In 1987, Derrick Lee was selling roofs in Huntington Beach, California. He had no interest in politics. But he had this unemployed roommate. One day Lee noticed some help-wanted ads for paid petition circulators -- the folks you see outside the library and the supermarket who ask you to sign...
My original New Year's Eve plan was to be in Redondo Beach, California, to see a rare solo performance by Beach Boy legend Brian Wilson. In my naiveté, I thought that ringing in the new millennium with a concert by a man whose music has been a symbol of all...
Click Here for the Photo Gallery In June 1999 as I began my first week at New Times, my predecessor as music editor brought a large box into my office. "What's this?" I asked. "Pictures." "Pictures of what?" "Local music pictures. It's an archive of our old stuff." Nearly 25...
As you walk down Tempe's Mill Avenue, somewhere past the Gap and Hooters but before you get to Abercrombie & Fitch, you'll pass Long Wong's, a funky bar plopped on the corner of Seventh Street. Within the shiny surroundings, it seems an architectural and cultural anachronism. It remains one of...
CITIZENS OF THE VALLEY: This is a code-red Mullet alert. In recent months, there has been a drastic increase in the number of confirmed Mullet sightings in Phoenix and surrounding cities. Estimates indicate we are rapidly approaching the crisis threshold of one Mullet Cut per hundred hair styles. Simultaneous outbreaks...
A kid limps up and offers his palm. He wears a black Misfits tour shirt and Marine fatigues, glittery combat boots and a teal-colored mess of hair. Framed by the hazy hues of Mill Avenue on a Friday night, he seems an antagonistic juxtaposition to the street's sugary chain-store harmony...
Bully-ish on Music When I was about 10 years old, some buddies and I were hanging around a canal ditch, having fun, looking for crawdads. Some older neighborhood kids came around on their bikes and started circling us and teasing us. I chose to ignore them and was bent over...
If you build a stadium, people will come," says William Garrard, former owner of Coyote Springs Brewing Company. But he adds, "It's a quickie effect." And when Bank One Ballpark opened its roof in downtown Phoenix, people did come -- more than 3.6 million fans in 1998 and 3 million...
Strolling the paved shores of Tempe Town Lake, I notice the water has changed in color since my last visit -- from antifreeze green to a sort of espresso-sludge brown. I stop amid a troupe of snowbird cyclists to watch a city employee methodically scoop garbage from the water with...
Fiduciary Duty I applaud Paul Rubin's article regarding further exposure of the malfeasance of fiduciaries ("Nancy Drew," January 20), whether public or private. These crimes against the elderly would be more frequently exposed if the judiciary would do its job and stop rubber-stamping annual accountings when they are presented without...
Phoenix wouldn't be Phoenix without its illusions about water. All its boats and pools and golf greens, all its fountains, irrigated farm fields and backyards have helped to turn some fairly extravagant wet dreams into everyday occurrences. That may be why last week's formal opening of Tempe's Rio Salado project...
Someone once noted that if there was a local Punk Preservation Society charter, Keith Jackson would be its Chairman of the Bored. Few things, it seems, can excite the musician like the subject of his favorite rock revolutionaries. Perhaps the only thing that can generate that type of boyish exuberance...
Dreams unfulfilled/Graduate unskilled/It beats picking cotton/Waiting to be forgotten -- Replacements, "Bastards of Young" Crushed chords are long, sustained and heavy. The sounds of concrete skies desolate landscapes. The vocals swing low, deep, almost ironic-sounding. The singer is skinny, like a stray, waifish, too, and the band just broods. The...
Village Voices The article "Hood Winked" (Edward Lebow, March 30) is a wake-up call. However, has anyone taken the time to stop moaning and groaning about what the city won't do, and post fliers around the "neighborhoods" asking for volunteers to clean up their own neighborhoods? It only takes one...
Arizonan Pie The geniuses promoting the Arizona State Fair had to add a strip to the billboards advertising the event, because people kept calling up and asking what they could do to help the poor kid pictured thereon. Those who have seen the signs will agree that this kid looks...
It's been hard not to feel a little bit sorry for Gloritone. It's not that the local trio isn't a good band; it is. It's just that the group had the misfortune to come along a couple of years ago, as the golden age of Tempe music had ground to...
Kimber Lanning is a petite, fair-haired lady. Plopped down in a beanbag chair in a corner of her Tempe Stinkweeds record store and surrounded by records, tee shirts and magazines, Lanning's youthful face and diminutive figure suggest an earnest indie-rock kid rather than the self-made businesswoman she is. Lanning has...
Wanna know how come no one paints his or her favorite band's name on the back of a denim jacket anymore? It's not because blue jean jackets are out of style -- it's that rock bands are. No kidding, there ain't a group out there worth cracking out the acrylics...
At night, from atop Tempe Butte, the high canopy of lush foliage over the historic Maple-Ash neighborhood near downtown Tempe blocks out the street lamps, creating a dark square in the grid of lights that appears to extend forever in all directions. On the sidewalks beneath that canopy, underground irrigation...
Ten years is a long time. When I moved here from California a decade ago, I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. I was thrilled with the affordable housing. I was thrilled that my kids could walk to school unescorted. I was thrilled that my car insurance rates...
Dope pushers lurking around playgrounds? I don't think so. Dentists are more to blame for turning America's children on to the perilous joys of getting high. My dentist introduced me to drugs when I was just 9 years old. A white-haired, kindly man, he laid me back in a soft,...
As front man for the Gin Blossoms, Arizona's most famous rock band, Robin Wilson fulfilled all his adolescent fantasies. For years, he played to sold-out clubs and arenas, earning a wall full of gold and platinum records. He wrote or co-wrote four hit singles and was nominated for a Grammy...
