KJZZ | By Amber Victoria Singer

This Valentine’s Day we’re thinking about different types of love. Ryan Avery is a local artist, musician and the brain behind Related Records. They recently put together a zine called "please, celebrate me while i am alive." Here’s Avery reading part of the first page of the zine:

“A few months before my friend Fatima passed away in their sleep, I was having a great conversation with them about death. Fatima said something to the effect of, ‘I really don't care what happens to me after I die, or how I am remembered, I just want to be celebrated and enjoyed by others while I am alive.’ So this is my first attempt at celebrating the lives of people that are important to me and sharing that with others while they are still alive.”

Volume 1 of "please, celebrate me while i am alive" features Avery’s 80-year-old neighbor Cia Lorde. They first met around six years ago, and Avery says Lorde is one of the "coolest and most interesting" people they’ve ever met.
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RYAN AVERY: My neighbor that lived behind me was doing some sort of neighborhood party, and she was like, “oh, you should meet Cia. You two are going to get along great.”

And, we did get along great. My wife and I invited her over to our house after talking about art, because she said she wanted to see all of our things that we had in the house, and she just, like, lit up when she saw. Our house, and she was like, “you have to come see my house.” Our house is kind of like an art gallery or a museum, and Cia's house is the same way, but it's all like wood and concrete and recycled pieces.

All of the art in her house is amazing. She does some painting, she does photography, she does collage, she does sculpture. My favorite pieces that she does is her collage. She'll do collages with her own photography. Just like cutting the photos into odd shapes, and then fitting them together into different things.

I used to be on the board for the Trunk Space, which is an all ages music venue. I asked Cia if she would be interested in having an art show there, and at first she said yes. And then, like two days later, said no. And that began the discussion of like, “why? why don't you want to share this with other people?”, and she said, "I just don't care to. Like, I don't care if other people like it or see it. I enjoy sharing it with people like you, and I enjoy, you know, sharing it with other close friends that I have.”

I visit with her, probably on average once a week. Sometimes it's just for a few minutes, sometimes it's for hours. Sarah and I will invite her over for dinner like once a month, and whenever we make too much of something, we share it with her.

Cia and I will talk about everything. It's such a natural flow, like, the way it is when you stay up late with your best friend or something. I went over there the other day to bring her something, and she just asked me about how often we're using our heater, and that led to a discussion about the way people think about heaters, depending on the way they were raised. Before I knew it, I was talking to her for over an hour, and I was like, “oh well, this really was supposed to be just like, you know, a three-minute drop-off,” but I just enjoy talking to her so much.

Almost every time I see her, I'll ask her about her day, and I'm so jealous. She's just like, “I woke up, you know, whenever I felt like it, I took care of my plants. I started making art while I drank coffee. I did some organizing. I read a book.”

In August, Sarah and I had Cia over for dinner, and I knew the whole time that I wanted Cia to be the first person I make a zine about. We were talking about birthdays, and we're like, “Cia, when's your birthday?” And she's like, “oh, it was last week,” and we're like, “oh, happy birthday. Did you do anything?” And she's like, “no, I didn't tell anyone about it either.” We're like, “OK.” I asked her how old she was, and she said 80. And I was like, “well, I should get going on this project.”

I didn't ask her first. I just made like, five copies at first, cause I also didn't want to go forward with making more until I knew how she felt about it. But yeah, so I just made a few, gave her the first one, and she was like, “this is amazing, this is so cool. I'm so lucky to be involved with you this way.” So then I went ahead and made 30.

​I have a few other people that I have in mind to do profiles about, but I mean, really. Everyone should be celebrated more before they die.

By Benjamin Leatherman

By Benjamin Leatherman

Mahfood: I moved to Arizona in '97 or '98 and I'd come to Eastside a couple times a week, buying CD and records, and becoming friends with Mike and Ben. They started carrying my self-published mini-comics and zines and stuff. And all the money would go back to the store to feed my record habit.

