Chris Brown is well known to screaming teenagers, but he broke out to a wider audience at this year’s MTV Video Music Awards. There, he perfectly parroted the Gloved One’s Moonwalk, prompting Justin Timberlake to tell the world he felt old. That indicated the torch had officially been passed. Brown…
System of a Down is one of the trickiest bands these days for one reason: its willingness to let its freak flag fly. Artier and politically sharper than its hard-rock contemporaries, SoaD infuses its songs with dashes of wit, grandeur, and bombast. Singer Serj Tankian delivers each and every proclamation…
It’s an interesting time for soul music czar Stevie Wonder to be out and about on a rare U.S. tour. Because, aside from some concealed gems here and there — such as Anthony Hamilton and Amp Fiddler — soul music has been a stagnating beast for the past five years…
“Say it to my face, look me in the eyes and say what you have to say,” Toryn Green sings on Fuel’s latest album, Angels and Devils. This has to rank right up there with Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney’s staged spat on “The Girl Is Mine” for all-time least-convincing…
Where do you go when the cute wears off? Lee’s teenage band, Noise Addict, overflowed with precocious charm epitomized by his humorous ode to Evan Dando, “I Wish I Were Him.” It earned the Beastie Boys’ patronage, and the Aussie teen recorded two solo albums for Grand Royal, the latter…
After his departure from the Byrds in the mid-’60s, late Americana icon Gram Parsons envisioned “Cosmic American Music,” a savory stew of traditional country with flavors of rock ‘n’ roll, Southern soul/R&B, and gospel. Though some bands striving to follow in GP’s boot prints get the country-twang aspect, too many…
For a while, it seemed as if the only hip-hop action going on in the PHX was being put on by the superfly soldiers of The Blunt Club or our boy Al Page at the Hidden House. Thankfully, the dearth of dopeness has been remedied, thanks in part to the…
I don’t know what it is, but I have a sick obsession with Japanese noise/punk music. Like, a for-real manic obsession bordering on a permanent stay in a padded cell at the loony bin.
I think the fixation started when I discovered John Zorn’s Naked City in the ’90s. Mind you, the sick-o group was made up by a bunch of maniacal white dudes (Zorn, Joey Baron, Bill Frisell, Wayne Horvitz, Fred Firth), but it’s Yamatsuka Eye’s Tasmanian Devil timbre on select LPs that speak to my inner weird-o. Plus, I love that Eye’s inaudible, wordless vocals are backed by an anything-goes, straitjacket-esque ensemble.
Not long ago, a three-CD, 50-track collection of America-themed songs that’s titled, appropriately enough, Song of America, arrived in stores. What’s so special about that? Well, aside from the fact that it features freak folker Devendra Banhart (“Little Boxes”) and Springsteen acolytes Marah (“John Brown’s Body”) alongside the likes of soul diva Bettye LaVette (“Streets of Philadelphia”) and Chevy rocker John Mellencamp (“This Land is Your Land”), the set was executive produced, oddly enough, by Clinton-era Attorney General Janet Reno (no, “Burning Down the House” isn’t on there, but thanks for playing). Apparently, she and her niece’s husband, a record producer, conceived the idea a few years ago, and even made a trip to the 2005 Grammys to get artists to sign on to the project. “I just hope that people will have the opportunity to hear [Song of America] and to see what songs can do to inspire and to motivate and to give people a sense of themselves,” Reno recently told NPR.
A lot of people out there despise the Aquabats with a passion. Jaded music critics, surly rock fans, and even the security thugs at Aquabats shows love to drink the hater-ade on the Orange County ska-pop group. They usually crack on their simplistic and silly lyrics, obnoxious stage antics, and ostentatious superhero costumes. One particularly nasty diss came from the pierced mouth of some bitter record clerk at Zia, who labeled them “KISS for 12-year-olds.”
I have a confession to make: Robots used to scare the shit outta me. I mean, really scare the shit outta me.
