Sometimes, with music, you’re lucky enough to be present to watch the first time that a collaboration among artists becomes greater than the sum of its parts. That happened to me recently when I saw the first four-piece practice of a country band that now calls itself the Rock Ridge…
To be completely blunt about it, ubiquity isn’t really an asset when it comes to playing around town. It’s good to have your name out there, to be recognizable. But if I see your name or your band’s name in the music section’s ads week after week for years, I’m…
It’s always good to see our local needle-sharers hitting the road with outta-town acts, but it’s even cooler when they breeze into town and get a li’l bit of a homecoming crowd out to hype them up. DJ Element, one of the ‘Nix’s best known turntable talents, has been out…
What’s in a name? Depends, when your name is Elmo Kirkwood. At 22, he’s the singer and guitarist for locals Broken Robot. But his musical legacy is much older: Elmo’s the son of Meat Puppets guitarist Curt Kirkwood and nephew of troubled Puppets bass player Cris Kirkwood. “I was in…
Few things sicken me as much as band-reunions-for-cash, whether it’s the Sex Pistols’ appropriately named Filthy Lucre tour a few years back or the constant barrage of ’70s outfits like Black Sabbath hitting the stage again. I saw the Sabbath reunion its first year at Ozzfest, in 1997, and it…
To say that DJs Senbad and Pete “Supermix” Salaz have been around the block in the ‘Nix is a freakin’ understatement. Salaz just celebrated his 20th year DJing, after starting out with local legend Eddie Amador back in 1986. The self-proclaimed “house music souldier” and partner Senbad have been rocking…
DJ AM has built his reputation on being the DJ for anything celeb-related, so we suppose it’s appropriate that he’s the featured act at this Thursday’s Axis Hollywood. Yeah, you read that right — Axis Hollywood is what the promoters are calling Thursdays at Axis in Scottsdale (7340 East Indian…
There are a lot of odd and brow-furrowing ways to make it as an artist in the music business, from American Idol and its imitators to battles of the bands like the Bodog Battle of the Bands that the gambling Web site www.bodog.com’s founder Calvin Ayre is sponsoring. (It’s online…
Recently I was at a show at the Real Bar early in the evening, when the young’uns are out to rock. A two-person band had just finished its set when a crowd of tween and early teen kids with screamo hair (long bangs in their faces, cut short in the…
Now that summer’s upon us, we have a dearth of entertainment options and the promise of sweaty afternoons spent waiting for the sun to drop below the horizon so that the concrete heat islands stop sizzling. Once the natural light has faded, though, there are still a few places you…
The legendary DJ Vadim has been gaining accolades in the underground hip-hop community for ages now, working with a who’s who of MCs and holding his own as an instrumental sonic architect. Across the Atlantic pond, where the Russian-born DJ holds down a residency in London called Loose Change, Vadim…
On Tuesday, which happens to be the one time this century that the calendar’s readout is 6/6/6, the local rawk prophets in Steppchild — Adam Jacobsen, Adam Roach, and Adam Carter — will debut the band’s long-in-the-making rock opera, appropriately titled King, Adam. (And yes, the comma is supposed to…
Brendon “Alias” Whitney and Rona “Tarsier” Rapadas don’t technically use the needles to get their dark and vibrant combo of rhythm and female vox across; Alias instead exchanged the turntable technique for drum machines and electronic tools, while Tarsier lays her poetic lyricism on top. The duo’s collision and collaboration…
It takes balls to do a solo acoustic set in the middle of a bill consisting of loud bands, mostly because it’s so easy to fall flat on your face and turn the crowd off completely. A few weeks ago, though, I saw a kid pull it off. On a…
Who’d have thunk it? The way DJ nights come and go in this town, it’s pretty damned amazing that Adam “Dumperfoo” Dumper’s Thursday night Blunt Club at Hollywood Alley in Mesa has made it to the ripe old age of four. Mad props to Dumper and his cohorts, resident DJs…
Early last week, I was incensed to learn that Bonneville International Corporation, a company wholly owned by the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City, announced it is acquiring what I believe to be the most valuable radio station we’ve got here in the ‘Nix, Power 92. Bonneville will be completely…
Christopher Lawrence is one of the overlords of techno trance, a globally lauded maestro of seizure-inducing beat alchemy. His harder, sometimes melancholic brand of trance and techno has made him America’s premier purveyor and innovator of the 4/4 trance genre. Homeboy just dropped his latest mix CD — his first…
In the current business climate for live music venues here in the ‘Nix, a three-year anniversary is definitely something to celebrate. Last Exit, the rock and Americana club at Priest Drive and Southern Avenue in Tempe, is throwing a third birthday party for itself on Saturday, May 13, with Dramarama,…
A few weeks back, I was drinking coffee, perusing the gossip pages online, and stumbled on a hilarious piece in the scandal-plagued Page Six section of the New York Post. Apparently in Las Vegas there’s not one, but two KISS cover bands composed of little people, and they’ve got a…
Few people — if any — can claim as much influence on the recent crop of dance-rock and new Brit invasion bands as Paul Epworth, the man who’s produced and/or remixed music by Bloc Party, The Rapture, Babyshambles, The Streets, The Rakes, The Futureheads, and others. Epworth, a.k.a. Phones (when…
Thirty-three years old is too damn young to die. That’s what keeps running through my head when I think about the passing of Sidney Copeland, the proprietor of stalwart punk rock bar Jugheads on McDowell Road in Phoenix. I never got to know the guy, but the shock of losing…
As of press time, New Times got word of a tragic loss suffered by the Valley’s punk rock scene: Sid Copeland, 33, proprietor of Jugheads bar and music venue, suffered a fatal heart attack on Saturday, April 22, reportedly while lifting weights at a commercial gym. He is survived by…
