Artist: The Cool KidsTitle: TackleboxRelease date: May 31Label: Chocolate RecordingsNoted hip-hop fan (and New Times music editor) Martin Cizmar knows I’m lukewarm when it comes to the genre, so he’s always on the lookout for hip-hop that I’ll dig. Not sure what it is about The Cool Kids that he…
How did Adult Swim’s Memorial Day edition at the Hotel San Carlos fare? To hear co-promoter Jen Deveroux describe things, it started sounding like déjà vu all over again. “The cops came by a few times and the hotel told us to bring down the volume,” says Deveroux, who organizes the…
Facepainted Detroit rap duo Insane Clown Posse is set to release their long-awaited second Cowboy movie, Big Money Rustlas, on DVD on August 17.So, yeah, that gives the average Juggalo only two and a half months to upgrade from VHS. Better try to pick up some double shifts, gentlemen. You’re…
It’s nice to have a little diversity on the Vans Warped Tour, the summer punk rock festival that’s notorious for its multitude of sweaty, shirtless guys running around on-stage.This year, following in the footsteps of powerful female singers Katy Perry, Charlotte Sometimes and Hayley Williams of Paramore, a few other…
Arcade Fire is officially one of the biggest bands in the world. Like, their latest tour dates, announced yesterday, feature a stop at Madison Square freakin’ Garden.How did it happen? If I had to pinpoint the band’s best attribute, I’d say it’s an uncompromising attention to every detail. Simply put,…
Folks at The Stray Cat were wild’n out in a serious way at WTFunk Friday last weekend. See what you missed in our WTFunk Friday slideshow…
Song: Good Charlotte, “The Anthem”Context: The band is coming to town tonight. You can use that as an excuse to enjoy this little pop-punk gem. Good Charlotte – The Anthem by kylelegit08…
I could go on an on about this album, and the fine people at Pop & Hiss, the Los Angeles Times’ music blog, perhaps also recognized that Before Today is something intriguingly difficult to pin down, making the album available for stream…
Country music fans might just wind up crying a tear in their collective beers after hearing this particular bit of news: The Country Throwdown Tour has called off its stop at the Cricket Wireless Pavilion on June 18. According to Live Nation, the adrenaline-charged summertime concert tour, which was created…
This is part of a series of reviews on weekly events at local bars. Having lived in the Valley my whole life, I only recently realized that tons of bars offer weekly events featuring bands that are staples of the music community. The shows are nearly always free, and the…
But I digress. MC Hammer may have been too legit to quit in 1991, but the man is not too legit to play Fort McDowell Casino this July. He, along with KISS, Ted Nugent, Lil’ Kim, The Game and Ricky Skaggs round out a colorful week of show announcements.Oh, and…
What the critics are saying:…
Hope you all had a good Memorial Day weekend. Now that you’re back on the clock, use company time to give a listen to the sixth Nothing Not New podcast. In this installment, music editor Martin Cizmar and I play 11 songs from recent new releases and discuss the industrial…
One of the coolest things about reading What’s Selling every week is seeing how people in different parts of town at different record stores in the same city buy such drastically different kinds of records. Revolver Records attracts a lot of the die-hard vinyl consumers in CenPho, and their taste…
It seems that since the break up of Oasis, Liam Gallagher hasn’t quite figured out what to do with himself. He has been busy working on a film about the Beatles. This really isn’t so far fetched since John Lennon is his ultimate idol, claiming both that he’s been visited…
Song: LCD Soundsystem, “Dance Yrself Clean”Context: The holiday gave me time to listen to all nine minutes of this song twice. So great…
Regardless of your politics, you have to admit that interesting things are happening musically at the White House. Since Barack took office, the First Family has hosted a number of notables in the music world. While last year included a “Jazz Studio”, a country music celebration, and a classical music…
Brian Wilson’s last few high-profile tours have tended to be been big, classy affairs. You know, Pet Sounds in its entirety with a symphony at the Hollywood Bowl — that sort of thing. Those shows promote the image so many of us like to have of the semi-retired genius: tanned…
When one thinks of Japanese punk, exotic locales like the hard-hitting streets of Osaka come to mind. Well think again, gaijin. Turns out the Valley’s got its own J-punk band called Toybox and they’re releasing a brand-spankin’ new album called Stay Alive tomorrow at Big Fish Pub…
Just when we thought that the only things to come out of the Garden State over the last few years were the Jersey Shore brats and corrupt politicians, DJ Italian Sensation goes and proves us wrong. The Newark native certainly knows his way around a pair of turntables, as evidenced…
Besides pissing off big-name recording artists and motivating them to boycott Arizona, last month’s passage of SB 1070 became an absolute call to arms for those in the local music scene. And one of the first artists to answer the call was DJ John Blaze. Along with P-Town hip-hop siren…
Title: Late Night InnuendoBasics: I’ve given up trying to imagine some local Arizona bands sending in something remotely different from country-twinged rock music. It seems all local, smaller bands record this same type of music. There’s no point in trying to fight it. I don’t get it — but I…
