While the month has always been bountiful for new releases, some January albums often get left off of many year-end, best album lists. Those that do make it onto such lists have to be albums that are enjoyable enough to merit listens well into the later months of the year. …
Title: Borrachos, Chingasos Y Rucas Basics: How about some good ol’ fashioned AZ punk, compliments of local quartet Numbers On Napkins. Lead by the prolific Chase Stain, Borrachos was produced by Joe Queer of, oddly enough, The Queers while being engineered by Landmine Marathon’s Ryan Butler. That’s a…
Being as how you’re visiting Up on the Sun, a music blog, it’s probably a pretty safe bet to assume that you like music. But, have you ever stopped and asked yourself the question: What is music? It’s a pretty deep question and it also happens to be the subject…
Beer and booze are once again flowing at the Scottsdale space formerly known as biker place the Billet Bar. The spot, which is located at 3752 North Scottsdale Road, has taken on a rebooted identity as the newly opened Bar 350. Owner Johnny West is hoping his joint will become…
Nothing says “good times at the Trunk Space” quite like Pee Wee Herman and Snail Quail.Snail Quail’s singer and guitarist Jonathan Cisneros designed this week’s featured flier. He was shooting for something that would make people smile.”The concept behind the flier was to make it undeniably ‘Snail Quail-esque’ and simple,”…
The Flaming Lips have done an interesting musical experiment with smartphones, according to Prefix.Wayne Coyne and Steve Drozd of the Flaming Lips recently recorded a jam sesh that took place in a bath tub.The guys played different parts of a song they wrote by playing the tracks of each instrument…
Today marks the one year anniversary of the death of Jimmy Lee Lindsey, better known by his stage name, Jay Reatard. This year will see a flurry of Reatard-related activity: Reatard’s official site states that two songs Lindsey recorded two days before his passing, “You Get No Love” and “I…
Metal has probably produced more legitimate subgenres than any other branch of rock. Yet, for the most part, these offshoots have remained fairly true to the genre’s roots, especially visually: Grizzled, long-haired dudes in black leather playing brutal music. But then we have metalcore and bands such as We Came…
It’s hard to know what to make of Social Distortion’s over-30-year-cling to their signature sound. Take their new single, “Machine Gun Blues,” from their forthcoming album, Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes: The three-minute ’30s gangster parable sounds exactly how you would expect the first single from a new Social Distortion…
The music scene in Phoenix, as much as we don’t like to admit it, isn’t perfect. It’s not that we don’t have enough bands making decent music — but one thing that has, in my opinion, always hampered some bands in Phoenix is that their records seem to lack a…
Someone in Concrete Blonde’s licensing camp really dropped the ball. 2010 saw the release of the 20th-anniversary edition of their seminal 1990 album, Bloodletting, described by the kind folks at Amazon as “a gothic tapestry of danger, vampires, alcoholism, and passion,” but I didn’t hear a single one of their…
Every year at Castles-n-Coasters, 50 bands play on four stages in front of crowds that could be considered big by any reasonable Phoenix standard. Odds are, however, that unless you happen to follow Christian music, you will not have heard of the bands on the two-day Rage Festival bill. Thousand…
Though they flamed out faster than John Bobbitt’s adult-film career, Air Supply can always lay claim to early-’80s light-rock godhood. In a post-Carpenters world, they kept us going, man. The group’s founding duo — guitarist Graham Russell and singer-songwriter Russell Hitchcock — have another, less obvious claim to fame: They…
Hardcore punk is one of those easily dismissed, oft-overlooked genres. Too frequently, people regard it as solely for teens — or irrelevant after the late ’80s. The reality is that good hardcore music does have a place in the music world, and bands like Madball are at the forefront of…
Stuart Langelaan (a.k.a. Lange) commands some serious respect in the DJ world, and rightly so. Some of the 36-year-old British trance trickster’s accomplishments include ranking highly on the UK sales charts several times over the past decade (and earning an appearance on BBC’s Top of the Pops as a result),…
THURSDAY 13 27th Avenue Bar: R&B Thursdays (old-school R&B) Airia Nightclub: Ladies Night with DJ Circle, & D-JR (hip-hop, Top 40, remixes, house, electro) AZ88: Josh One (rare groove, urban funk) Bar Smith: Short Notice with DJ Smite, Monsoon Sound, Johnny D., One Peso, J-Cut, Djentrification, DJ Melo, DJ Mantis…
If you’re a loyal reader of all the New Times blogs you may have spotted a few familiar bylines over on our news blog, Valley Fever.All our coverage related to the tragic shooting in Tucson is there for convenience sake, but in case you missed some of the music-related (and…
This week, New Times ran a list in our print publication highlighting some of the most interesting posts published at Up On The Sun over the past week. Here are links to those posts.What sort of music did Jared Lee Loughner listen to?Why does Alice Cooper have a naked lady…
When the dreaded last call inevitably strikes in Scottsdale, the Old Town party crowd is confronted with a few of choices:A. Schlep on home and call it a night. B. Get some greasy-ass grub at Joe’s NY Pizza or elsewhere C. Pass out on the sidewalk D. Head to an…
[jump] Amy Winehouse – Valerie (Slow) by Pooh_BearPooh_Bear has slowed down some other songs, but I might point your attention to his sped up version of Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay.” There’s a hint of some Amy Winehouse in there, too. Who know either speeding up…
Heard of Warehouse 201, the north Phoenix all-ages venue catering to hardcore, metal and punk acts? No? A lot of other people haven’t either, and that’s sort of a problem says Brandon Kellum, a local dude who’s played in Vera Lynne, The Hostage Situation and is now fronting a new…
Kings of Leon actually got sick of hearing themselves all the time at one point, according to Spinner.”We were all sick of Kings of Leon!” the band’s guitarist Matthew Followill said. “We couldn’t go 10 minutes without hearing one of our songs…It definitely got annoying after a while.”I’d say that…
