“I think anytime you make a record, it’s got to be a leap of faith,” contends Emmylou Harris. “Because you never know how it’s going to turn out.” Harris has plummeted into the unknown on numerous occasions over the course of her more than a quarter-century of performing and recording,…
Veteran bluesman Buddy Guy’s modesty is becoming, but sometimes he takes it too far. Take, for instance, the following statement: “I’m not a great singer and I’m not a great guitar player.” That’s absurd. Guy has an extremely strong and distinctive voice capable of enigmatic purring, full-throated roaring or unexpected…
Mike Elkerton is a rock-and-roll musician in love with Americana’s cliches. So when he’s told that his latest band, Electrolux, conjures up images of Fifties-era prison flicks, movies by Roger Corman and Russ Meyer and other cultish faves from cinema’s seedier side, it’s no surprise that he immediately relates. “I…
These are the discs of your lives. “Kitchen of rhythm/Pocket of dreams/ Falling these angels/How desperate it seems”: These lyrics, from “Lemon Ceiling,” a selection on Sponge Kingdom’s self-titled CD, offer an indication of the earnest poetics favored by the sextet. Sponge Kingdom is ultra-tasteful, and Jessica Vanden Hogen’s violin…
The members of Dr. Loco’s Rockin’ Jalapeno Band certainly know their stuff. Not only do they play distinctive msica that celebrates the Mexican-American heritage; they’re also as well-educated as the employees at many colleges. In fact, Jose B. Cuellar, aka Dr. Loco, actually teaches at one: This proud recipient of…
On Tuesday, April 2, KBPI disc jockeys Dean Myers and Roger Beaty–better known as Dean and Rog–demonstrated how well they’d learned their lesson. As every local able to turn on a radio knows, Myers and Beaty, who can be found weekdays from 6 to 10 a.m. at 106.7 FM, were…
It hardly seems strange that Sam Destefano, guitarist and lead screamer for Denver’s Hate Fuck Trio, moonlights for a band called Bob’s Lawn Service. But when fellow Trio bandmembers Pete Cassidy (bass), Jon Destefano (rhythm guitar) and Sean Weldon (drums) reveal that they’re also part of Bob’s Lawn Service, the…
Somehow it’s appropriate that the members of Love and Rockets are figuratively climbing out of their graves. As part of Bauhaus, a seminal goth band born in 1979, Rocketeers Daniel Ash, David J and Kevin Haskins helped turn a generation of teenagers into the walking dead. Then, in 1984, following…
Aisha Kandisha’s Jarring Effects Shabeesation (Rykodisc) Those of you who rail against cultural appropriation should start sharpening your knives for this one. A trance band reviled in its native Morocco because of its impolitic name (Aisha Kandisha is a she-devil of legend whose name is not spoken aloud in proper…
Jack Logan Mood Elevator (Medium Cool/Restless) Logan’s history (he’s a mechanic turned songwriting savant) has so captivated journalists that many of them have neglected to actually consider his music as anything other than a sidebar to a human-interest story. But unlike last year’s Bulk, a disc culled from hundreds of…
“We’re basically just a ham-fisted punk band,” declares Matt Wright, lead singer for Seattle’s Gas Huffer. “But I like to think that there’s a little finesse to our music, too.” There is, but it may not be apparent upon first listen. After all, the four-on-the-floor ditties produced by Seor Wright…
Although there are numerous venues in the Denver-Boulder area that spotlight jazz, all but a handful concentrate on the watered-down variety–music that’s fine in the background but less challenging than Pong. As a result, some of the region’s best jazz performers (and there are a slew of them) must choose…
It’s an hour shy of midnight on a Saturday night in early March, and a case of the Andromeda Strain seems to have brought activity in Boulder’s industrial section to a dead stop. But this apparent tranquility is deceptive. Outside one nondescript warehouse, a single beacon attracts a steady parade…
Among the winners at the 35th annual Downtown Denver Partnership awards presentation earlier this month was the Spot, at 2019 Stout Street–an operation to which few people over the age of twenty are hip. And that’s good. Because unlike most public-private efforts to do something for urban youth, the Spot…
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Murder Ballads (Reprise) “It sounds like you’re playing that at the wrong speed,” a co-worker told me as I spun this CD at my desk–and that’s as succinct an encapsulation of Cave’s pluses and minuses as you’re likely to hear. He certainly has a…
Luna was an appropriate opening act for a Lou Reed concert–perhaps too much so. As lead guitarist/vocalist Dean Wareham pulled angular, occasionally atonal lines from his six-string March 21 at the Paramount Theatre, even quasi-knowledgeable listeners couldn’t prevent visions of the Velvet Underground from dancing through their heads. One tune…
“I’ve been listening to music by Charles Manson for a long time, and I really like his songs,” reveals Ang, vocalist for Denver’s Scramblehead. “Charles Manson is interesting in the sense of his situation as a whole, and the man himself is a very interesting story, also. I decided I…
Not long ago, subcultural clans seemed a lot easier to define. For example, citizens of the hetero world once knew (or thought they knew) that the music beloved by gay men ran the gamut from ABBA and disco to show tunes and Judy Garland. By the same token, breeders were…
Radiohead’s last Denver date–October 4, 1995, at the Ogden Theatre, opening for Soul Asylum–was a show no one in the band will soon forget. Shortly after the arrival in town of the musicians (lead vocalist/guitarist Thom E. Yorke, background vocalist/guitarist Ed O’Brien, drummer Phil Selway and brothers Colin and Jonny…
South by Southwest ’96–with bullets. *At a crowded seminar entitled “Why All the Clamor for Entertainment News?”, Village Voice senior editor Ann Powers claimed that Hootie & the Blowfish are “fascinating.” Because she’s a respected professional, no one laughed at her. Perhaps one-tenth as many conventioneers checked out primers on…
The pop-music aficionados in Aurora’s Simpeltones aren’t looking for corporate sponsorship. They’ve already been involved in one such deal, and the experience left a bad taste in their mouths. “We were actually sponsored by Budweiser for a year,” explains guitarist James Dalton. “Basically, what they did was help us with…
“Before I started the band, I’d been taking singing lessons to build my confidence–because I didn’t think I could sing in front of anybody,” explains Leslie Simon, the hyperkinetic, tambourine-shaking front thang for Denver’s Simon Sez. After studying techniques that strengthened both her pipes and her sense of self-assurance, she…
