L7 Slap Happy (Wax Tadpole/Bong Load) The women of L7 look and write songs these days as if the '90s took them for a hard ride and put them up wet, as the band's three remaining members clock out for the decade with Slap Happy, an album as heavy and...
More and more, Tempe is becoming an enemy of the state. Developers are encouraging the growth of an already overly saturated downtown area, and businesses are being forced to relocate. Even McDonald's--a company with a seemingly infallible reputation for success--was unable to survive on Mill Avenue. Some say that hungry...
One by one, they have been forced out of downtown Tempe in the name of progress: John's Shoe Repair. Long Island Pizza. Rundle's Liquor & Market. The Q N Brew. All were knocked off Tempe's main street more than a decade ago to make way for the Centerpoint project, which...
The Promise Ring Very Emergency! (Jade Tree) Sad to say, the American emo scene is quietly turning into what will most likely be the next decade's nostalgia-tinged Monster Ballads compilations pitched on late-night TV. You may argue the point, of course. Emo fans are nothing if not fiercely protective of...
Year-end best-of lists are usually accompanied by depressing State of Music essays, the kind that take a sweeping view of significant happenings and industry trends and culminate with dire prognostications for the future. Inevitably, most of those things start to sound like a Chicken Little speech. If you tried to...
Here's why you should be skeptical about what Graham Berry and Robert Cipriano say about the Church of Scientology: Berry's been after the church for years, and he makes no secret of his desire to litigate the 45-year-old organization to its knees. An eloquent, New Zealand-born attorney who lives in...
"That was fucking insane." When all was said and done at last Wednesday's Buck Owens birthday salute, that succinct verdict from Flathead bassist Kevin Daly was probably the assessment that best captured the tenor of the evening. Standing in a corner and looking resplendent in a Nudie-style suit and silver...
thursday july 15 "Was Jack the Ripper a Woman?" That's the question that's being used to promote Paradise Valley Community College student playwright Allison Rose's new speculative drama The Fifth Victim: Jack the Ripper Discovered. The work, directed by Gray Zaro, is the inaugural production of PVCC's summer theater program...
"Hum to me baby," croons Glory Revival singer/guitarist Paul Lamb from the stage of Nita's Hideaway as the spry seven-piece band slides down into a Sly Stoneish passage. The horn's brassy meter and the seemingly looped groove of the rhythm section has female hips rotating in slow, deliberate gestures on...
Kiss My Butte Tempeans are finally waking up to the true purpose of the city's $125 million (and counting) Rio Salado Project, which features the 225-acre Town Lake. The lake was cleverly promoted by city officials for a decade as a "regional park," but residents are now outraged to discover...
Stories often wind up in the trash. But this one begins there, with letters I found in a Tempe alley two years ago. They were dumped among heaps of books, files and envelopes stuffed with bills and receipts. The discards were too dated to be those of a college roomie...
thursday july 1 Down-home country comic Rodney Carrington--sort of a cross between Tim Allen and Garth Brooks--spends his Independence Day weekend in the Valley at 8 p.m. Thursday, July 1; 8 and 10 p.m. Friday, July 2; and the same times Saturday, July 3 at the Tempe Improv Comedy Theater,...
Thursday July 8 Several of the Valley's top female vocalists--Ayanna, Karen Brooks, Dorothy Grayson, Maxine Johnson, Lady J, Kauffe, Lila, Karen Scott, Patti Williams and others--perform, backed up by Blues Ratio, at "Phoenix Divas Live: An Evening With Ladies of Color," a benefit show scheduled for 8 p.m. Thursday, July...
Four Peaks Brewing Company, 1340 East Eighth Street, Tempe, 480-303-9967. Hours: Lunch and Dinner, Monday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 1 a.m.; Sunday, 1 to 11 p.m. In spring, the poet says, "a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of love." But once spring turns to summer, just about everyone's...
Kona Grill, 7014 East Camelback (Scottsdale Fashion Square), Scottsdale, 480-429-1100. Hours: Lunch and Dinner, Monday through Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 10:30 a.m. to midnight; Dinner, Sunday, 5 to 10:30 p.m. Empires don't spring up overnight. Rome wasn't built in a day: It took centuries of...
The contracts were in the mail. And that was bad news for Phoenix officials and volunteers struggling to organize a massive downtown turn-of-the-century celebration that hopes to attract more than 100,000 revelers into the city's resurgent central core for an evening of partying, dancing, music and awe beneath an unprecedented...
thursday june 10 "I used to think that if you did an hour on TV, you couldn't go and do that same hour live. But I've learned the opposite is true. That's precisely the hour audiences want you to do. There's this feeling that if you did it on TV,...
thursday june 3 Bona fide show-biz legend Mickey Rooney plays the title role in The Wizard of Oz when a touring stage version of the L. Frank Baum tale comes to the Valley. Jo Anne Worley, the wild woman of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, plays that embodiment of Midwestern evil,...
Ethnic Flood Thank you so much for penning the poignant story on my interesting friend Pavle Milic ("To Serb With Love," Michael Lacey, June 3). His fragmented and diverse roots have sculpted him into a talented and passionate person, especially sensitive to the ethnocentric nature of Americans. His future writings...
All this millennium talk of recent days is nothing new to Al Stewart. His 1989 song "Last Days of the Century" pointed to the event better than 10 years ahead of time. The lyric to that song included many hallmarks of Stewart's writing style: literary, cinematic and historical elements that...
We keep hearing rumblings that Phoenix has emerged as a major metropolis. Some inhabitants even take pride in the smog they inhale, viewing it as confirmation that we're in the big leagues. But Phoenix still struggles to find its own identity and forfeit facsimile. Serving as one of many sketchbooks,...
Tom Sands is poised to open the floodgates. On June 2, the Salt River Project engineer will begin diverting water from a canal in Papago Park into Tempe's Town Lake, the centerpiece of the city's Rio Salado project. About 100 million gallons of water a day will cascade into the...
