If you call yourself a fan of electronic music, then it’s safe to assume you’re familiar with Jimmy Tamborello of DNTEL. If not, you might want to visit Tamborello’s Wikipedia page then smack your head on the keyboard for nearly committing indietronica music geek social suicide. The contemporary electronic music…
Wait, what? Katy Perry is being considered too sexy for China? And Lady Gaga is too controversial, you say? That’s unheard of! Well, not if you have any say in Chinese cultural authority.Katy Perry’s hit “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)” as well as six songs by Lady Gaga have been blacklisted…
Jessica Cuff Cuff is the owner of The Coffee Shop and has appeared on Food Network’s Cupcake Wars. When you put your key in the ignition and turn on the radio, what station would play right now? 103.9-FM. I’m not hella into a ton of super mainstream bands, but I’d…
BY DANIEL RAVEN Young Jeezy Celebrity Theatre Thursday, August 25, 2011 Young Jeezy may not know how to ride a beat or rap for more than ten seconds without losing his breath, but he was certainly able to keep it gangsta last night at Celebrity Theatre. Rapping to a half-empty…
No doubt you read our awesome Q&A with Atmosphere’s Slug from the other day — but even if you didn’t, you probably want to go see the group on Saturday at Mesa Amphitheater. After all, the group’s latest record, The Family Sign, is loaded with taut rhymes and minimal beats…
With the release of Muppets: The Green Album earlier this week, audiences have the chance to hear popular artists from a variety of genres cover a slew of Muppets favorites. In fact, the lineup on the soundtrack/promo album is so varied and talented that it has a chance to completely outshine the upcoming Muppets film that they are it is trying to promote.
Well, here’s one for the “nobody is surprised” bin: Rapper Earl Simmons, better known as DMX, was arrested Wednesday night. The arrest took place just before 9 p.m. after being pulled over for doing 102 miles per hour while driving westbound on U.S. 60 near the Power Road exit in…
It’s tough to believe that locals Jimmy Eat World released what was perhaps their biggest hit, “Sweetness,” nearly a decade ago. But sure enough, Tokyo Police Club is here to remind us of just how much we’ve aged. As part of their “10 days, 10 covers, 10 years” project, the…
Hey, you know how the Valley’s audiophiles have long been boasting that we do, in fact, have a music scene if you just look around a bit? The big wigs in Los Angeles have finally taken notice, and are transplanting a little of their Sunset Strip lifestyle right here in…
Well, Lil Wayne canceled his Phoenix show. And all the talk of skateboarding accidents and makeup dates cannot make up for that simple fact–at least to Weezy’s fans. They spent days and months looking forward to that special date, August 24, only to have their hopes dashed.
Well, guess what. August 24 happens to be my birthday and my name happens to be Wayne.
In honor of that coincidence and to give the Lil Wayne-loving public something to mull over in their free time I came up with a somewhat-contrived and very abstract idea that kind of involves the rap artist.
Arizona rock quintet, Man Made Machine have thrown their name in the mix of local bands making waves on the national music scene. Earlier this week, the band debuted the official music video for their first single, “Victim” Revolver Magazine’s website. The exclusive premier on “the world’s loudest rock magazine”…
In this week’s issue, we featured a story about Mergence, a Phoenix band that knows a thing or two about “weird.” We knew the group was out there — just check out singer Adam Bruce’s explanation of “Me and My Family Vs. The Robots” — but when guitarist Yod Paul…
Local funk band JUNKtheband wanted to positively impact the community when they wrote their song, “Protect Your Joy,” since the track was inspired by news of young people committing suicide as a result of bullying. “I was a small kid and bullied quite a bit growing up,” says singer/guitarist Marten…
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. Why is College Dropouts returning to the same location where it closed only months ago? What…
Just a few weeks ago, Beef Vegan of KWSS 106.7’s The Morning Infidelity asked New Times music editor Jason Woodbury when the Black Bottom Lighters should expect a write-up in our humble alt-weekly. While the band was sitting in the studio. Not that we’re feeling the pressure — the Glendale…
Jean Grae comes across as the kind of lyricist you don’t want to mess with. “You Don’t Like It (So What),” from her forthcoming album, Cake or Death, states it plainly: “I’m like Judy Bloom with uzis.” You wouldn’t expect DJ LES735 (a.k.a. Luis Sias), who will be spinning at…
Patrick Stump didn’t just lose three of his bandmates when he started his solo career. The former Fall Out Boy frontman also tossed out those signature hats and shed a bunch of weight, too, recasting himself as a svelte and sexy singer with a personal style that favors bow ties…
Even though Prince’s control-freak tendencies made him itch to play every instrument himself in his first band, Grand Central Corporation, friend and guitarist Morris Day swung his swanky balls around enough to earn a place in the little guy’s future collaborative royalty. Day’s song “Partyup” ended up on Prince’s genre-ravaging…
Of all the Rock and Roll Hall’s glaring omissions, it’s hard to beat the institution’s blind eye toward the “Wizard of Osmond” himself. When The Osmonds abandoned their barbershop quartet revival campaign and recorded “One Bad Apple,” a song that Motown had rejected for the Jackson 5, it ended the…
There’s a killer song by ’80s doom-metalheads Saint Vitus called “Born Too Late,” and the song’s subject fits Tempe-based roots-rock band The Smith Family Band well. The music of Derek and Ryan Smith doesn’t have anything to do with the sludgy guitars and crawling tempos of Saint Vitus, owing its…
How can a self-respecting weirdo rock ‘n’ roll songwriter stand apart from the crowd? How does one manage to craft songs about typical tropes (love, freedom, and self-discovery) without sounding, well, typical? For Adam Bruce, the frontman of Tempe-based indie-blues quartet Mergence, the answer is simple and unexpected: Wrap those…
BIG FREEDIA IS SHAKING BOOTIES AND TAKING NAMES. The evolution of “bounce music” in New Orleans has been a strange one. For more than two decades, New Orleans DJs have been using the same two hip-hop samples to get parties moving — the Showboys’ “Drag Rap (Triggerman)” and Cameron Paul’s…
