‘Tis the season for something. Whether you unironically don an ugly Christmas sweater and embrace the holidays or spend December bitching about consumerism and the inherent shallowness of modern society, there’s something about the last month of the year you’re doing differently. If you can spare the dough from your…
Get ready, jam band fans. Your demigods, Widespread Panic, are coming in just a few short months. Concert organizers announced the lineup of the McDowell Mountain Music Festival over the weekend. On top of the bill are Widespread Panic, the jam band legends. Joining them are Passion Pit, Thievery Corporation,…
Musically, Phoenix doesn’t have a ton to brag about. Sure,, we’ve had some locals make noise in the national circuit like Jimmy Eat World, Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington, not to mention people like Rob Halford and Stevie Nicks, who have had homes in the Valley at one point or another…
Whether it’s apathy or simply ignorance, some bands tend to remain mostly hidden from the world. This can add an air of mystery, or perhaps lead to an underground cult following that will ultimately lead to a burgeoning career. For Los Angeles’ Francisco the Man, there’s no real answer for…
Searching for the perfect gift for that music lover in your life isn’t so difficult. However, trying to find the perfect gift for a metalhead is a bit more daunting. It’s not that we’re picky — we just don’t particularly value the commercialized side of our beloved genre. Therefore, the…
It’s getting toward closing time during The Blunt Club Thursday night at Tempe’s Yucca Tap Room and it looks like no one’s in the mood to call it quits. The main bar is glowing with Christmas lights and busy with activity as DJ Reflekshin drops slow jams in between classic…
Every year, the music industry brings us a wide variety of shocking moments. Whether it’s a surprising death (Whitney Houston in 2012, Lou Reed in 2013) or a publicly off-putting/humiliating debacle (the VMAs, from almost any year), there are always a handful of moments that stick out each year that…
There are plenty of things we’ve come to expect around the holiday season. Crazy shoppers, long lines, snowbirds, traffic, and Alice Cooper’s Christmas Pudding. Now if you’ve been living under a rock for the past decade, Christmas Pudding isn’t a holiday dessert your grandmother force feeds you after dinner, it’s…
Plenty to do this weekend. Check out our concert picks below, and browse our comprehensive concert calendar for many more options…
Painting, to paraphrase the late Jackson Pollock, is an act of self-discovery whereby every good artist paints what he is and what he knows. And local painter Deon Doughty would certainty agree, since he’s spent the last three-and-a-half years doing just that. The 43-year-old artist is one of the biggest…
“Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies” is a lyric I could go my whole life without hearing again. It’s not that it isn’t a catchy little piece of an innocuous pop/rock song. Christine McVie’s lyric is exactly that, but I just don’t like it. I also hate myself…
Let’s get this out of the way first: This tour only has Ryan Adams and Jenny Lewis playing. Yes, there are Rilo Kiley songs. Yes, there are songs from Heartbreaker. Yes, the show is almost three and a half hours. And, yes, if you’re going to pull out your iPhone…
Naked Pizza was the brainchild of eccentric Phoenix-based saxophone player “The Artist Formerly Known as Austin Rickert,” as he requested he be called, and just like Rickert … it was really weird. They were a ska band that would play in crazy costumes looking more like theme camp at Burning…
While Brian Setzer never set out to reinvent the wheels of rockabilly and swing music, there is no denying that he has successfully breathed new life into both genres and created a body of work that has stood the test of time for more than three decades. The one-time leader…
Being an active member of the local music “community,” I often contemplate what “community” actually means. I believe community to be a tightly knit place of love, acceptance, forgiveness, and focus. Living and working as a musician by day, and being a regular “night owl” in the artist world by…
If you’ve ever wondered about the meaning or history of a specific online trend or concept –Doge, Bitcoin, Slender Man, or that creepy Nicolas Cage face — a remedy exists at Know Your Meme (www.knowyourmeme.com). The site dedicates thousands of pages to explaining the significance of famous Internet ideas, fads,…
Jim Eno, drummer for indie stars Spoon, reveals some insider knowledge about the creation of “The Beast and Dragon, Adored,” the opening track from their fantastic 2005 album Gimme Fiction. It’s a peek behind the curtain of how the Austin-based band constructs an album. Once privy to the information, you…
Editor’s note: Since Oct. 6, 2012 (the 50th anniversary of the release of the Beatles’ debut single “Love Me Do,” we’ve been on a half-century celebration cycle in which we are scheduled to relive every Beatles innovation, every release of the Beatles’ landmark career in real time, right until the…
Vocalist and guitarist Leighton Antelman’s musical career started early, when he and some friends from Gilbert’s Greenfield Junior High School got together and formed a band called Rolo 15. That band went through some changes, and ultimately it was Antelman and guitarist Steve McGraw who stayed together to create music,…
This one is very personal. In the spirit of full disclosure, I must admit, I am a huge fan of Dan Clark. I loved watching Victory Acres play as a young’un and I still love listening to them now. As for Joke Flower, they were more of a guilty pleasure,…
Formed in 2010 following the dissolution of electro-dance band The Analog Society, The Echo Bombs aimed for a more lo-fi approach, a la Best Coast. Now they’re switching gears again with their first full-length, King of Uncool. It’s more primal and creepy as fuck, with sludgy garage-rock riffs that typify…
2014 was a hell of a year. Phoenix residents got a taste of a wide variety of awesome concerts, and our photographers were hard at work capturing the action. Here are our 20 favorite concert photos we took in 2014. Check out more than 100 more here…
