Music

Last year, the World Famous Wake Up Show connected with UrSession.com to host a hip-hop contest called the 100K Battle. This battle consisted of well-known hip-hop producers like DJ Muggs, 9th Wonder, Pete Rock, Alchemist and others, donating beats to any rapper who wanted to spit a rhyme. The beats…

Every year, in the weeks after I have submitted my year-end best-of lists, I take a few days to go through everyone else’s lists to catch things I overlooked, ignored and missed out on. This has been a ritual since the days I was only making those lists for myself,…

It’s been a little while since we heard from producer and MC Strange Powers (known to some as Shag One). But Powers is slowly getting back into the fold after working in the background with a variety of artists, plus using an alias on a variety of other music projects.”Right…

All right, so this is a new one. While most bands are content to promote their shows by sending out MySpace bulletins or posting fliers around town, leave it to John Common to come at it from a completely different angle. To spread the word about a show at the…

It was all a dream. I used to read Word Up magazine… Right about now, Neil McIntyre can relate to the sentiments in the opening lines of “Juicy,” as Biggie Smalls reflects on the framers/heroes that came before him. McIntyre, we just found out, traded verses with rap legend Kurtis…

The Bottesini Project, the completely improv project spearheaded by Creative Music Works’ Paul Riola, is taking its unique show on the road. Riola is taking the concept — spontaneous compositions created by like-minded musicians in a formal jam context — to San Francisco on Friday, May 15, at the Starry…

Neil Young ended 2008 with a bang by performing a marathon two-and-a-half-hour-long set at Madison Square Garden that was not only chock-full of classics but also included a handful of new tracks that Young wrote during his quest to turn one of his antique cars into a viable alternative-fuel vehicle…

Plenty of punk-rock fanatics claim to be founts of information about their favorite musical style — but compared to Damian Abraham, frontman for the groundbreaking Canadian hardcore combo Fucked Up, most of them seem like hopeless poseurs. In addition to a deeper-than-deep knowledge of the form’s recognized innovators, he’s able…

A cigar-smoking buddy of mine dragged me into the original Purple Martini on 15th Street (between Market and Larimer streets) back in the mid-’90s, when it was one of the first martini lounges in town. We were sitting in a booth, and my friend had just lit up a stogie…

Is it more important for an artist to be embraced by critics or loved by fans? I pose this question as the first reviews of the Fray’s new disc come rolling in — most of them unimpressed shrugs. Rolling Stone gave the record two stars out of five. “The Fray…

With an imposing array of guitar gear, including at least one full stack and a variety of pedals, many obviously modified, Warren Bedell, former frontman of the well-regarded Zombie Zombie, looks like he might be the lead player in a Sleep tribute band. As Spellcaster (due at Rhinoceropolis on Sunday,…

If you need to tempt your hipster friends to the dark side — otherwise known as real dance music — the Rapture DJs may be able to help. Not only are they a recognizable brand name (believe me, they all love “House of Jealous Lovers”) that should make your shaggy-haired,…

I was lucky enough to be invited to the recent Festival of the Fuck Bands, led in a ceremonious fashion by Fucked Up’s very own Father Damian. The festival is a chance for bands worldwide to get together, discuss music and politics, and chat about how awesome they are for…

Oh, sure, profane, sexually explicit hip-hop is nothing new. Peaches made the most ridiculous extreme of that type of thing artistically respectable — even confrontational and political. Yo, Majesty! isn’t content to be a mere curiosity either. The primary aesthetic of this act is hip-hop, but a more than cursory…

By the standards of most contemporary performers, Iris DeMent works largely off the grid. She doesn’t even have a MySpace page, and her official website, www.irisdement.com, is apparently dead. Not that modern technology has ever been her raison d’être. Her first album, 1992’s Infamous Angel, was a stunning original folk…

For the most part, it’s pointless to take a band’s name too literally. For example, I’ve stopped hoping that I’ll receive a coin every time I’m forced to listen to Nickelback. Occasionally, though, a group’s appellation perfectly captures its aesthetic, as is the case with Musee Mecanique, which headlines a…

Few bands convincingly cross genres within a career as deftly as Cynic does within a single song. These virtuosic purveyors of progressive metal from Miami are a prime example of musical ambition and the typically tumultuous response that follows revolution; critics hailed their genre-bending 1993 debut Focus as visionary, yet…

The Fray’s latest feels like a natural progression from its massively successful debut. Everything that drew listeners in the first time — the piano-driven ballads, the tasteful guitar flourishes, the dramatic builds, the soaring melodies and earnest, soul-searching lyrics — is plentiful here and more refined. The magnetism of Isaac…

In the early ’90s, Gang Starr rapper Guru helped pioneer the fusion of hip-hop and live jazz with his various Jazzmatazz groups and recordings. While he might not have been the first to mix the two, he proved that they can be worthy companions, as does TheSaurus. As the band’s…

Hailing from San Diego rather than Louisiana, Delta Spirit writes the type of music that will always be lumped in with some strain of Americana. A casual listen to the band’s music reveals roots in the folk, blues and soul that is very much a part of that tradition, but…