Limbeck is scheduled to perform tonight at the Chyro Arts Venue in Scottsdale. If I was an arrogant, self-centered kind of music journalist, I’d probably spend the next 400 or so words detailing all the cool-ass concerts I was planning to check out this weekend, dishing out details in between…
Defensive end Antonio Smith shows off the “raise the roof” gesture. Wanna high-five a few Arizona Cardinals players on their recent clinching of the NFC West crown? We’ve got info on where a few players will be kicking back tonight…
It’s not often that a bassist leaving your band can make you somehow much more popular, but that’s just what happened to Black Label Society. Of course the situation wasn’t exactly normal, what with Robert Trujillo leaving the band to join The Beatles of Metal, Metallica. Soon after Bobby T…
The Daddy of Rock ‘N’ Roll (1963-2003)The late Wesley Shabazz Willis was one of the coolest mofos in music. The schizophrenic African-American musician (who refered to his psychotic episodes as “hellrides”) sung howling songs set to keyboard music usually about such disparate subjects as McDonalds, Alanis Morrisette, and Spider-Man. If…
It can’t be easy to forge your own musical identity when every music writer insists on reminding you and everyone else in every article they write about you that you were good friends with Jeff Buckley. And you sound an awful lot like him. And come to think of it,…
Where: The Chevron Station located just West of the stop and about two minutes on foot. Drink: Grab 24 ounce can of Budweiser for $2.09. It’s the official beer of gas station drinking (as far as we’re concerned) and what the hell, grab a moon pie too. Microwave action is a necessity. Scene:…
The Medic Droid’s Hector Bagnod and one of his fans. You can’t spell “fanatic” without “fan.” As I detailed wrote in this week’s cover story in the Phoenix New Times, local electro power-pop group The Medic Droid has built a considerable teenaged and twentysomething (not to mention overly-enthusiastic) fanbase across…
This one comes from the “leave your number at the beginning of any voice mail you leave me” file: I got a call from the front man of Glass Heroes yesterday about the Joe Strummer benefit and memorial the band is hosting this Saturday at George and Dragon downtown. His…
It just wouldn’t be Christmas in Arizona without Alice Cooper’s annual event, Christmas Pudding, where the shock rocker turned radio jock assembles local and national talent to raise money for The Solid Rock Center, a Christian center aiming to keep teens out of trouble and teach them about the Way…
You may be wondering: Can a shirtless guy in his mid-50s who dresses in purple velour shorts still rock like he did in 1979? I know I asked myself the same question before AC/DC took the stage Wednesday night at U.S. Airways Center. But now I’m done doubting my aging heroes. Like…
Rolling Stone, that music magazine that felt it necessary to feature the ladies from MTV’s The Hills on the cover of its May issue, just released its list of top 50 albums of 2008. Wouldn’t you know it; they put Bob Dylan at number two. Why not number one, Rolling…
Where: American Park ‘n Swap at Phoenix Greyhound Park (3801 E. Washington St., 602-273-1250). Drink: 16-ounce cups of beer for $3 each plus a $2 admission per person. Scene: The American Swap Meet is like Wal-Mart, thrift store, and Mexican supermercado all rolled into one gigantic outdoor yard sale. Four…
If anyone’s compiling a reel of defining Arizona 21st-century rock moments, don’t forget Kirkwood Dellinger’s January 2008 appearance on Good Morning Arizona. Falling squarely, and I do mean squarely, under what Elmo Kirkwood will frequently categorize as “corny crap,” the band briefly played to the commercial break a snippet of…
Where’s the love for rap’s elders? Almost 30 years after Sugar Hill Gang released hip-hop’s first hit single, “Rapper’s Delight,” the genre evinces less nostalgia than reel lawn mowers. While rock luminaries like Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones, Neil Young, and Bob Dylan still attract fans (some who weren’t even…
THURSDAY 11 Blooze Bar: DJ El Dedo (rockabilly) Bunkhouse: DJ Doom (dance) Cherry Lounge: DJ M2 (hip-hop, Top 40) Club Red: The Blunt Club with Evidence, The Smob, Kahlee, Pickster Uno, DJ Element, Emerg McVay, & more (hip-hop) Crabby Don’s: DJ Johnny Knuckles (mash-ups, Top 40, ’80s) J-Heads: Thursday Night…
Zach Daniell is wiped out. It’s the night before Thanksgiving and the 18-year-old New Yorker has just flat-out sprinted through lower Manhattan with his 16-year-old girlfriend Kiki Fausel, his sister, and some friends. Bounding and pounding, they make the frenzied one-mile dash from Washington Square Park to a concert at…
Like an ambitious chef, Fear Before has attempted a new recipe with each of its four releases. The Colorado quintet’s 2003 debut, Odd How People Shake, raged with clamorous hardcore before graduating to a more spastic, experimental mathcore approach, for 2004’s Art Damage. It toned down the noisy, frenetic rumble…
Honky-tonk renegade Junior Brown is the consummate misfit. Beating the hell out of his one-of-a-kind guit-steel ax (custom-built after it appeared to him in a dream), roaring lyrics with coarse, chainsaw-toned vocals, and displaying the sort of nimble-fingered facility that makes guitar geeks around the world go limp, the Arizona-born,…
With their golden-age comic book costumes, silly supervillains, and absurd song titles, The Aquabats are punk rawk’s answer to GWAR. Only instead of promising the destruction of the known universe through copious bodily fluids, the ‘Bats are out to protect it. The superhero rock brigade got its start in 1994…
Transitioning from over-hyped buzz generator to perpetual powerhouse ain’t easy, even for figures as charismatic as the men of Bloc Party, and the strain shows on Intimacy, the Brits’ third LP. “Ares” is the sound of a band trying too hard, albeit with assists from some pretty interesting elements: screaming…
Neo-honky-tonker Wayne Hancock’s nickname is “The Train,” and though it may appear convenient to give the native Texan the moniker simply because of the Dr. Seuss-style rhyme one can play with his first name, Hancock has earned an allegiance with perhaps country music’s greatest symbol of both heartbreak and freedom…
One of the grooviest things about the Valley’s EDM scene is that DJ/dance events seemingly spring up in the unlikeliest of places. An all-night rave can take place in the middle of the forested mountains up near Camp Verde, for instance. Or some local turntablism collective will put on a…
