See also: Keep These Tunes Away from Your Valentine’s Playlist You know, it’s not just Valentine’s Day and Arizona’s Centennial Birthday: It’s also New Release Day, a special day that happens once every week when the record labels sound out shiny discs to stores and let you start listening to…
Editor’s Note: An abridged version of this article appears in this week’s issue, featuring 100 Songs that Defined Arizona. In celebration of Arizona’s centennial, we’ve rounded up sound clips for (almost) everyone featured in our list, and will be rolling them out over the course of the week. “Not alone…
Editor’s Note: A version of this article appears in this week’s issue, featuring 100 Songs that Defined Arizona. In celebration of Arizona’s centennial, we spoke songwriter Howe Gelb, who has led the constantly mutating Giant Sand in Tucson and all around the world since 1985. Gelb is known for his…
Doesn’t matter if you’re like me and have been mostly indifferent to fun. in the past, the band’s new single, “We are Young (featuring Janelle Monáe)” has been inescapable over the past few weeks. The song’s huge, and sounds like it was custom built for a car commercial (and yeah…
New Times Soundcheck 2012 Night 1 New Times Soundcheck kicked off with 14 diverse and talented bands. Regardless of personal tastes, every performer was entertaining to watch. Like most music festivals, the artists played at overlapping times and made for some difficult decisions. Fortunately, the festival is arranged so that…
Fresh off his stint in the hospital, things are starting to normalize for Brad Dwyer. We were happy to have Jeff Owens, musician and mini-comic artist extraordinaire, fill in last week, but it’s nice to have Dwyer back. This week, Dwyer creates a whole new punk rock subset, adding “home-core,”…
This weekend is going to be busy in the Valley of the Sun. Not only is New Times invading Club Red/Red Owl for Soundcheck Festival 2012, featuring Glass Heroes, Sugar Thieves, The Love Me Nots, Father Figures, Jason Devore, Crusher Sound System, The Insects, and many many more, but there…
When we last touched base with Hooves, they were splitting town, cramming into the Bikini Lounge for a goodbye celebration before heading to Washington. I noted “…we can take comfort in knowing they’ll be back to visit. It’ll be “Party Time” then, but it’s hard to imagine it all feeling…
We knew the daunting (impossible, really) task of picking 100 songs that define the sound of Arizona was going to be tough, but lucky for us, we had a lot of help, from you, our readers. We opened up a Gmail account and took submissions from you, reading through liner…
This week, New Times ran a list in our print publication highlighting some of the most interesting posts published at Up On The Sun over the past week. Here are links to those posts. How does Sweetbleeders handle performing PJ Harvey songs? Will Noel Gallagher play any Oasis songs at…
“Out of Here,” Sleepwalker, Man on the Moon (1998, Hayden’s Ferry) “There’s just something in the vocal delivery of Jamal Ruhe. It was just Jamal singing and playing guitar, and Jon Rauhouse on pedal steel, bass, and drums. It’s not complex; it’s super-stripped down and pretty. Jon Rauhouse has played…
“One Man Crusade” (1994), “The Inner Flame” (1997), and “The Farm” (2002) by Rainer Blues guitarist Rainer Ptacek was born in East Berlin and spent his childhood in Chicago but rose to prominence in Tucson. Though he never achieved mainstream success, his work is widely admired, with ZZ Top’s Billy…
By the time this issue hits stands, it will have been just over a week since Soul Train impresario Don Cornelius was found dead by a self-inflicted gunshot in his Encino, California, home. The legendary host of Soul Train was instrumental in bringing black music into prime time, and though…
It’s a pretty good time to be soft. You know, like Adult Contemporary soft, the kind of stuff that 95.5 KYOT played before it started playing “old school” funk and soul. Bon Iver’s Bon Iver, arguably the biggest indie-rock record of the year (with its Grammy nominations and its domination…
“Not alone for gold and silver / Is Arizona great / But with graves of heroes sleeping / All the land is consecrate!” — “Arizona March Song” The goal of finding Arizona’s 100 greatest songs was hardly easy. We asked our readers to tell us what songs have defined Arizona…
Get ready for gross out. Pop deconstructionists Man-Cat, whose mission statement reads: “We’re just trying to feed pop music back to the consumers in the most subversive way possible,” have reactivated their long dormant YouTube video for “Yeast.” And it’s comprised solely of “pizza delivery boy porn” clips (insert “extra…
It’s almost here: New Times Soundcheck at Club Red is this weekend, featuring a roster of entirely local talent. Over two days you get The Love Me Nots, Father Figures (download an exclusive MP3 here), Jason Devore (of Authority Zero), Crusher Sound System, Mouse Powell, and many, many more. Tickets…
When we last checked in with Shawn Foree, the man behind synth punk band Digital Leather, he was touring in support of his Fat Possum LP Warm Brother. He’s been busy since then, releasing a mini-LP, Infinite Sun on Volar Records (which featured a song “co-written postmortem” by Foree’s friend…
Some of our favorite local hip-hop has been coming from the Avenue of the Arts Crew, and one of the best releases by said crew was last year’s Cold Castle LP by ILL AL the Anglo-Saxon & Beatnic the Enforcer. The album features plenty of good jams, but my favorite…
Saturday night was a good one for emotional rock ‘n’ roll. The Jealous Sound (featuring former and current members of Knapsack, Sunday’s Best, Foo Fighters, and Sunny Day Real Estate) aired tunes from its brand new record, A Gentle Reminder, at the Rogue Bar in Scottsdale. Source Victoria, whose last…
Of all the articles concerning Madonna’s Half Time show/M.I.A.’s on air fingerbird (Finger-Gate 2: Electric Boogaloo), none was quite as hilarious as this one, from Vigilant Citizen, which alleged that the entire performance was an indicator of Madonna’s allegiance to the Illuminati (you know, that secret world order): “Laced with…
Just in case Flogging Molly’s annual St. Paddy’s Day stop in Tempe doesn’t make it abundantly clear to you, the Phoenix metro area loves Irish stuff, and it loves its Celtic punk. In 2009, Authority Zero frontman Jason Devore (who headlines the New Times Soundcheck festival this weekend) formed The…
