As any DJ-producer hyphenate will tell you, it takes a huge investment of both time and money to get into the beat-crafting game. It also helps to have some primo equipment and a few skilled and savvy mentors to help guide the way if you have any hopes of becoming…
See also: Antoine Dodson’s “Bed Intruder Song” Remixed as a Bizarre Gangsta Warning to Snitches Tucson-based rapper and tattoo shop owner Isaiah Toothtaker proudly boasts the title “felon rapper” on his Facebook. As if to further prove the point, he’s worked up a collaborative album with incarcerated rapper Max B…
For a little less than a year now, Tucson has been the arena to a rap battle royale called, The Voicebox Battles. It’s a place where wordsmiths throw verbal jabs, lyrical left hooks and insulting uppercuts at one another, all in the name of battle supremacy. Although this showdown takes…
In 1998, after grunge ground down and MTV flirtedwith electronica before getting completely in bed with reality TV, David Bash founded the International Pop Overthrow Festival to give support to a fractured pop scene that had probably given up all hopes of being signed to a major label since The…
See also: Five Reasons We Still Love DMX See also: DMX: Going Old School on New Album? Settled right of Main Street in the heart of Mesa, you would have no idea just by looking that Saltmine Studios is the recording home of legendary artists, producers, and hit tracks. The…
Amir Bar-Lev’s Re:Generation Music Project is a truly sensational demonstration of the music that can be made when people have an open mind. As DJ Premier said in the film, “Music can’t die as long as someone keeps on making it fresh, and that’s what we did.” The Re:Generation Music…
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. Want to hear a single from hip-hop bikers Black Harley Riders? Want to watch Stephen Malkmus…
This week in Phoenix New Times (on stands and online now): I hang out at the Palo Verde Lounge with Tempe-based blackened rock ‘n’ roll sextet TOAD, and discuss the band’s righteous Rotten Tide. M.T. Richards chats with Christopher Owens of indie power-poppers Girls, whose unusual religious upbringing informs his…
Saul Williams’ credentials don’t hint at anyone you’d expect to associate with a genre as innocuous as pop music. After all, the outspoken wordplay wizard cut his teeth as the MC offspring of black activists, rose to prominence via the slam-poetry circuit, is a published and uncompromising poet, and gave…
In the unlikely event that Al Stewart can’t make his scheduled March 2 concert, Destroyer frontman Dan Bejar could definitely fill in. Maybe he’s Stewart’s illegitimate love child, because, seriously, what are the odds two unrelated people could have that high, nasally vocal timbre? Either way, check out Destroyer’s “Painter…
Three-chord alternative isn’t new, especially in Tempe. In the ’90s, bands like The Refreshments and Gin Blossoms rode the style all the way to the major-label bank. Unfortunately for Darkness Dear Boy, they seem to be running a couple of decades behind. But the Tempe-based band, which just celebrated its…
Can’t an emotionally complex, religiously ambiguous metal band get a break? Even though the members of introspective prog-metal titans Shai Hulud are neither uniformly spiritual nor sober, the band has been combating both the “straight edge” and “Christian” tags almost since its inception in 1995. Genre is apparently a point…
Neither Ryan Fontana nor Aaron Cool are illegal in nine countries. Nor do they reek of pure gasoline or Bigfoot’s wang. Truth be told, there are scant similarities between Sex Panther the Orange County-based DJ twosome and Sex Panther the fictional musk of Anchorman fame. Fontana and Cool don’t settle…
Christopher Owens, the songwriter who fronts jangling indie rockers Girls, insists he doesn’t have an ax to grind. Sure, the revivalist cult Children of God effectively destroyed his life before it had even begun, indoctrinating a young Owens to live like a monk in the name of “apostolicism.” Sure, they…
When he’s touring in Europe, Gabriel Sullivan keeps an eye out for Gypsies with instruments. “It’s a constant search for that common theme of necessity in the music,” says Sullivan, whose band, Taraf de Tucson, sets Balkan brass and Peruvian cumbia side by side, combining Latin rhythms and exotic melodies…
It’s early on a Friday night, and I’m saddled up at the bar at Palo Verde Lounge in Tempe, waiting for the six members of blackened rock ‘n’ roll sextet TOAD (it’s an acronym: Take Over and Destroy) to show up for an interview. The “Dirty Verde” is notoriously small,…
Thursday 1 16th Street Bar & Grill: Kickback Thursdays with DJ Cedric Ceballos (hip-hop, classics, neo-soul, reggae, R&B, Top 40, old school) Afterlife: Beat the Scene Thursdays (electronica, dance, remixes) Bar Smith: Double Vision Thursday with DJ Kyko, DJ Idenaty, & DJ Dario (Latin, hip-hop) Bobby Q’s: DJ Phlava, Judge…
Of all the estimated 80 million people who saw The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964 to catch a first glimpse of The Beatles, maybe 10,000 of them formed groups. Maybe 1,000 of them made charting singles. Only one of them was a performer on the Sullivan stage that…
As enchanting and entertaining as Grimes’ performance was at the Rhythm Room on Monday night, the real action was taking place outside of the CenPho music venue. While the Canadian indie artist charmed the crowd with her captivating voice inside, a chaotic scene unfolded in the Rhythm Room’s parking lot…
Welcome to the latest installment of our recurring feature, Sound Off, in which Jason P. Woodbury is joined by a different guest to listen to and discuss three tracks from local Phoenix artists. If you would like your songs to be considered for future Sound Off columns, please email music@newtimes.com…
Albert Manjarrez, manger of The Roxy Lounge is hosting a benefit for his sister on Thursday, March 1.This event features live performances from local acoustic musicians Adam Shero, Angela Ferrari, and Javier Garcia. Amanda Manjarrez was an asymptomatic 26-year-old single mother, unaware she was ill until she tried to write…
Cloud Nothings Crescent Ballroom Tuesday, February 28 When I spoke with Dylan Baldi of Cloud Nothings, he said he had never been intimidated by extensive touring, high-profile shows, or recording Attack on Memory, the band’s latest record, with punk purist Steve Albini. The band’s excellent set at Crescent — airtight…
