Recently Phoenix’ Crescent Ballroom played host to three talented acts that I had initially not heard of: The Chain Gang of 1974, Zak Waters and Empires. The impetus for thinking I had to catch this show was from coming across it in a Twitter feed and reading an interview with Kamtin Mohager (The Chain Gang of 1974).  Mohager disclosed that he was first moved to create music after he heard Tears for Fears’ classic “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” on the Real Genius soundtrack. Since I am a huge fan of Songs from the Big Chair (Real Genius not so much, other than Deborah Foreman) having written about it for this site, I decided that anyone so moved by Tears for Fears was a must see....

  Recently I was able to catch Eagulls’ show at the Crescent Ballroom which is rapidly becoming my all time favorite music venue. In the past year I have also seen Haim and The War on Drugs there and there is not a bad seat in the house.  It’s standing room only up front, but there are also bleachers in the back that are at most only 20 feet from the stage. Eagulls self titled debut album has been critically applauded, but at this point in their career, they are a band that is best appreciated live. That is why it was disappointing to see barely over a hundred people at the gig because this is a band that deserves...

  Considering that we recently had  Coachella, record store day and Easter all occur, I thought I’d publish my review on The War on Drugs show from Phoenix’s Crescent Ballroom from a couple weeks back.  After all, these things all relate to the show in the fact that The War on Drugs are one of the best live shows I’ve ever seen (Coachella), their new album (Record Store Day) supported by this tour is incredible and this is the most psychedelic yet “traditional” band (Easter Holiday) that you’ll probably hear in your lifetime. If you’ve never listened to The War on Drugs they are a band that I cannot recommend highly enough. For starters, they will restore your belief...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#916 in the Series) is the self-titled debut from The Stone Roses. (Silvertone) With the recent news of The Stone Roses reuniting and touring, I thought back to my freshman year of college at Arizona State University twenty plus years ago, where I was first introduced to their self-titled debut. This was a great time in my life musically, considering I was away at college and free to spend as much time as I wanted scouring the record bins at Tower Records or listening to live music at Long Wong’s, the venue that launched The Gin Blossoms. Additionally, that fall both Nirvana’s Nevermind and Pearl Jam’s Ten were released. Not to mention my...

  Today’s Cool ‘Album’ of the Day (#906 in the Series) is Ummagma “Rotation” b/w “Live and Let Die.”  To paraphrase the bio on their website, Ummagma is a Canadian-Ukranian duo comprised of Alexander Kretov and Shauna McLarnon. They deliver an eclectic yet harmonious kaleidoscope of dream pop, post-punk, ambient/ethereal, shoegaze and spacerock, creating sublime resonance, beats and rhythm to create other worldly soundscapes. Truthfully, it would be hard for me to describe them any more clearly than that. If you are a fan of shoegaze (Lush, My Bloody Valentine), dream pop (Air, Chvrches, The Cranberries), or space rock (Pink Floyd, The Verve) then in all likelihood this is a band you should give a listen to. More specifically,...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#900 in the Series) is The Sundays, Reading Writing and Arithmetic I have never been that big a fan of the MP3 revolution. For one, it put the buying power of music more into “tweens” and teens who for the most part do not have very good taste in music. As a result, the themes in popular music became much less sophisticated. Artists were no longer developed, they were produced because it was no longer albums that mattered but singles. Not to mention, soon shows such as American Idol came along offering to make anyone a “star” as opposed to these people working their way up in the traditional way where you hone and perfect...

Recently I had the privilege of seeing Haim live, at what has now become my all-time favorite music venue for national acts, The Crescent Ballroom in Phoenix.  Having already seen some great shows there, including The Psychedelic Furs a few months back, what was so amazing about this show was that it was sold out to a capacity crowd of 550 people. The reason this is so unbelievable is that I was easily able to get tickets for the show a month in advance and just over a week prior to the show Haim’s debut album had beat out Justin Timberlake’s new offering 20/20 for the number one album spot in the UK. This shows how fundamentally the music...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#880 in the Series) is Smashing Pumpkins, Siamese Dream In my favorite film, Almost Famous, Lester Bangs, as played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, warns his young protégé, William Miller, about the trappings of writing “sanctimonious stories about the genius of rock stars.” Going on to say “they will ruin rock ‘n’ roll, and strangle everything we love about it.” Well, at the risk of sounding sanctimonious this is a piece about the genius of rock stars and one rock star in particular, Billy Corgan, and The Smashing Pumpkins 1993 masterpiece Siamese Dream. 1993 was a magical year in music and more specifically, to what many people would refer to as “college,” or “alternative”...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#872 in the Series) is Tears for Fears, Songs from the Big Chair I don’t know that you can name a definitive album of the 1980’s, but if you could, Tears for Fears Songs from the Big Chair would definitely be in the conversation. The follow up to their also classic The Hurting, it is a classic musically as well as a touchstone in social activism. It is an important aspect of the decade for which it rarely gets credit. Tears for Fears, along with R.E.M., The Cure, Echo and the Bunnymen and a few others were instrumental in bringing 80’s college/alternative/indie rock into the mainstream. This was important because this new genre, and most specifically, Songs...