‘Eighteen years ago, bluesman Otis Taylor, a longtime fixture at the Denver Folklore Center, walked away from his career as a professional musician with hardly a second thought. “I just quit, because I decided I didn’t need that lifestyle,” Taylor reminisces. “I tend to be the type of person that…
A rule governing participants in the second annual Westword Music Awards Showcase, set to take place September 22 at a variety of LoDo venues (see the ballot on page 94 for more details), states that nominated acts can’t be signed to major labels; after all, such folks are not exactly…
At the Lion’s Lair during the waning hours of a Thursday in late August, the hipsters have gathered. Knots of musicians, fans and hangers-on cluster around the venue’s bar, patting backs, exchanging gossip and otherwise epitomizing all that is fresh and modern and now about nightlife in the Nineties. In…
Nearly God Nearly God (Durban Poison/Island) Obviously, Tricky isn’t lacking in confidence; conceding that he’s “nearly” God, as opposed to “better than” God, for instance, doesn’t exactly constitute a gusher of modesty. However, Tricky earns his egotism; while Nearly God can’t top his solo debut, Maxinquaye (which is among the…
In the July 11 edition of this here column, I told you about Area 39, a new club (owned by Johnson frontman Haylar Garcia) that features an on-site recording facility. Obviously, the venue/studio notion is an idea whose time has come–and the Bluebird Theater, at 3317 East Colfax, is trying…
To most of his friends and neighbors in Colorado Springs, the notoriously conservative town where he’s lived for the past thirty years, Stephen Scott is simply a professor of music at Colorado College. But to listeners interested in the development of classical music during the twentieth century, Scott, 52, is…
Gene Simmons’s famous tongue is wagging like Lassie’s tail on breeding day. A publicity vampire, he’s been starved of the press for a long, long while, at least in America. Although his albums sold respectably into the Nineties, even many onetime fans thought of him as a campy figure from…
So its lead singer has long hair, its grabbiest instrumentalist is a female violin player, its CD sports a secret bonus track and its live shows attract dozens of flannel-adorned air guitarists. Does that mean Boulder’s Sponge Kingdom is just another hippie band? Not so fast. Beneath the exterior of…
“My balls are smokin’, my ass is on fire,” sings ex-Throttlemen leader Rex Moser, who’s fronting a new band, Jetredball. “Hot chili, it’s you I desire.” If the first image this lyrical slice from the song “Hot Chili” arouses in you is a smiling portrait of Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, you’ll…
The Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Association Telethon gets no respect. Although most daily newspapers carry a perfunctory paragraph or two about fundraising totals following the annual Labor Day event, the Telethon receives far more ink as a result of demonstrations staged by dystrophic protesters who feel demeaned, marginalized or otherwise…
Those flyers referring to Spell’s Friday, August 30, date at the Bluebird Theater (with the Apples, Space Team Electra and Social Joke) as the act’s last Denver gig are a bit overstated–but only a bit. The trio, which features drummer Garrett Shavlik, guitarist Tim Beckman and bassist Chanin Floyd, hasn’t…
Diversity is a goal that many in the Boulder music scene try to achieve. But rarely is so much of it found in one person, as is the case with Beth Quist. A connoisseur of sound, she sports a resume that seems more like a U.N. mediator’s than an entertainer’s…
Now in his mid-fifties, country blues guitarist/ vocalist John Hammond has held up well. His thick crop of hair shows no traces of male-pattern baldness. His figure, often accented by stylish suits, remains svelte. And his voice has never sounded better–which is remarkable given the fact that he’s spent a…
There’s a good reason why Al Green, perhaps the greatest male soul singer still among the living, appears on so many late-night television shows but is seldom interviewed by the programs’ hosts. While his performances are instantly accessible, his conversations are determinedly non-linear. He’s unfailingly chipper and pleasant, but he…
“My vibe switch is on right now,” says Busta Rhymes, one of the most vital personalities to break out of the hip-hop scene in eons. “So I can’t stop. Because when your vibe switch is off, you can’t do shit about it until the vibe comes back and you can…
Consider the plight of America’s small-town punks. Over the past two decades the punk-rock subculture in cities and media centers has grown from a snot-nosed, nihilistic infant to a bratty but terribly trendy adult. But as recently as a few years ago, high school outcasts from the heartland were still…
As an act becomes more successful, its relationship to music critics mutates in tangible ways. Take the frequency with which artists do interviews with the print media, for example. New performers trying to make a name for themselves will talk to anyone, anytime: high school students putting out mimeographed fanzines,…
Twenty-something singer-songwriter Dar Williams confesses, “I’m probably getting a little more hype than I’m worth.” This becoming display of modesty is prompted by a line from a recent edition of Stereo Review; a critic there dubbed her “the Great Folk Hope.” To Williams, this designation is flattering but somewhat premature…
These notes are for you. Tippy, from the cranium of Denver’s Neil Slade, reminded me of Seventies-vintage Todd Rundgren in its juxtaposition of pure pop melodies, sometimes arch lyrics, challenging structural conceits and substantial ambition. “Shauna,” “Couch” and several others are extremely hummable, yet they also ask for (and reward)…
Nas It Was Written (Columbia) The reported death of gangsta rap has been greatly exaggerated: It Was Written entered the Billboard sales charts at number one, and three weeks later, it’s still there. But although this album contains the usual verbal allotment of niggas, bitches, gats and gunshots (as well…
On August 16, 1977–nineteen years ago this week–Elvis Presley died. But while the general public believes he’s at rest on the property of Graceland, his Memphis home, Carol Downey, perhaps Denver’s most devoted Elvis booster, knows the truth. “I don’t think he’s there,” she says. “I don’t think they moved…
In May, I derided Denver’s electronic media and the folks at our fair city’s daily newspapers for their hysterical coverage of an altercation between kids and cops during a punk-rock show at an area Veterans of Foreign Wars hall. Well, the coverage of the ruckus in Morrison on August 5,…