Ryan Avery, patron and musician: I'd discovered it through my friend Lena and I remember being blown away by the punk and ska selection they had. Just excited by the way they did everything with the [bin] dividers being hand-drawn or having old Japanese toys like [Shogun Warriors] by the ceiling. The music they were listening to was always cool and interesting.

Emily Spetrino, patron: With kids my age, Stinkweeds was for the indie kids but the punks would go to Eastside, which were more of who I was hanging out with and ended up there often. Mike and everyone else working there were super-chill with letting a bunch of weird teenagers hang out there all the time.
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Schriner: Sonic Youth paid us a visit on their Neil Young tour. One of his fans complained about Sonic Youth in front of them. Michael told the guy he could pass on his feedback directly.

Martinez: You had this menagerie of interesting people coming in. Personalities, characters, street performers, and unhoused, and characters. William Wonderful, this street poet, was always in there. This guy Pepto would stick his head in and joke, "This is a robbery!" and everybody laughed. It was a place for the fringe, the alternative culture. People would cruise Mill, hang out at Java Road or Coffee Plantation, and hit Eastside.

Luke and Joe welcome Ryan of Related Records to the show to discuss the 2019 tribute to Floating Eye of Death NO SINGLES!

This is one of my favorite disposable photos I have taken. It's a great action shot of the Los Angeles based noise artist "Wrong Hole" right when they threw their body on the floor during their set at the International Noise Conference 2016 in LA. It was my first show that I attended after moving there that year and it was very weird for me (noise shows are isolating enough as it is, but adding the fact that it was a shady "ask a punk" type venue, at a show where I didn't really know anyone that well) I was so uncomfortable until this person went on and freaked the fuck out in front of the upset looking, black t-shirt wearing, arms folded, serious-as-fuck looking people in the audience. Then I was finally able to relax and have a great time.

Meet “thegoodshowsaz” – the protective older siblings of Arizona's music scene.

The account works to disrupt the music industry's lack of diversity and tendency to promote problematic artists while providing a safe space for marginalized musicians and audience members alike in the local music community. 

​Run by Bailey Pyritz, a junior studying digital culture, and Ryan Avery, a longtime member of the Phoenix music community, the account is the successor of a website by the same name. 

Avery had previously co-run a website focused on ska shows in Arizona and started The Good Shows website in 2004 to appeal to a wider audience.

The original blog lost traction in the early 2010s with the arrival of Facebook Events, and even now, the new Instagram account is hesitant to post more shows due to increasing concern over the coronavirus pandemic.

As such, the account has shifted gears to provide advice on avoiding COVID-19 at music events and tips on running house venues during a pandemic.

Avery found the inspiration for restarting the site after talking with a friend.

Recalling the conversation, Avery said that as an older member of the community, they are now “responsible to provide a space for a younger generation of weirdos.” 

There are three requirements that make “thegoodshowsaz” true to its name. To be accessible, every show had to be under $15, open to all ages, and something that was worth going to.

For Pyritz, having shows open for all ages is a big priority.

“A lot of venues are 21-plus, and they have punk shows there, and it’s kind of killing the scene, because really what keeps the scene alive is the kids and the youth," Pyritz said.

This iteration of the project, which was renewed in July, maintains its original purpose of creating a safe, welcoming space for newcomers and veterans alike with an extra emphasis on safety. 

Ava Fox, a senior studying sustainability, as well as a band member and concert-goer, said the scene should support artists, not people using its bands as a tool for social clout.

"thegoodshowsaz" tries to promote only artists with no history of misconduct or bigotry. Bands that threaten the safety of the scene are not promoted on the site, Pyritz said.

​“The space was made for white men, by white men, and I just think that’s something that needs to go away,” Pyritz said.

They want to bring more activism to the project by creating a space where the account's audience can celebrate art without fear of encountering racism, homophobia and misogyny.

”It’s OK to stand up for yourself, and it's OK to stand up for what you believe in and the changes you want to see,” Pyritz said.

Neither Fox nor Pyritz tolerates anyone with a history of misconduct at an event. Both work to make everyone aware of their presence in the scene — for Pyritz, through the account, and for Fox, on stage as a performer. 

