Radio Free America I know what you’re thinking, but no, this isn’t a recap of how I spent the weekend. It’s almost the holidays so I had to forego the hookers this time around. Rather, this post is marking a milestone of sorts for Radio Free America, soon to be…
There’s a veritable glut of great shows this weekend, so this is the extended remix weekend edition of the Show Picks series. First, tonight (Friday, Nov. 17) at Stray Cats, for a mere six bucks you can catch a punk rock extravaganza with the Fed-Ups, Thirteen Black, Dick Hazard, Walt…
Last night was an aural adventure (unfortunately not an oral adventure), wherein I hit up both a country show by my cowboy buddy Andy Hersey (who’s opening for Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers at the Marquee this Saturday), and later caught a pretty amazing rock show by Vayden. Vayden’s kind…
An, ahem, Aesthetic A while back I threw up a “show pick” blog post where I dissed locals An Aesthetic for their silly band name. Luckily these guys have a sense of humor, and sent me the following reply… Ha ha… Thanks for posting up the flyer for our show…
As of today, the voting is open for the ’07 PLUG Music Awards, the indie market’s version of the Grammy’s, or, uh, not really. PLUG’s pretty tight though, giving ups to artists that wouldn’t otherwise ever see an award or trophy. And it’s all based on internet voting, so it’s…
SMoCA Nights has become the quintessential fashionable event for Valley clubgoers who want to hang up their ho-bag clothes for the night and feel high-class. With fine art as the backdrop, social sophisticates showed off their stiletto pumps and designer dresses. The crowd at “Luna: Fall SMoCA Nights” on Thursday,…
“All music shows are better with booze,” according to Josh Preston, lead vocalist and guitarist of local band A Few Random Drunks. True to its name, the group formed out of “four men who accidentally stumbled into each other” over brewskis, and their shows are all about bonding over beer…
“Fetti Profoun” is a horrible hip-hop handle, but the hooks here are hot as hell. The CD opens with audio clips from local news stations, spliced together to sound like a big, controversial story about Fetti, then busts into the title track with hydraulic-bumpin’ beats and suspenseful synths, where Fetti…
“It would mean so much to me to know mystery,” Brock Ruggles announces early on in The Great Saturday Night Swindle, but he and his new band Tierra del Fuego have crafted a debut album even Colonel Mustard with a lead pipe in the study would have no trouble figuring…
Ben Lee may be headlining the “Fun! Fun! Fun! Tour,” but the artist most likely to live up to the spirit of that tour name is Rooney, a band whose infectious self-titled debut felt like the Beach Boys bringing in Rivers Cuomo to save the day when Brian Wilson had…
Holy cowbell, biker babes! This co-ed stoner metal band sure has some gritty gee-tars and hard rock chops on its fourth studio effort, Their Rock Is Not Our Rock. The album takes its title from Deuteronomy 32:31, but the only gospel Fireball Ministry seems to be preaching is the gospel…
If you take a cynic’s view toward “expanded” reissues of recent albums, then, yeah: Anymore, the masters don’t even get shelved before record labels are padding releases with videos and B-sides, and dangling them before the same folks who bought the albums last year. From a consumer’s standpoint, buying such…
Based on polls conducted last week, here are some of the reasons Americans chose The Elected this year: 1) They ran a positive, intelligent, feel-good, idea-filled campaign with their second album, Sun, Sun, Sun; 2) They’re uniters, not dividers — the quartet’s message of country-tinged indie- and chamber-rock appealed to…
The thinking-man’s-metal tag that hangs on Isis seems bad for business, but guitarist/vocalist Aaron Turner and his comrades don’t appear to mind. After all, the jacket of their new CD includes the quote (“Nothing is true, everything is permitted”) that inspired the album’s title, as well as a quasi-footnote conceding…
Everybody knows that Dubya is a diehard country music fan, but even the good ol’ boys would have wrinkled their noses if Trace Adkins had played “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk” at the Republican National Convention in 2004. Unfortunately, that hick-hop song didn’t surface until last year, so there was no chance…
Wherein Tom Waits cleans out the closet, holds a garage sale and finds the crowd begging for more, more, more. Hence the 26 soundtrack-compilation-etc. familiars and 30 “new” songs that sound like all the old ones, spread over three discs that glibly and ably summarize the career thus far: “Brawlers”…
Despite the best efforts of several generations of right-wing extremists, it’s impossible to watch this DVD, Elvis Presley: The Ed Sullivan Shows (Image Entertainment) today and truly understand just how electrifying Elvis Presley would have seemed to the kids tuning in to Ed Sullivan’s weekly variety show in an age…
Last month, two Argentinean children appeared on the popular free video Web site YouTube with their endearing rendition of the classic Sepultura protest song “Refuse/Resist,” live from their living room. Within days, the video became the latest Internet phenomenon. At press time, an estimated four million people had downloaded the…
It’s no secret the devilish dance demons of Sadisco hate Tranzylvania. Besides nursing a grudge over how an overzealous bouncer at the popular weekly goth night allegedly broke Sadisco member Dark Father’s arm last year, members of the freaky faction of DJs and party fiends feel Tranzylvania is “boring and…
The Trucks
Here’s a group of girls who look like they’re dressed for a slutty, gender-bending slumber party, singing a song called “Titties” that asks a question like, “What makes you think we can fuck, just because you put your tongue in my mouth and twisted my titties, baby?” But The Trucks…
Old folks’ music. An antique museum piece. A bleak and forgotten cause. All stereotypes to describe the American-born and -bred art form known as jazz. By these standards, the music created by 76-year-old jazz legend Sonny Rollins belongs locked in a climate-controlled room along with Renaissance paintings, 17th-century novels, and…
When I heard the Rolling Stones were coming to Phoenix on another of their supposed “final” tours, I overdrew my checking account to buy tickets. Usually, when I break the bank for music, it’s to buy rare vinyl pressings by obscure sludge/punk bands like Drunks With Guns, Lubricated Goat, Grong…
