Features

Valley folk-rock guitarist extraordinaire Mat Weddle has gotten plenty of worldwide fame in the past 18 months, since the video for his acoustic cover of Outkast’s “Hey Ya” debuted on YouTube in August of 2006, including more than 1.5 million views, kudos from iTunes, and loads of press coverage from the likes of Spin.

And the attention just keeps on coming, as last week, legendary shock jock Howard Stern featured the song on his Sirius Satellite Radio show. Shoehorned in between pointed discussions about ABC reality show Wife Swap and Joey Buttafuoco’s new sex tape during the January 10 edition of the show, the self-proclaimed “King of all Media” heaped plenty of praise upon the bearded Obadiah Parker frontman and the song.

“I’m gonna stay right here and fight for this lost cause even if this room gets filled with lies like these . . . somebody will listen to me . . .” — James Stewart, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington “Been broken down too fucking long . . .” —…

Environmental destruction, greed, suicide, and watching your elderly mother die may sound like strange topics to plumb for optimism, but that’s exactly what Oakland’s Rogue Wave manages to do on its latest album, Asleep at Heaven’s Gate. An exquisitely crafted slice of pop that harks back to the days when…

Sasha Frere-Jones, Jessica Hopper, and pitchfork-toting denizens of the blogosphere: You’ll be satisfied to know Magnetic Fields frontman Stephin Merritt experienced a road-to-Damascus type conversion. His iPod was shattered, and all pop sins — endorsing the catchiness of “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah,” under-representing black artists in his numerous “artist playlist” exercises, and boldly…

If you’ve looked at the forums at Web site www.arizonabeats.com, you already know that my cover story on Phoenix hip-hop, “Raising Terrazona,” has ignited quite the firestorm of criticism from members of the local scene. For those who haven’t seen the forums yet, there’s a whole section titled “Arizona reacts to the New Times article ‘Raising Terrazona,’ wherein people in the forum level several complaints, including that the story was “racist,” that I tried to create tension that didn’t exist between two scenes, and that since I’m not a hardcore hip-hop fan, I had no business writing about the local hip-hop scene.

This week’s cover story on Phoenix hip-hop, “Raising Terrazona,” contains a scene where 5Fith Coast Records co-owner Roca Dolla and local artist Cinque exchanged words in the VIP room at The Door on Scottsdale Road. Since the story came out, I’ve received phone calls from both Roca Dolla and Cinque, who each want to clarify what really happened that night. The scene in question is below, followed by Roca Dolla and Cinque’s responses.

In high school, I quit guitar lessons after just six months. I have really tiny hands and got frustrated just making chords — plus, my teenage self thought it’d be more fun to date an ax master than to be one. Later, I decided that writing about rock bands was…

Mike Relm is single-handedly introducing turntablism to parts of middle America on his second stint with Blue Man Group, opening its current production, How to Be a Megastar Tour 2.1. With between 7,000 and 12,000 people at each show, it’s the San Franciscan’s biggest gig. He’s already a YouTube celebrity…

Overlooked amid the hoopla surrounding the recent Mitchell Report — former Senator George Mitchell’s investigation into the use of steroids and human growth hormone in Major League Baseball — was the release last month of the Quayle Report. The culmination of an eight-year, $77 million investigation headed by former Senator…

In conjunction with this week’s cover story on Phoenix’s hip-hop scene, “Raising Terrazona,” we’re putting a media blitzkrieg up here that highlights some of the hottest hip-hop acts in our great desert metropolis. Below, you’ll find photos, links, and embedded videos from some of Terrazona’s best. Consider it proof of an impending Southwest hip-hop explosion.

The holidays are a time of family, schmaltzy Christmas commercials that somehow make you cry, and if you are involved in music journalism, list-making. Lots and lots of list-making. Over the past few years, the availability of year-end critics lists has multiplied faster than the worry lines on Ben Bernanke’s…

Cleveland doesn’t have celebrities. That’s why our contribution to this year-end roundup is star-free. The biggest thing we’ve got (next to LeBron James, who was too busy playing basketball or something to talk to us) is the stripper-lovin’ host of The Price Is Right, Drew Carey. But we’re pretty sure…

For basketball star Diana Taurasi, 2007 was a stellar year. The 6-foot guard for the Phoenix Mercury helped lead the franchise (and the city of Phoenix) to its first-ever basketball championship, toppling defending WNBA champion Detroit Shock on its home court in the final game of a best-of-five series. The…

Margaret Cho has had her own TV show, a couple of bestselling books, a Grammy-nominated comedy album, and two feature films based on her national tours, but 2007 saw a new conquest for the comic: She became a viral video queen. Cho’s sexy, traveling circus-like spectacle, The Sensuous Woman, which…

San Francisco’s world renowned Kronos Quartet has charted an impressive course around the globe, commissioning more than 600 works — and releasing more than 40 records — with composers from China, Russia, Vietnam, and Iraq since its inception more than 30 years ago. Founding member David Harrington cites an unusual…

Dixie Chicks Grammy-winning-song collaborator Dan Wilson released his first solo album this year, the Rick Rubin-produced Free Life. The Semisonic songwriter and former Trip Shakespearean still lives in Minneapolis, still shops at the Electric Fetus, and plans on holing up and writing songs for the next few months. He recently…

As two different Radiohead releases this month prove, rock boxed sets aren’t becoming any more sensible. The “discbox” version of the band’s new release, In Rainbows, is stuffed with extras. They range from useful (music), through aimless (booklets and artwork), to mystifyingly redundant (the album on CD, 12-inch vinyl, and…

The Fiery Furnaces — the frequently conceptual Brooklyn indie/art rock band with siblings Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger at its creative core — is typically branded with such adjectives as “difficult,” “challenging,” “dizzying,” and “unpredictable.” They’re also pretty damn prolific, averaging an album a year since 2003. The group’s latest is…

Jerry Riopelle is an old-school cat, which means that the singer/songwriter’s been making records longer than almost anybody else in the Valley. As a staff writer and producer for Phil Spector’s Philles Records in Los Angeles, Riopelle wrote his first top 20 hit (“Home of the Brave,” recorded by Bonnie…

Normally, I’m not a big fan of Christmas albums. I get stacks of them every year, and less than half of them actually make it into my CD player (really, I don’t need to hear Josh Groban’s take on “Little Drummer Boy” or James Taylor doing the umpteenth-thousandth cover of “Jingle Bells”).

But this year, I received A Taste of Christmas Pudding, an annual holiday compilation that features Phoenix artists doing their renditions of Christmas classics. There are two things that make this album stand apart from the seasonal stacks of wax for me. One is the sheer diversity of musical styles on the compilation. We open with a heavy metal cover of the creepiest Christmas song ever, “Carol of the Bells” by Karnage, before gliding into the soulful acoustic sounds of Haven James doing “Please Come Home for Christmas.” Ultimately, the 12-track CD wraps up with a raucous rendition of “Feliz Navida” by Kraised, with some garage-country (“Blue Christmas” by Juicy Newt), some funk (“Funky Desert Land” by Isle of Essence), and some frat boy rap-rock (“The Night Before Christmas” by Zoom & the Sporty Forties) in-between.

How does music engage and touch us so deeply? Why is its presence so intrinsic to what we do? It’s everywhere, from stereos and headphones to movie soundtracks and commercials. Even our voices possess a unique musicality. It’s hardly essential to life, yet music’s been a part of every human…

Every year around the office, it’s the same old pickle: What do you buy for the Secret Santa gift exchange? You don’t want to go super-cheap, because somehow everyone always figures out you were the jackass who bought the stupid Bush-isms desk calendar, but you also don’t want to spend…