Marla Wing begins talking before we actually meet. She comes huffing up the stairs at Nixon's Lounge, trailing scraps of paper and shiny pamphlets that sneak out from the pile of mangled folders she's got clutched to her chest. We settle into an upstairs booth, and, surrounded by the bar's...
Twenty miles north of Kearny, Arizona, a pistachio tree grows. Strangers turn up from time to time to trim its branches, or to snip away the weeds growing near its trunk. Some leave notes or handwritten poems that, like the tree, are dedicated to the memory of Ladmo, the late,...
Let's pretend you're a club owner — we'll wait while you yank the necessary hairs out of your skull to make this a more credible performance. And to sweeten this role, let's say you book the bands at your venue. One day, in walks a representative of Undertoe, a Valley...
Love 'em or hate 'em, Victims in Ecstacy looks like a band built for success in the music biz. After all, this is a musical age when subtlety is for losers and permanent cult figures. VIE doesn't suffer from an excess of subtlety. They're loud, abrasive and image-conscious. They're unabashedly...
Let's say you're a music-biz Dr. Frankenstein. You want to build the perfect beast for the MTV era, an artist equally adept at visual and musical communication, someone for whom a video and song are all part of an inextricable package. Rob Zombie just might be that beast. Sure, it's...
Star StrickenThe Spike is not the most discerning of television viewers. Other than The West Wing and 24, which are actually entertaining, the Spike is usually happy to flop on the couch for Everybody Loves Raymond reruns until it's time to shop the 10 o'clock news for something that's not...
It's always the ones who fail in their chosen field of expertise that are the most fascinating. Always. Poverty-wrecked pulp novelist David Goodis counting nickels for booze and sewing couturier labels into cheap suits at the peak of his form is far more interesting than Elmore Leornard's latest million-dollar purchase...
Even if hip-hop's been the dominant form of popular music over the last decade, it's continually encountered pockets of resistance from people who simply don't get it, or wish it would go away. Clayton Call and Fabel, Arizona State University seniors, college radio-station DJs and aspiring rappers, both know what...
Alice Cooper'stownWe suppose it’s better to call Diamondbacks pitcher Randy Johnson “The Big Unit” than “The Big Johnson.” Still, it’s more information than we want to know, thanks. Who came up with this nickname, anyway? The only such thing we’re interested in exploring is The Big Unit Hot Dog served at Alice Cooper’stown — a two-foot-long […]
Alice Cooper'stownWe suppose it’s better to call Diamondbacks pitcher Randy Johnson “The Big Unit” than “The Big Johnson.” Still, it’s more information than we want to know, thanks. Who came up with this nickname, anyway? The only such thing we’re interested in exploring is The Big Unit Hot Dog served at Alice Cooper’stown — a two-foot-long […]
If 2001 was a maddening, schizophrenic year for America, that goes double for the music that bubbled to the surface in the last 12 months. For most of the year, bland frivolity and mindless chest-thumping ruled the airwaves. Then, as the World Trade Center went down in a monumental pile...
After a two-week trip out of state -- that's right, Bash & Pop has ho's in different area codes -- we returned to New Times' offices greeted by an avalanche of packages and e-mails. While sorting through the mess of corrugated envelopes and eye-glazing correspondence, we happened upon a couple...
Editor's note: The names of juveniles have been changed to protect their privacy. Last January, Gail Edwards got a message on her answering machine from a nurse at Adobe Mountain School, the state juvenile detention facility in north Phoenix where her son Scott was then living. "Your son was in...
Kimber Lanning likes to keep lists of tasks she has to complete.For Lanning, the owner of Stinkweeds Records and a self-described type-A personality, it's a way of assuring herself that she's in control of the numerous roles she juggles on a daily basis: record-store owner, college student (majoring in psychology),...
"I found a million dollar baby/In a five and ten cent store . . ." -- Billy Rose, 1931 In other nickel-and-dime news, this year, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame shortchanged Alice Cooper singularly and collectively when it again failed to nominate Vincent Furnier and friends into the...
The publicist asks if I'd like to speak to D.A. Pennebaker to commemorate the 60th birthday of Bob Dylan, which falls on May 24. She asks this because, during the spring of 1965, Pennebaker made a documentary about Dylan's tour of England, Dont Look Back, which captured a drained, cagey...
In much the same way package tours prove it's possible to see Paris in a day ("People, we've got a half-hour in the Louvre, but if we blitz through the Impressionists, we can set aside 10 extra minutes for the gift shop"), Mail or Muse is taking you on an...
The headlines scream that the Diamondbacks aren't making money. Attendance is down, and the baseball team is struggling. All eyes are on Jerry Colangelo to fix things.I've got a suggestion: Rather than pump more cash into hotshot player salaries, give the fans something palatable to munch on while cheering for...
Last spring, Patrick Lange removed an ornate Persian urn from a shelf in his 1920s-era hacienda and carefully poured the contents of the small container on a table. He stared at the powdery mountain before him. Then, using a spoon and knife he went to work, dividing the chalky, off-white...
In Austin last March, the Black Halos breezed in to Emo's and proceeded to tame an unruly SXSW crowd until the show-me punks were eating out of the Vancouver quintet's mitts, begging for more, and getting it. As the Halos' smeary racket slammed from the stage, acrobatic lead singer Billy...
In show business, it borders on an axiom that the actors who play the villains tend to be the nice guys in real life. If it's true, then Len Lesser should be one of the sweetest guys you'd ever want to meet. Nasty, rotten human beings are this veteran character...
When the idea was first hatched, no one could've imagined that this week's Scotti-Stock concert -- a local music extravaganza to benefit Piersons/Beat Angels bassist Scott Moore, who was involved in a near-fatal traffic accident last October -- would have taken on such a profound meaning. Relying heavily on the...
