thursday march 5 Robert Schimmel: The Phoenix-based comic, currently touring in support of his ironically titled CD Robert Schimmel Comes Clean, talks frankly about sex and other social taboos, in the tradition of Carlin, Pryor and Bruce. He performs at 8 p.m. Thursday, March 5; 8 and 10 p.m. Friday,...
Paradise Bar & Grill, 401 South Mill, Tempe, 829-0606. Hours: Lunch and Dinner, Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Life in a university town can be incredibly appealing. Anyone who has ever wandered off-campus in Ann Arbor, Berkeley or Madison...
One of the first times I saw Big Pete Pearson and the Blues Sevilles was at Char's Has the Blues, the club on North Seventh Avenue. I was chasing shots of Jack Daniel's with ice-cold Rolling Rocks. At one point during the performance, Big Pete disappeared from view. But the...
thursday february 12 Desdemona--A Play About a Handkerchief: This "deconstruction" of Shakespeare's Othello by playwright Paula Vogel posits the Moor's hapless wife as a "spoiled and self-centered" pill who "struts around like a sorority queen reveling in her tales of sexual conquest; ever mindful that the one man she hasn't...
thursday february 5 The Old 97's/The Gourds: Both of these Texas outfits crank out curious, likable hybrids of folk, country and rock. The 97's, based in Dallas, are touring behind their Elektra release Too Far to Care. As for the Austin-based Gourds, any band that titles a song "I Ate...
Some people can maintain their composure in a burning skyscraper. But the average record-company exec, faced with a few months of flagging album sales, is liable to run naked through the nearest strip mall, brandishing an AK47 and screaming threats in some twisted form of pig Latin. So, in 1997,...
thursday january 15 Discover Stars on Ice: Kristi Yamaguchi, Scott Hamilton, Ekaterina Gordeeva, Kurt Browning, Katarina Witt, Paul Wylie, Brian Orser and other superstars of the thermally challenged set take the ice, under the direction of Sandra Bezic and Michael Seibert, at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, January 15, at America West...
thursday january 29 Phoenix Symphony: Though his songs remain widely popular with performers, composer Kurt Weill is one of the relatively unsung--in the other sense of the term--geniuses of 20th-century music. He was even dissed, posthumously, by his longtime collaborator Bertolt Brecht. Weill's stinging, brilliant work is featured in this...
thursday december 18 Baby, It's Bright Outside: Fiesta of Light; Ahwatukee-Foothills Festival of Lights; ZooLights; "Wild Winter Nights": The City of Phoenix's free Fiesta continues nightly, through Thursday, January 1, 1998, in the area surrounding Symphony Hall Terrace, Second Street and Adams (534-3378). Phoenix's other major display, Ahwatukee's bounteous, white-lights-only...
thursday january 1 Craig Shoemaker at the Improv: The alchemical comedian has transformed a miserable childhood as a hopeless geek into a he-man mint--he was the American Comedy Awards pick for best standup comedian of 1997, he's slated to host this year's VH1 game show My Generation, and he's to...
thursday january 22 Scotland the Brave: Ambrose Bierce defined "kilt" as "a costume sometimes worn by Scotchmen [sic] in America and Americans in Scotland." His point will probably be amply proved at this presentation starting at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, January 22, at America West Arena, 201 East Jefferson, which will...
thursday december 25 Salvation Army Christmas Dinner: If you're using this publication for warmth as well as reading material, you may want to drop by this free, open-to-the-public repast in Exhibit Halls A and B at Phoenix Civic Plaza, Second Street and Adams, from noon to 2 p.m. Thursday, December...
The atmosphere in Mind's Eye Digital Recording is jammed with sound waves, the kind of badass, bottom-loaded frequencies that blow woofers and mess with eardrums. Bionic Jive, a Tempe sextet, is rehearsing songs from its forthcoming Six Million Dollar Band CD, a psycho-delic joy ride that makes groups like Prodigy...
Six East Lounge. "The Beast." People in Tempe have called it that since the late '70s, when it was still a biker bar. Today, it's easy to see--and smell--why the nickname stuck. When you walk in, rancid piss and cleaning chemicals mingle with whiskey, smoke and a musty, old-house smell...
Fred Green Groover (Rorschach Records) It's a common syndrome. Great live party bands, when put in the clinical confines of the recording studio, often just don't cut it. It's easy to see why. Live performance and recording require very different skills. Manic energy and fierce commitment can carry a live...
thursday november 27 The Ben Folds Five: The piano-bass-drums trio from Chapel Hill, North Carolina--so named because "it sounds better than the Ben Folds Three," says baby-grand man Folds--plows a deep furrow about midway between roots and alt. In fact, the BFF sounds a bit like a Gen X version...
thursday december 4 Baby, It's Bright Outside: Fiesta of Light; Ahwatukee-Foothills Festival of Lights; "Wild Winter Nights": Phoenix's free Fiesta continues nightly, through Thursday, January 1, 1998, in the area surrounding Symphony Hall Terrace, Second Street and Adams (534-3378). Phoenix's other major display, Ahwatukee's bounteous, white-lights-only bonanza, can be viewed...
Time to get ill? Nah--time to get sik, on location in the Sik Bay, creative den of R.C. Lair, underground DJ and premier graphic artist for the Valley's dance-club and rave scenes. R.C. (the initials stand for Ryan Christopher) is a bit nocturnal. Sik Bay--actually one room in the Tempe...
thursday october 30 Three Semi-Automatics Just for Fun: The genesis of this black-comic, multimedia piece--produced by Arizona State University's Institute for Studies in the Arts and billed as "June Cleaver wearing pearls and a pistol"--was a visit to an Albuquerque bookstore by one of the work's principals, American actress Leslie...
thursday november 6 The Food Chain: Though Nicky Silver (Pterodactyls; Free Will and Wanton Lust) is one of America's more promising comic playwrights, his writing sometimes straddles the line that divides standup patter from subtler characterization; there's surely no little connection between that and men having an en masse attraction...
Mention the name "Fritz Tuffli" around the upside-down glass pyramid of Tempe City Hall, and you will likely be greeted with a roll of the eyes, or a slight crinkling of the nose, as if some unwanted odor had drifted into the building. Tuffli is a humorless man who seems...
thursday october 23 UK/AZ You Like It: Romeo et Juliette, Hamlet on Trial and More Stuff From Beyond the Pond: The UK/AZ Festival celebrates the--rather tenuous--connection(s) between England and Arizona. So what have France and Italy got to do with it? Well, Arizona Opera opens its season with French composer...