I don’t know what it was about automatons and androids, but during my pre-pubescent years, these mechanical menaces used to give me Texas Chainsaw Massacre-sized levels of terror, particularly the junky, lo-fi kind of machines that looked like they were cobbled together by some mad scientist. (Cartoon robots like The Transformers and Voltron were a-okay, though). Remember all those freaky mechanoids that filled that weird-ass, early ’80s video for “Rock It” by Herbie Hancock that aired in heavy rotation during MTV’s embryonic years? That shit used to give me nightmares, as did the vid for Lou Reed’s “No Money Down” (where a robotic doppelganger of the rock icon tears its face to shreds).
If the massive rainstorms that’ve been plaguing the Valley today have given you second thoughts about checking out The Locust’s scheduled gig tonight at The Sets in Tempe, it’s kind of a good thing, since we just got word that the show (which was being put on by local concert powerhouse Lucky Man) has been axed.
There’s little dispute that Judas Priest singer Rob Halford is the Metal God. Since 1974, Judas Priest has sold more than 9 million albums in the U.S. alone, not to mention the success of Halford’s other bands, Halford and Fight. The British-born Phoenix resident is named as a vocal influence by everybody from original Iron Maiden singer Paul Di’Anno to Arch Enemy singer Angela Gossow, and is also credited with introducing the leather-and-spikes look to the genre. And at 56 years-old, Halford continues to churn out his beloved heavy metal music. We recently caught up with Halford to discuss the new Fight DVD (War of Words), the upcoming new Judas Priest album, and how he feels about being one of the few openly gay men in metal.
Woe betide the “next big thing” who gets squeezed through the music industry hit machine, only to find their visions are all misshapen and the expectations are impossible to meet.
Once upon a time, an artist whose debut album charted at #10 on the Billboard charts and sold 119,000 copies the week of its release would be considered a success. Not so for American idol winner and Phoenix resident Jordin Sparks, whose self-titled debut is being flagged as a failure by music pundits because she didn’t debut at #1 like previous Idol winners Kelly Clarkson and Ruben Studdard.
“I’m a big fan of beautiful accidents,” says Skeleton Key leader Erik Sanko. And he might as well be. Though he is referring to spontaneous creative accidents, Sanko also admits to being mystified that Skeleton Key — which formed in 1996 amidst a thriving downtown New York arts scene —…
These days, most gentiles (that’s non-Jews, folks) think Hanukkah is some sort of Christmas equivalent for God’s Chosen People, but the truth is, it’s one of Judaism’s minor holidays and has moved to the forefront only since secular pop culture felt the religion was getting the shaft during the “holiday…
Since 1996, Jay Vance (a.k.a. JBOT) has been a prisoner of robots he originally created to serve as his onstage death metal band. That’s the gist of Captured! By Robots’ bio — that, and Vance has a problem playing with others, necessitating animatronic bandmates. But the reality of the situation…
Baja Tilly’s: DJ Adrian (old school, R&B, cumbia, reggaeton) Bikini Lounge: Sophisticated Boom Boom with DJ HFE (rockabilly, surf, jazz, classic country, indie, obscuro, R&B) The Blooze Bar: DJ El Dedo(rockabilly) Bobby C’s: Willy B. (old-school R&B) Bunkhouse: DJ Doom (dance) Casa Blanca: DJ Fifty Dollar Bill (R&B, soul, funk,…
We need some Quaaludes. We can’t stop listening to Phoenix rock trio Psych 101’s Attachment Disorder, and it’s totally messing with our heads. All of its danceable dirges are giving us delusions: that Joy Division brought Ian Curtis back from the dead and made a reunion record, that the Moody…
It took us a couple of days before we dragged our bloated bellies out in public after stuffing ourselves on Thanksgiving. Instead of hitting a hotspot with expectations of beautiful faces and flat tummies, we decided to hit a casual favorite, Papago Brewing Company in Scottsdale, on Saturday, November 24…
San Francisco trio The Kim Philbys has guts — don’t they realize bands these days are supposed to be predictable, either melodious or arty-abrasive, not both? In this manner, they recall (yet don’t sound like) the Meat Puppets, who encompassed brutal sonic assaults, lysergic twang, and ZZ Top-like boogie. The…
Where is R&B going these days? That is the question posed by this Philadelphia newcomer, whose self-titled CD features guest appearances from Lupe Fiasco, Q-Tip, and Wyclef Jean. The first track that grabs the listener’s attention is the anti-racist anthem “It Don’t Make Any Difference To Me,” which contains some…