Fox said that in order to promote the bands that deserve attention, the community needs to regulate itself. 

She said she supports “thegoodshowsaz” because she feels it highlights the beneficial aspects of the scene so that younger people and those from marginalized communities can safely interact with their favorite artists.

Fox said that it’s vital to create a safe environment in the first place, rather than policing future events for harmful actions. “To help a community, you do something first,” Fox said.

​Andy Warpigs died tonight. Between 2011-2015 they would be at what seemed like every single show I went to in Phoenix. And you could always tell they were having an amazing time AND a lot of those times they were secretly recording the bands set.

When Andy started getting more serious about making and playing music, they stopping to as many shows just for fun, and I only seemed to see them at shows they were playing (which was almost every night of the week, Andy hustled HARD!)

Andy's mom (Lynn) was the kindest, most loving and supporting band mom I've ever met and was a real "no bullshit" type of person which I LOVE! She got real sick a couple years ago and I don't think I've seen her since 2017 or 2018. But she loved Andy and love all of Andy's weird misfit friends and all the artists they would go see and secretly record. That is something that always made me smile.

I've seen Andy Warpigs play live probably 29 times over the years. (Like I said they hustled hard!) and when Andy played live it went one of 3 ways it seemed.
1. Andy would play acoustic, by themselves and it ruled. Not too much banter, and Andy always had a tight 20 minute set of songs that encouraged others to sing along.
2. Andy would play with 2-4 other people backing them up who knew Andy's songs and you could tell they practiced a couple times before the show. This was always a more punk sounding set, very fun and inspiring. Most of these shows Andy seemed really really happy. almost glowing and I loved being able to recognize that with them.
3. Andy would ask people from the audience who have never heard their music or played their songs to accompany Andy on stage try to play along. These live sets were really bad in my opinion, I really did not like it.

But when I asked Andy about these live sets with random people playing along, they said it felt like it was important. And I think about this a lot actually, it's important to create an environment for people who may not be good at their craft yet, and it's important to let them experiment, grow and fail in front of others. And this is what Andy was doing and I think that's beautiful. I was really looking forward to seeing my friend and giving them a big hug at the next Trunk Space show or whatever. But now, fuck, I don't know. I wish our last conversation wasn't about Facebook.

Written by Ed Masley for the Arizona Republic

It was 2017 when two brothers started charming their way into all-ages shows at the Trunk Space, a nonprofit avant-garde arts venue housed in Grace Lutheran Church on North Third Street in Phoenix.

"They were 10 and 11 at the time," recalled Steph Carrico, who cofounded the Trunk Space in 2004. "They just kind of showed up and were asking a bunch of questions. We were like 'Where did these kids come from?'"

The boys managed to work out a deal where if they helped take out the trash or clean up afterward, they were allowed to watch the bands.

"So then they started showing up almost every night and we learned that they were homeless," Carrico recalled. "They were living with their mother, staying nearby. And it was something for them to do in the evenings."

The kids' bad situation got much worse​

The Trunk Space has been temporarily closed since March because of COVID-19, but the boys stopped coming around before that.

When Carrico heard in late June that their mother had died, she couldn't stop thinking about them, wondering if they were safe.

"I was able to get a hold of someone who was in contact with them," she said, "and found out they were living in a motel with their guardian, who's 21."

​After reaching out to other members of the Trunk Space board, Carrico started a GoFundMe page in late July, hoping to raise at least $500.

As she wrote in that initial post, "At the least, we'd like to be able to help them buy some new clothes, though it would be pretty fantastic if we were able to raise enough money to help them get established in more permanent housing."

They raised $1,000 in the first half hour.

"So I bumped the amount up to $5,000 and hit that in two days," she says. 
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By the time she shut off new donations, Carrico's GoFundMe page had raised $6,587, allowing the boys and the cousin who took them in, to get established in a new apartment.

