…
Waylon and Willie spearheaded the outlaw movement in country music, but if you separate their stylistic felonies like fiddle shunning and pigtail wearing from the real ones, what’s mostly there is pill popping and tax cheating. Johnny Cash did a few nights in the cooler for drunk and disorderly, and…
The Great Super Bowl Rogue Breast Disaster of 2004 has reached truly epic levels of overexposure, with every pundit, columnist, blogger and dude-standing-behind-you-at-Subway scrambling to weigh in on the moral outrage of it all. But in our haste to denounce either our shot-to-hell sense of human decency or the Puritan…
The most noticeable change trance DJ Sandra Collins undergoes between her last mix CD, 2001’s Cream, and her new one, Perfecto Presents . . . , is visual. On the cover of the old disc, she’s hyper-modernist Euro, wearing a skintight vinyl top and an impossibly smooth gray skirt, looking…
It’s shaping up to be a stellar year to see touring indie acts in metro Phoenix, and it couldn’t have happened soon enough for our atrophied live music scene. Just in the next month we have NYC’s Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Canadian twee popsters Stars shortly afterward. Hold on, wait…
Air makes great soft-core-porn music. At least seven of the 10 songs on the new Air album Talkie Walkie could back the drawn-out slow-motion sex scenes to those old dubbed-in-English Emmanuelle skin flicks and, in some of those instances, actually improve the aesthetic. The tunes really are that evocative of…
Rock ‘n’ roll fantasy camp isn’t just for baby boomers who were never in bands in the first place. It can also be for ex-punks with closets full of metal albums, whose current mainstream-alternative bands aren’t providing the pure chewing satisfaction they’re after. Thus, Dave Grohl, weary of platinum sales…
It’s only fitting that the Zombies enjoyed their biggest-ever hit posthumously. The group’s excellent 1964 debut chart entry “She’s Not There” set the tone for pop over the next three years — moody minor-key masterpieces where breathy singer Colin Blunstone sighed about not getting the girl while Rod Argent trilled…
CLUBS ACME Roadhouse: In its original Scottsdale location, ACME catered to Harley-Davidson weekend warriors. In its new Tempe incarnation, it entertains the college set with dancing and, on Saturdays, local rock bands. Dance space is at a minimum, but there’s plenty of room for other social rites. Sun: Live music…
Intra-band love — past or present, real or imagined — is the simplest way to ensure that chumps (like this one) endlessly obsess over your personal life and ignore the damn tunes. Ask the White Stripes: Everyone else has. But if Fleetwood Mac represents the benchmark for post-relationship acrimony, Mates…
When Survivalist became the first Arizona hip-hop group to crack Billboard’s Top 10 Hot Rap Singles chart in 2001 with the aptly named “Bounce,” its members felt they were strapped in for a rocket ride to Ballersville. Instead, when all the big-label contracts the suits flaunted like origami for their…
Mabybe Jesus Christ invented hard-core. Christians, after all, believe the man from Nazareth died for our sins with nails through his hands. It just doesn’t get much hard-core than that. Perhaps that explains why the Christians who release their music through the independent punk label Tooth & Nail Records have…
Ryan Breen is best known locally as the guitarist for Chronic Future, the young, progressive rap-rock band whose first Interscope album is scheduled to drop in April. But in his latest musical endeavor, Back Ted N-Ted, Breen doesn’t touch a guitar. If you hit up a Back Ted N-Ted show,…
