KUPD-FM 97.9A few months ago, KUPD inaugurated a new TV advertising campaign. In the ad, a crowd of rambunctious kids at a hard rock concert shouts out their devotion to KUPD, while the mother of morning DJ Dave Pratt holds a picket sign complaining that the station is too damn loud. More than any station in […]
"I'm not really that sick," says Bruce Connole, coughing as he shuffles through his east-side apartment. While the singer was forced to cancel a recent gig with his bluegrass side project, the Pearl Chuckers, because of a cold, the spring sniffles have been the last thing on the mind of...
The Peeps are discordantly glamorous. Guitarist Paula Monarch is all tattoos and red hair. Bassist Chela Mischke is tall and dark -- with dark makeup and a helmet of even darker hair. Liz Adams is shy and soft-spoken until she gets behind her drum kit and becomes a reckless blur...
The most frequently repeated joke about the '60s was that if you could remember it, you weren't there. Along those lines, the morning after the overwhelming spectacle that was the New Times Music Awards Showcase, the hazy cloud of amnesia that fills my head might be my only solid proof...
Late on a brassy Sunday afternoon, Celia Putty stands beneath the velvet curtain, loaded on sass and confidence. Stretching diagonally over his frilly shirt and ample breasts is a red beauty queen sash that reads: "Project LifeGuard Phoenix--Queen of Safe Sex ?-1999." Putty's black leather shoes are trimmed with bright...
In a day and age where most bands are eager to take the quickest shortcut to commercial success, the Mob 40's are a refreshing change of pace. While discussing their brief but eventful history in the back room of Long Wong's, the group members never broach subjects like major-label conglomeration,...
It's impossible to talk about Valley music for long without the subject turning to the sad state of local radio. Even natives frequently shake their heads in disgust, unable to comprehend that a market of this size could be stuck with so few credible music options. The most glaring omission...
Ben Wallis manned the wheel of the old Camero, a car in need of repair but still a loud, monstrous, muscular machine that can go at a great clip if need be. We rounded the corner onto Adams Street, and Wallis gave her some gas, offering a glimpse of what...
thursday september 24 How often can you mention the Dalai Lama and the Beastie Boys in the same sentence? The lads take a break from fighting for their right to party in order to help out in the fight for the rights of the Lama's 'hood in Free Tibet, a...
thursday april 16 "You guys got baseball now!" says Tom Paxton, by phone, of the Valley. "I'll have to remember to do some baseball songs. I've got one called 'My Favorite Spring' that I'll have to do." Paxton, the legendary Pete Seeger protege best known, perhaps, for "Goin' to the...
On Saturday, April 18, Brad Singer was in Tucson. The owner of the Zia Record Exchange chain had driven down for the annual Tucson music awards club crawl, universally known as the TAMMIES. Although he was a bit run-down from a persistent cold, Singer knew that he needed to be...
thursday august 28 "Art of the Matter: Seven Collaborations in Paper Art": Organized by the Dieu Donne Papermill of New York City's Soho district, this installation makes a case that the meticulous, hands-on pursuit of papermaking remains relevant in the Cyberspace Age. Including pieces by artists working in pairs (some...
It's 1997, and rock 'n' roll is still a dirty phrase. Once merely synonymous with teenage copulation, the term now embraces a wide array of unseemly images. Your parents doing the nasty on a Monsanto carpet. A guy in his late 40s washing his Buick to the strains of Steppenwolf...
thursday june 12 Love! Valour! Compassion! Benefit Screening: The recently released film version of playwright Terrence McNally's dish-heavy dramedy about a summer of love and affection among a group of gay friends was directed by Joe Mantello, who helmed the original, Tony-winning off-Broadway production (and who, incidentally, received his own...
The red, white and blue Plymouth Reliant rolled off a Chrysler assembly line in 1982. Now, in the beer garden behind Boston's, the family-size station wagon is meeting a most ignoble end. Several dozen fans and members of the modern-rock combo Jesus Chrysler Supercar rain blows on the highway titan...
The mood was surly in a dressing room inhabited by the Deftones, the ninth of ten bands scheduled to play at the 1996 U-Fest, an annual rock festival that erupted into a riot, causing a reported $150,000 in damage to Desert Sky Pavilion on October 5. The Deftones, a rap-flavored...
thursday october 3 Coppelia: Ballet Arizona has opened its season with a revival of E.T.A. Hoffmann's Frankenstein-style work about mad Dr. Coppelius and the strange bond he forms with his mechanical creations, especially the beautiful title automaton. The score is by Delibes, and the set is great. Final performances are...
Lady of the Rings Dewey Webb's "Lourdes of the Rings" (February 8) was most interesting, even and well-done, except that it gave a misleading, two-dimensional profile of Kay Torrez. For a half-century, Torrez has been an ardent, effective, respected neighborhood and community activist, much of it in the cause of...
Reeling Movie reviewer M. V. Moorhead was close, but not precisely correct, in describing LaJetee as a half-hour film "told entirely in still photographs" ("Uneven Dozen," January 11). There is a scene in which a woman blinks. Thomas J. Baker Payson Fife Imitates Art I just finished reading "Young Fife:...
The Bad News: Despite KUKQ's business-asusual broadcasting, the indie-rock AMenclave will cease to exist sometime Monday--the third and, evidently, final time the financially strapped station has folded since it signed on in 1989. The Good News: There really isn't any. The Cause of Death: What else? Money. Sandusky Newspapers, a...
If you haven't figured it out, I'm old. And I'll tell you something else: I have a tough time getting it up for great, big rock n' roll shows anymore. But I've had my fun in the past, sure. For example: I got smashed against the front wall, stoned out...
Yet another 12 months of popular song have come and gone--for many, a year of soul-touching hits, for others, an unfulfilling mess of redundant backwash. But one thing's for sure: 1994 was a year of events in the music world. Michael and Lisa Marie got together, Kurt and Courtney broke...
