So, I know that as soon as the Grammys are over, there is typically an onslaught of heavy metal music journalists complaining about how the awards don’t respect the genre. We all know this, in fact. The heavy metal category hasn’t even been televised in more than a decade. While…
Local band Dirty Hairy is a bit of an anomaly. Led by frontman H. Shelton Valentine, a raspy-voiced punk rock dervish in the body of an aspiring Buddha, the band cranks out some of the most questionable covers you could imagine, along with a smattering of punk/metal hybrid originals. And…
The Waste Management Phoenix Open isn’t so much a golf tournament as it is a seven-day excuse to party. So much so that all the birdies and bogies being unleashed by links legends like Vijay Singh and Mark Calcavecchia on the green during “the greatest show on grass” seem to…
Let’s get one thing out of the way: Getting upset about absolutely anything to do with the Grammys is like finding yourself alarmed by the quality of the food at a Pizza Hut. To expect an organization to do anything other than what it normally does, which is consistently miss…
The music industry is a brutal battlefield. It’s strewn with the bodies of talented artists who were suffocated by success (Kurt Cobain), swallowed whole by indulgence (Keith Moon), or taken by tragedy (Randy Rhoads). No genre is safe: The path to the top of the charts is paved with some…
Those who have come to know The Motet as an Afro-centric band should be happy with the band’s directional shift on its eponymous new album. While the African influences that gave the Boulder, Colorado, group its footing in the 1990s can still be heard, The Motet has morphed into a…
Yuck’s Max Bloom faced down new songwriting challenges on his band’s second album by concentrating on making Glow & Behold a more cohesive, concise whole. The London band’s 2011 self-titled debut drew widespread praise on both sides of the Atlantic for its invigorating take on 1990s alternative rock. For Yuck’s…
The Waste Management Phoenix Open isn’t so much a golf tournament as it is a seven-day excuse to party. So much so that all the birdies and bogies being unleashed by links legends like Vijay Singh and Mark Calcavecchia on the green during “the greatest show on grass” seem to…
Thursday 30 AZ/88: Black Out Thursdays with Josh 1 (soulful house, lounge) Bar Smith: K Theory (electronica, hip-hop) Bobby Q’s: All Star Thursdays with DJ Freshmaker, DJ Phlava, DJ Dark Vader, & DJ Skoolboi (hip-hop, Top 40, reggae) Dos Gringos (Scottsdale): DJ Switch (rock, Top 40, remixes) Fat Tuesday: DJ…
Pete Seeger, who died on Tuesday at the age of 94, intended to be a journalist. Toward that end, he studied sociology at Harvard, but wanderlust led him away from books and on a bicycle tour of New England. Ultimately, Seeger’s stories were told not in newspaper stories or in…
The already stacked lineup for the Viva PHX music festival just got a little bigger. It already boasts more than 40 different bands and artists from A to Z (namely, Adam Arcuragi to Zero Zero) and, as of this morning, now includes quirky dance punk/electropop act YACHT and local DJ…
The music industry is a brutal battlefield. It’s strewn with the bodies of talented artists who were suffocated by success (Kurt Cobain), swallowed whole by indulgence (Keith Moon), or taken by tragedy (Randy Rhoads). No genre is safe: The path to the top of the charts is paved with some…
Editor’s Note: Shea Serrano is an award-winning music writer and goofball whose recent exploits include Bun B’s Rapper Coloring and Activity Book. In his new column, he writes about his life and times. Perhaps you do not know this because you do not follow weather trends of the Southeastern United…
On any given day I will tell you that being an adult is either the greatest thing ever or the absolute worst. Much like the moral of a South Park episode, however, the truth is somewhere in the middle. As many of you have no doubt discovered, being an adult…
Not to burst any death metal bubbles here, but Matt Harvey of Exhumed is a really nice guy. He’s insightful, seems to genuinely care about how much fun fans have at their shows, and when I approached him from the standpoint of why and how he does his thing, he…
If watching endless hours of Star Trek taught us anything — other than how to proclaim “Qapla!” with the proper Klingon inflection — it’s that there’s infinite diversity in infinite combinations. It’s an axiom that’s most definitely apropos to the music world, whereby mixing and matching different artists and performers…
Skinny Puppy Marquee Theatre 1/27/14 “Do you like Skinny Puppy?” It’s a question that was posed to me at a warehouse rave somewhere in the Midwest in the late ’90s by a fellow wearing combat boots, black BDU cutoffs, and long black dreads atop an otherwise shaved head. He had…
My first taste of Foster the People was hearing KROQ’s Locals Only playing “Pumped Up Kicks” in January 2011. My roommates and I sat in the back of my station wagon, waxing up surfboards and getting ready to paddle at El Porto in Manhattan Beach. I hadn’t seen the music…
Many a moneymaker got shaken this past weekend, and not just at the various dance clubs dotting the Metro Phoenix night scene. A few off-the-chain and off-the-radar dance parties took place around downtown Phoenix, ranging from the rave-like affair The Underground at The Pressroom to the industrial-strength fun of Fallout.Shelter…
If you’ve ever been to a show at the Trunk Space in the summer — and experienced all that goes with it, like the heat sticking to your skin — then the venue’s recently launched crowdfunding project should make you happy. Ditto for those Trunk Space fans eager to celebrate…
My oldest daughter arrived yesterday with my two grandsons, ages 1 and 3. That’s right. I’m a music-blogging grandpa. If you’ve ever read any of my past rambling, you may remember that I’m still wrangling kids as well (five kids total, three in the house). That means I’ve got myself…
There’s going to be a war going on inside Club Red tomorrow night — and your cochlea may not survive the battle. The Tempe music venue will play host to representatives of some of the music world’s most heaviest and hardest music genres — including Portland’s Toxic Holocaust and Northern…