By Chris Coplan

Ryan Avery’s something of a local music guru. Whether playing with bands like Fathers Day or Drunk and Horny, or booking shows at Trunk Space, they've been involved with hundreds of shows over the years (Avery uses they/them pronouns). Yet there’s one project that stands out among the slew of indie and punk shows: the Real Coachella festival.

​"Whenever we'd ask an artist that we want to have perform, we'd say, 'Do you want to perform under the moniker of one of the acts that are playing the other Coachella," they say. "If they said yes, then we'd say, 'Tell us the name and give us some idea of how much time you need or what you want to do. Or don't tell us at all."

The event, which ran from roughly 2005 to 2014, became a kind of satire not just of Coachella but other big, bloated festivals that dominate the music scene and draw talent and attention from smaller operations. But as Avery explains, that wasn’t always the intention.

"When we started doing the Real Coachella, that sort of shit wasn't as apparent," they say. "It was like, here's a bunch of '80s bands reuniting in the desert and people are going apeshit for it. And then indie bands that just a couple months ago that were playing the smaller stage are now thinking that's going to launch their career into something bigger. But as time progressed, it was actually becoming the worst."

They add, "The other thing that was really obnoxious, to me anyway, is it was so frustrating to see a band that we really missed reunite and then only play Coachella. Like, I wanted to see Refused so bad, but I don't want to be surrounded by people who don't care."

While the notion of a faux festival seems silly, Avery admits that all the organizers remained deeply committed to the gag at all stages of planning.

"We'd meet somewhere ridiculous; we wanted every aspect of it to be ridiculous," they say. "So one year, we met at Mastro's and we wore really nice clothes."
Along the way, Avery and company accumulated several memorable performances. There are far too many to encapsulate what made the fest great, but Avery has a couple favorites.

"My old band Night Wolf did a tribute in 2009 to Danzig where we pretty much printed out [his] Wikipedia article and rewrote parts of it to make it sound spookier and make it sound more evil, which is, like, definitely the perception that he wants to give people," they say. "So I read that on stage and my partner Andrew played Misfit and Danzig songs between every couple paragraphs. Then we ended it with the Tuba City incident. But instead of saying that he just got punched, we said that he actually died. Then we reenacted it."

Not every memorable performance had to do with music, either.

"Another performance that I really, really enjoyed, and we did it every year except the last, was JRC, the former co-owner of Trunk Space, performing the opening ceremonies as this performance art project called Pinata Party," they say. "He'd have this spiel about how important the pinata was, and then let people have turns whacking at it. Only it'd be filled with plastic vegetables or rocks or old gumballs."

The event didn't just gross folks out; it actually tricked quite a few hapless concertgoers.

"The year The Specials were going to reunite [2010], it was just some karaoke thing performed by a local ska group," Avery says. "That's the only time that we got regular hate mail from people. They're just like, 'You don't fuck with The Specials like that. I was about to fly down to Phoenix to see them play for $5 at an art gallery.' The same weekend they were going to be in California."

Or, the deeply devoted Scissor Sisters aficionado.

"They just did this real spooky thing for a couple minutes, with white face paint and candles," Avery says of the mock performance. "The person stayed for most of the show. But apparently they went up to the counter and demanded their money back. Like, okay, here's your $5."

Eventually, though, the joke ran its course. However, Real Coachella didn’t merely fold like any other festival.

"The way we decided to send off the Real Coachella, either in 2014 or 2015, was amazing," Avery says. "We'd been getting a lot of heat from this guy on the internet, and he was flagging all of our event pages on Facebook. So we put his name on the event and didn't ask any bands to perform. We told everyone it would be at The Dressing Room, but we didn't ask the people running The Dressing Room. We just set up in the parking lot dressed like ghosts and played Misfits at 16 RPM."

Avery is slightly hesitant to recall the "legacy" of Real Coachella, perhaps because that kind of thinking would only ruin the whole joke. Still, when asked if they were trying to be silly and dumb for the fun of it, or if there’s some deeper meaning, they had at least some insight.

