Music

This week’s flier is for a show featuring Phoenix avant indie rockers Emperors of Japan and loony local rockers The Necronauts. We’re not quite sure what it means — maybe that’s Satan or Ming the Merciless in the middle, and the signs along the bottom are letters from the American Sign Language alphabet. I think they spell “SAWA.” Not quite sure what that means, either.

Almost any band can sound decent on a studio record. Enough overdubs, multi-tracking, knob twisting, and processing can make even the crappiest of garage bands sound like disciplined, precise musicians. The true test of a band’s talent is the live show – not just the sound and cohesiveness, but the energy and the connection between band and audience.

For the past six weeks, I’ve been asking local bands to send their CDs to me for review in this weekly “You Asked for It” blog. The original idea was that bands who complained about not getting coverage from us while we covered “inferior” local bands could finally get what they wanted – and the original premise was that a lot of these local CDs would suck (some of the complainers had actually sent me their CDs, and I didn’t like the music, so I declined to write a negative review, which meant no review at all). I vowed to review every single local CD sent my way (in the order they were received), and write my honest opinions, for good OR bad.

Normally, my Monday blog is devoted to “Niki’s Weekend Word,” but this past weekend was a bust for me – not because there was nothing going on, but because 1) I felt ill, and 2) It takes $65 to fill my gas tank and less than three days for me to go through it when I’m driving to clubs all over the Valley.

The latter challenge has led me to become one of those “hypermilers,” people who try to save on gas by doing simple things like not accelerating like a drag racer when red lights turn green (like those idiots who put spoilers on their 80s-model Hondas and suddenly think they’re Tony Stewart) and not doing 75 mph in a 55 mph zone on the freeway.

By Jonathan McNamara A day of punk-rocking, T-shirt purchasing and baking in the summer sun drew to a close as Gym Class Heroes rapped one last song into the Phoenix night. The sweat-drenched fury that is the Vans Warped Tour was over for another year. But fret not, Warped Tour…

From the television screen to the magazine rack, music coverage generally skews young. It makes sense, given that the most rabid consumers are kids with time on their hands and cash to burn as they scour their sources for breaking artists. Eventually, though, an older generation of music fans gets…

After listening to Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’ unlikely collaboration, Raising Sand, we couldn’t help philosophizing about what other artists we’d like to see record together. We had rules, though, as all good lists should have. Whatever pairings we came up with would have to be, like Plant and Krauss,…

One day last year, Michael Sweet — frontman of the Christian metal band Stryper — was sitting down with a bowl of Cheetos to watch a Law & Order marathon when his cell phone rang. Michael Sweet: Hello? God: Hey, Michael, it’s me, God. Sweet: No fuc — I mean,…

Detractors tell you American Idol is ruining pop music. Alarmists go even further, reminding us that American Idol is pop music evil incarnate, having secretly replaced the rich taste of The Beatles, Elton John, Michael Jackson, and U2 that we used to enjoy with the sound of Davids Cook and…