On Friday, Tempe Music Festival announced a pretty uninspired lineup (Kid Rock, Three Doors Down) for April 3 and 4 at Tempe Beach Park. It was better than I was expecting (ahem, nothing) but it certainly didn’t pack the punch of last year’s event, headlined by Fergie and My Chemical…
It’s not often a movie with Elijah Wood, Juliette Lewis, George Clinton, Wayne Coyne and a host of other big names premieres in Phoenix, so it probably wasn’t surprising that The Heart is a Drum Machine’s opening at Phoenix Art Museum drew a huge crowd last night. Free wine from…
With so many big announcements this week, including (finally!) the bill for Tempe Music festival, Franz Ferdinand, E-40 and Il Divo we didn’t have time to give you the scoop on this one in a special post, but you’ll be happy to learn that Kings of Leon are coming to…
We’re still waiting for the full lineup, but Sarita Ray of LiveNation has confirmed several acts for Tempe Music Fest on April 3 and 4: Kid Rock, Cowboy Mouth and Roger Clyne play Friday. Three Doors Down and All-American Rejects play Saturday…
Do you like Arcade Fire? How about Gogol Bordello? Sure you do! So why not check out DeVotchKa’s show at The Clubhouse tonight?Cuz here’s the thing: As The Village Voice has pointed out, DeVotchKa was those bands before those bands were those bands. It sounds ridiculous to say an act…
I haven’t been overly enamored of local alt-country bands. The New Westerns had a nice sound, but spotty vocals, and suffer from occasional self-indulgence. Instant Hobo won points for being hobo-themed, but didn’t take the motif far enough, and their record seemed a little sloppy. As a long-time alt-country fan,…
I’ve been pretty hard on Mesa bands in general and Mesa punk bands in particular here in our weekly You Asked For It local CD review column. It’s not that I have anything against Mesa (I live there) or punk bands (I was a big fan of them in my…
Erick Purkhiser, better known as Lux Interior of The Cramps died today according to his publicist. (We originally go the story from The Daily Swarm who said he passed over the weekend). We won’t even try to compete with The Swarm’s post, which is chock-full of YouTubey goodness, but this…
It seems like every product on the market nowadays has to make a nod toward either being “green” or being healthy, so it is that we get the new Cherry 7Up with antioxidants. Now, if you live in Arizona you probably don’t suffer from a shortage of vitamin E, the…
Franz Ferdinand, the Archduke of Austria who’s assassination touched of World War I in 1914, is coming to the Marquee Theatre on April 18. Tickets are $26 in advance, $30 the day of the show. Openers not yet announced…
From the music blog run by our sister paper in Houston comes a piece on the upcoming Peter Tosh box set that’s got two DVDs documenting the ex-Wailer’s life and one CD of Tosh rarities. Ernest Barteldes, one of our freelancers, penned the piece, which has some cool videos included…
For our own mental health, we’ve been trying to let go of the Super Bowl for two days now. We’ve been trying to remind ourselves that the NFL is sports entertainment, and that we correctly predicted what was going to happen: Cardinals fans would be massively outnumbered in Tampa, and…
Langerado, an annual music festival in Miami, has announced it’s canceling its 2009 event because of sluggish ticket sales. The festival, which has been going since 2003, had problems beyond the economy, having moved from a rural Indian reservation where a legendary Phish show happened to downtown and booking indie…
Jimmy Buffett is coming to Cricket Wireless Pavilion on May 14 as part of the inimitably named “Summerzcool Tour.” Tickets go on sale next Monday at livenation.com. Expect lots of hats like those pictured above…
From our sister paper in the Twin Cities comes news that Prince is launching a new web site to… well, that’s not exactly clear, but it will definitely promote and possibly distribute Prince’s three albums due this year. The best part of this blog post? The category: The Purple One…
One last big concert announcement for the week: Flight of the Conchords will be at Dodge Theatre on May 19. The joke folk duo from New Zealand’s new season on HBO just started, so expect a few new songs from that. Tickets are $38.50 and availible through www.livenation.com…
Most of this week’s big announcements were already up here earlier this week when they broke — Modest Mouse, Bruce Springsteen — but we do have a few surprises on the next page. Like David Archuleta, the American Idol contestant who was too devoutly Mormon to sing the first verse…
Coachella’s 2009 official lineup is officially out — as of 3:15 this morning, says Michael Lopez. Here it is: Girl Talk, Crystal Castles, The Knux, Fleet Foxes, Lupe Fiasco (that’s, in order, five of my 10 favorite records of 2008) plus The Black Keys, Late of the Pier, The Yeah…
A couple of weeks ago, we brought you an unofficial list of acts supposedly slated for Coachella. Still no word from the promoters on who is and isn’t coming, which has stirred some angst amongst concertgoers. Now, he’s speaking up, according to our OC Weekly music blog, and he urges…
This week’s Flier of the Week was chosen not because of the art work (which is pretty cool, but not amazing) or the headliner, Magic Bullets, (who are pretty cool, but not amazing) but because it’s the best I can come up with to pimp the new Gospel Claws EP…
Things I witnessed while waiting nearly two hours for Lil Wayne to perform at US Airways Center on Wednesday night: An impromptu routine by all of opener T-Pain’s assortment of dancers, including two midgets, a fire-eating contortionist, two dudes with their faces painted like Juggalos and two of (what appeared…
As a Cleveland Browns fan, I’ve spent lots of time trash-talking Steelers faithful. When your team’s 2-17 against their team, you feel justified in bad-mouthing them. Cardinals fans are, mostly, peaceful people, unaccustomed to the level of hostility they’ll encounter in any run-in with members of the yellow-and black brigade…