"I wouldn't say that I want to be weird and wacky, but I would agree with the statement that normal things are boring," they say. "There's a book called Welcome to the Music Business, You're Fucked! If you're doing a local show, you're just a local band playing around your home state.

"You shouldn't be upset when people don't go to see you. Because you need to give them a reason to go outside of just seeing live music. That's the way I feel with pretty much any local event. I'm still not going to go unless there's another factor to it."

Which is to say, great music isn’t enough, and what makes a scene feel more real is how we grow and expand its larger role within a community. It’s a nice tidbit to muse on as folks sit at home, contemplating the eventual return of live music. Could that also include Real Coachella?
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"I wouldn't want to do Real Coachella again," Avery says. "I think saying respecting the legacy of what it was is accurate, but it feels like the opposite of what should be."

Who are you and are you in a band or do you perform solo? If in a band(s), what is the name of that band?
My name is Ryan Avery (they/them pronouns). I’m in a Queer Ska band called The Terri’s — we don’t have any recordings, havent played any shows and are on hiatus because of COVID but I am one of the 4 singers in the band. I also perform solo under the name “Hi My Name Is Ryan” which consists of me just singing songs and telling stories and doing other forms of performance art.

What instrument(s) do you play?
I don’t play any instruments, but I have played drums and guitar and keys for many different bands over the years.

How long have you been making music? And what first drew you to your craft?
I have been writing songs since I was a child, I have been performing live music and art since 2002. Growing up with older siblings who are into punk and alternative music drew me into the craft of writing music, and seeing live music (specifically local thrashcore/artschool band Hammered Dr. Destructo) drew me into performing live.

What was your favorite show of all the shows you’ve ever played?
Favorite Hi My Name Is Ryan show is any show where I see people cry because I know they are really feeling and hearing me.

What are you listening to during this period of social distancing?
I have been listening to music pretty much constantly since I started social distancing in the beginning of March. If it gets silent and I have to think for too long about how I am feeling I just start to cry so… music and cartoons non-stop in the house. I have been really enjoying these Golden Boots “Burning Brain Radio” mix tapes. The Golden Boots boys have this radio show in Tucson every Tuesday from 4-6 PM on 99.9FM, I never get a chance to listen to it live, but they make copies of the radio show on mix tapes later and they are such good, fun mixes.
I am also loving these Bandcamp days that Bandcamp has been doing every month (I hope they continue, but I think they are probably gonna stop). It’s fun to add things to my Bandcamp Wishlist throughout the month and then come up with a spending budget and spend all that money at once buying music from artists and know 100% of the funds are going directly to them or the organization they donate to. Then spend the next month listening to and enjoying all that new music. You can see what I am buying and wishlisting at bandcamp.com/majesticryan. My top 9 most listened to albums on my mobile Bandcamp app are
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1. The Funny Uncles “Writin’ Songs”
2. Dear Nora “Three States”
3. Various Artists “The Rebellious Jukebox Plays Northern Soul Stormers” (This is a comp of 100 different amazing Northern Soul songs)
4. Bessie Jones “Get In Union”
5. Kleenex/Liliput “Discography”
6. They Might Be Giants “Then: The Early Years”
7. Jackie Shane “Jackie Shane: Any Other Way”
8. Neo Boys “Sooner Or Later”
9. The Dezurik Sisters “Yodel and Sing Their Greatest Hits”

I would also like to mention that I feel like the musical works of Dorian Wood is the perfect soundtrack to what I feel like most of the world is experiencing right now, so I have been listening to a lot of their music since I started social distancing.

By Chris Coplan

It's a powerful little slogan you might have seen on bumper stickers around town: "Love Phoenix or Leave Phoenix." Which is to say, you can either be one of the many people to come and (promptly) go in this city, or you can adapt and thrive in this weird and wild desert.
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For plenty of people, the arts and music scene has made staying a viable (if not still challenging) option. In turn, these individuals have helped define so much of the Valley's cultural significance over the years. Here are a few such desert dwellers sharing what makes Phoenix worthy of their adoration.