Joe Wertz;News

You’ve made lists, stood in lines, unwrapped gifts and turkey-dined. Christmas is the season for giving, but even those who’ve been bad all year deserve a break. Get out of the house, forgo family festivities and stuff your live rock stocking with three offerings from Oklahoma music magi. CHRISTMAS EVEDJ Jeremy Dawson 8 p.m. Electro […]

The rock ‘n’ roll road has ceased for Streets of Thieves, a metro metal band ending its four-year run with a show in Oklahoma City. In an e-mail, singer Dirk Mathews wrote the breakup was neither “happy” nor “unhappy,” and came as the band’s four members moved on to separate commitments in the military, at […]

Students eager to enroll in Oklahoma City’s new Academy of Contemporary Music may now apply for admission, organizers said. Patterned after an acclaimed British school and directed by Flaming Lips manager Scott Booker, the University of Central Oklahoma academy is set to open fall 2009, offering students courses of study in vocal, guitar, bass and […]

Switching on less than two years ago, the Austin, Texas-based Electric Touch has quickly charged through the South Texas music grid and is generating enough current to power performances throughout the high-profile music festival circuit. SHINY GLOSSOKGREENFEST The band’s energy is derived from immediately catchy pop songs that fuse layers of straight-ahead rock guitars with […]

A well-known business owner and adored local personality died unexpectedly last week, prompting a lyrical send-off from local poets and a open-mic-style memorial organized by area musicians and performers. Craig Roche, co-owner of the Galileo Bar & Grill, died Nov. 18 at the age of 59. Born in Patterson, N.J., and raised in Gardener, Mass., […]

City Lives have joined The All-American Rejects as a tour opener and eager students of sold-out shows and international audiences. The Oklahoma City five-piece will return with the Rejects for Friday’s Diamond Ballroom show with Jet Lag Gemini and local rockers Aranda. Drummer Eric Pennell said audience response has been “way better” than the band […]

Local rockers The City Lives have booked an opening slot on The All-American Rejects’ winter tour, the band and tour organizers confirmed last week. The Oklahoma City five-piece will join the platinum-selling Rejects ” also a band of Okies which formed in Stillwater in 2001 ” for the U.S. tour, which starts Nov. 6 in […]

Auditions are already being planned at a new Bricktown venue where hundreds of musicians will book gigs that could prove career- and life-changing.  Renovations on the fourth floor of the Oklahoma Hardware Building, 25 E. California, are under way for the Academy of Contemporary Music ” a school organizers say will educate musicians and band, […]

Legendary vocalist Wanda Jackson was nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last week, along with eight other bands and performers, including pioneering Eighties rap act Run-DMC, English rock guitarist Jeff Beck, heavy metal’s Metallica and punk band The Stooges. The Oklahoma native dated Elvis Presley and is known as the “Queen of […]

The members of Oklahoma City rock band Luma ” an Oklahoma Gazette Woody Award winner in 2007 ” have reformed as Fires of Atlas, a 2005 side project that has stolen focus for each of the group’s four members. Fires of Atlas sounds decidedly more experimental than Luma ever was. Gone are the pop anthems […]