When I visit Cory Spotts in the control room of his north Phoenix studio, he’s got his finger on the Valley’s musical future — quite literally. With a click of the mouse, a sizable chunk of the best stuff being produced in town reverberates through the room, and Spotts is…
From their perch on the stage of Denver’s Bluebird Theater, the members of Matson Jones look almost like shadows. Drummer Ross Harada, limbs splayed, pounds a beat as bare as a rattling skeleton. Next to him, Matt Regan coaxes notes from his upright bass. Seated before them are cellist/vocalists Martina…
Bottom line: Judas Priest forged, in iron and molten steel, the very foundation of heavy metal. The stoned-out, low-end pummeling of Black Sabbath seems a distant cousin to Priest’s screeching-eagle sound. Unlike their neo-satanic brethren, historically the Priest boys have largely concerned themselves with individual rights — specifically, the right…
In early June, we carry with us a touch of the reverse Midas. We are the black cat in your path. We are the ladder you walk underneath. Yea, verily we say unto you, everything we touch turns to shit. And it just might be contagious. Two months into a…
When I was a teenager working in a skateboard shop called G&B up in Anchorage, Alaska, skateboarding was an insular scene that even had music of its own: a blend of punk, hardcore and thrash known as skaterock. Personified by acts like Arizona’s own J.F.A., Gang Green, Suicidal Tendencies, Drunk…
Pouyan Afkary is oblivious to how successful he is. He’s a 19-year-old kid who graduated from Highland High School in Gilbert two years ago and immediately left for a life on the road with five of his classmates — the other members of emo-rock band Scary Kids Scaring Kids. After…
A confession: I like sad, introspective music by mopey boys who sing about their broken hearts, a.k.a. emo. At the same time, I also like to make fun of the stereotypical emo fashions and emo kids’ self-absorbed affected moodiness. I’m too grown-up to define myself by the music I listen…
7:41 a.m. Get a wake-up call from my 14-year-old nephew, Jeremy, who I’m taking to his very first Warped Tour. He asks to borrow my faded old Bad Brains tee shirt because his Bowling for Soup tee makes him “look like a noob.” 10:06 a.m. Traffic slows as we near…
I’ve been having nightmares lately, populated by drug addicts, orphans, a woman with her mouth sewn up, and occasionally two skinny Afroed Chicano guys who whisper sinister things in Spanish. They didn’t go away even after I saw the band that’s causing them — the Mars Volta — play live…
Last year, in the dead of summer — you know, the time of year when the sidewalks are still too hot to touch at midnight, and the heat sucks the sweat right out of your pores — Robbers on High Street played the very first show of their West Coast…
If there were windows in Joe’s Grotto, they’d be steamed up tonight. Almost 400 people are packed into the small Phoenix club, fanning themselves with magazines and ordering extra ice with every drink. The crowd’s getting restless, jockeying for position near the stage and chatting away excitedly. Proprietor Joe Grotto…
“Hey, you got your Rancid in my Mars Volta!” “You got your No Doubt in my Postal Service!” “Now you’ve got your Sublime in my Radiohead!” No, I’m not talking about the latest mash-ups by Z-Trip or Danger Mouse. Rather, this was my internalized conversation with local independent alternative radio…
“Everybody thinks we’re assholes,” Sum 41 guitarist Dave Baksh says. “We’re Canadian; it’s impossible.” Phoning from one of the asshole capitals of Los Angeles, the Bel Age Hotel near Sunset Strip, Baksh and his band are taking a breather from an extended road trip with punk legends Unwritten Law. The…
I’m completely out of my indie rock element, but it’s quite the scene at the Sail Inn on a recent Sunday afternoon: pretty (and friendly) granola girls twirling around in flowing skirts, squealing little kids running around with bubble-blowing machines, gray-haired guys in tie-dyed shirts with their guts stretching the…
Rock critics can’t resist calling Of Montreal “sunny,” and there’s plenty of truth to that description. Since 1997, the Athens, Georgia-based band has put out seven albums of whimsical pop psychedelia that plays with shimmering, sophisticated layers of guitar and keyboard melody, over-the-top vocal harmonies, surreal lyrics, and unpredictable arrangements,…
In a recent New York Times article that disputes the age-old link between creativity and depression, author Peter D. Kramer claims that it is “depression — and not resistance to it or recovery from it — that diminishes the self.” Devoted acolytes of Nine Inch Nails major-domo Trent Reznor would…
At least another hour is left until touring headliners The Perceptionists are set to perform at the Old Brickhouse Grill on a recent Saturday night, but there are already hundreds of people in the house. When a startling siren blasts through huge speakers and a dense swarm of fans crowds…
It’s Kentucky Derby Saturday and I’m sitting at the bar of the Fiesta Inn in Tempe with Charlie Levy, the promoter behind Stateside Presents and man-behind-the-curtain at Western Tread Records, which he runs with Jimmy Eat World front man Jim Adkins. I’ve asked him here because I’ve known the bespectacled,…
Scott Herren (a.k.a. Prefuse 73) awoke one morning this past February to find that his new album, Surrounded by Silence, had been linked to the Internet a full three months before its scheduled release. While this is an increasingly common phenomenon, it didn’t make the pill any easier to swallow…
While you may not hear an obvious Smashing Pumpkins influence when listening to Stiletto Formal, the Phoenix indie-core band says it gets all gooey over Corgan and crew. On its MySpace profile, the band declares that the Smashing Pumpkins are one of their collective favorite bands. Good thing, too. Stiletto…
“Fuck trout! Trout are pussies!” my good friend John Rupp declared into the microphone while dancing onstage at the Rogue late last year during local roots/bluegrass/hillbilly trio Flathead’s set. Dressed in a homemade catfish costume (originally fabricated for Halloween), complemented by metal-tipped snakeskin shoes, Catfish John made his debut appearance…
Which came first, our iPods or our eclectic tastes? It wasn’t all that long ago when music lovers picked a team and stayed loyal to it. Hip-hop heads devoted their eardrums to rhyme and beats, punks immersed themselves in . . . punk. If you were a fan of, say,…
