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...
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...
