Fair's fair. A few pages ago, I dissed Rolling Stone for breaking out the Jimi Hendrix comparisons in a recent review of the new Chemical Brothers (no, really). But on the flip side, I have to commend the pop-music mag of record for recognizing home-grown Valley hip-hop DJ Z-Trip in...
Although it took several weeks for news to jump the pond, Sweet front man Brian Connolly died of liver failure last month in Slough, England. Here's why you should care: For better or worse, Connolly was the godfather of glam--the first rock star to put glitter on his face, wear...
Once again, the Valley music scene took it on the chin from the showcase selection committee of the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference. No point in going off about it at length, 'cause it's the same tired story, year after year. There's one new twist for '97--this time...
The Driskill hotel in downtown Austin, Texas, was built in 1884, and, according to the American Registry of Haunted Places, it's infested with ghosts. I stayed at the Driskill for five nights last week during the 11th Annual South by Southwest Music and Media Conference, and while I didn't see...
On a one to 10, with half points, here's how the gala debut of Utopia--the first real attempt to translate underground dance culture into a legal, nightclub setting in the Valley--scored in the following critical areas: Music: 9.0 Resident DJ R.C. Lair started spinning around 10 and, intelligently, cast a...
Q: What did the snail say on the turtle's back? A: "Wheeeeeee!" If you were at Hollywood Alley last Saturday night (January 18), you probably heard Les Payne Project guitarist James Karnes tell that one. I was, and I did. And I'm glad for it, because I also heard Karnes...
Al Amir, 8989 East Via Linda, Scottsdale, 661-1137. Hours: Lunch and Dinner, Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Friday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Saturday, noon to 10 p.m.; closed Sunday. The Middle East is a bubbling caldron of conflict. The region always seems on the verge of...
Curious, this half-page ad for upcoming shows at the downtown Manhattan venue Irving Plaza that ran in the club section of last week's Village Voice. Curious not only because it advertises a super-rare live show by underground heroes S.O.D. (Stormtroopers of Death)--headlining a bill that also includes Biohazard and Unsane...
Henry Rollins Electric Ballroom November 16, 1996 Damn. I wanted to rip into Henry Rollins so bad I could taste a bloody scrap of his black Gap tee shirt on my tongue. Power Book ad-posing, 7-Eleven coffee-chugging, "Baretta" guy in better days, stunt-double-looking, Charles Bukowski rip-off bad haiku writing, underground...
High on the Vibe Saturday, November 9 Sixth Avenue and Jackson I am god. At least, that's what Sunshine told me and 1,427 of my fellow deities near the climax of Dubtribe Sound System's two-hour live house-music performance at High on the Vibe, a large rave in downtown Phoenix. Actually,...
Dear fools-- I caught your wack excuse for a live set at the local hip-hop talent showcase last Friday (10/18) at Electric Ballroom. Your beats were tired, your rhymes had more bites than the house virgin in a vampire's castle, and your delivery choked and backfired like an old Impala...
Valley rave promoters and other denizens of the local dance-culture underground are breathing a tentative sigh of relief after a recent online statement by a Phoenix police officer that denies any organized law enforcement effort to stamp out the Valley rave scene. "The truth about the anti-rave task force is...
Bruce Hamblin, 1950-1996 The common wisdom among members of the Valley's rockabilly, blues, roots and country music scenes last week was that some band in heaven just picked up one hell of a standup bass player. Longtime Valley musician Bruce Hamblin died September 18 of liver failure. He was 45...
As a musical label, "rock" has long since passed into the realm of hazy, general nothingness. Divisions and subdivisions abound--sometimes providing focus in a bewildering maze of new music, sometimes only fueling petty, elitist wars of words and pigeonholing. One sect, industrial rock, has been divided and subdivided ad nauseam,...
WORST REVIEW OF A LOCAL BAND PRINTED OUTSIDE THE VALLEY Review of Fizzy, Fuzzy, Big and Buzzy June issue of Grid The Refreshments continue to bubble along nicely--with a new video in rotation on MTV and a recent glowing write-up in Rolling Stone--but the Tempe outfit took it on the...
Rumor(s): The Gin Blossoms have broken up; the Gin Blossoms have decided to release one more album and then break up; the Gin Blossoms will never play in public again. True or false: Tough call. Several Tempe sources close to the band say consistently that the Gin Blossoms are together...
Ex-Phunk Junkeez rapper Kirk Reznik says he has a nagging pain in his back from the knife his longtime partner and co-MC Joe Valiente stuck there in late August, when Valiente conspired with the crew's deejay and stage band to kick Reznik out of the group the two of them...
Ask anyone who knows me; I am a romantic. When I awake with the rising of the sun and venture out to pick up the newspaper from its resting place on the front lawn--wherever my careless paper boy has tossed it with his usual wanton indifference--I will instinctively take time...
One summer day A.D. 525, a Buddhist monk from India named Ta Mo arrived at the base of Mount Shaoshi in what would later become the Henan province of central China. He took in the scenery, thought or said something to the effect of "This is the place," and promptly...
For years, the uninitiated have roamed the aisles of adult boutiques, wondering what possible uses anyone could find for the bevy of battery-operated rubber-and-latex pumps, prods and plungers dangling from the walls. In recent months, however, sex-shop customers have been baffled by an even stranger mystery. Namely, what's so erotic...
Treatment: War of the Roses meets The Money Pit meets The Player. Scene 1: A summer day in present time, early morning, a quiet neighborhood in central Scottsdale. The movie opens in the rambling ranch house of our main character, accomplished screenwriter Steven McKay. The camera pans the house--living room,...
It played last July like a typical page-three scientific discovery, the slot where daily newspapers normally run the disease of the week or the story about the gene that causes obesity. The scoop: Phoenix resident and average guy Tom Bopp--truck-parts buyer for a cement company--discovers Comet of the Century. But...
