It was due in stores by July, but a lifetime of memories does not come easy to a man whose first hit came 41 years ago, when he was a member of a Sun Records roster that included Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and a boy named Elvis. So the…
Keeping up with the doings of Colorado Public Radio (CPR) is like tracking a major corporation in a perpetual acquisition mode. The statewide system of stations, overseen by Max Wycisk and run from the Denver offices of KCFR-FM/90.1, is forever looking for ways to add members to its family, whether…
Mark Eitzel West (Warner Bros.) Eitzel is one of those guys who could shoot the president and still not end up on the nation’s front pages. He served as frontman for the American Music Club, but the act never achieved anything more than cult status in its eleven years of…
In all likelihood, those of you who’ve not yet joined the computer revolution are blissfully unaware of the entertainment Web site competition that’s heating up online. Digital City Denver, an invention of America Online, was the first to jump into the fray, with a service that provides a wide variety…
The late Christopher Wallace, who went by the names Biggie Smalls and the Notorious B.I.G., is represented on the Billboard roster of best-selling albums by Life After Death, which at this writing remains the third most popular recording in the country nine weeks after its release. “Hypnotize,” the lead single…
Vince Clarke, the instrumental ringleader of the pop duo Erasure, has cast a large shadow over the field of electronic music. As a founding member of the seminal Eighties electro-bands Depeche Mode, Yazoo (aka Yaz) and the Assembly, he used his formidable musical abilities to create a genre that led…
Even musicians who’ve played hundreds of concerts can usually cite a single show that was pivotal to their careers. The members of Colorado’s Fiddlin’ Foresters are no different–but their definitive gig certainly was. “One of the big turning points for us that really helped us gel,” notes Foresters guitarist Jane…
With the programmers at MTV playing far fewer music videos than they have in years past, simply getting a clip onto the network is a victory of sorts for young bands on the rise. But for the ska-punkers in Detroit’s Suicide Machines, breaking onto the airwaves has been a mixed…
Amanda Rootes, the aptly named platinum blonde who fronts the English punk outfit Fluffy, has something important on her agenda. She reveals, “We’re just about to get our wigs done.” Do any of you punk-rockers have a problem with that? If so, you’re hereby instructed to share your feelings with…
Prior to Beck Hansen’s May 22 appearance at Red Rocks, I had seen him give two of the worst performances of all time–the first in April 1994 at Boulder’s Ground Zero, the second in July 1995 at Fiddler’s Green as part of that year’s Lollapalooza festival. These shows were dreadful…
The Holmes Brothers Promised Land (Rounder) Most of the CD stores that stock material by the New York-based Brothers Holmes–and not nearly enough of them do–place it in the blues section, as if that’s the only kind of music that three African-Americans of a certain age could possibly be making…
Scott Willhite is a man of many moods. He’s best known in these parts as the guitarist for Turnsol, an overtly accessible modern-rock aggregation that’s built up a sizable local following (the band opens for Zeut at the Bluebird Theater on Saturday, May 24). But he also possesses (or is…
“I don’t want punk credibility,” intones Henry Rollins, “because that would mean I’d have to have a heroin habit, shitty hair, no muscle tone and a girlfriend with pins hanging out of her tits.” No question about it: Rollins, 36, gives good quote–and he’s parlayed his way with the English…
Punk icon turned burly entrepreneur Henry Rollins claims not to care what journalists think about him or his most recent album (see page 79). But his comments about Beck, arguably the most critically acclaimed pop musician of the past several years, suggest that he might harbor a certain resentment for…
Beck Hansen is tired. He’s in England, a country where hot American acts are routinely vilified by reviewers who are suspicious of any trend that did not get its start from them. Beck, however, has somehow been spared this treatment. Since his arrival in Britain, he has been lauded, feted,…
At a recent battle-of-the-bands contest sponsored at Lafayette’s Centaurus High School by the community’s police department, the five local teenagers known collectively as the Gashcats were subjected to unseasonably cold temperatures, stinging winds and no fewer than four power outages. But what drummer Sean Merrell, singer Adam Beckley, lead guitarist…
Notes from the local underground. The first thing you hear on pianist David London’s new CD is London himself, sounding like a homegrown Fabio. “My name is David London,” he says over a lush backing track, “and this is my creation, Music on the Rocks. My main reason for writing…
The song that introduced Carol van Dijk, vocalist and guitarist for Bettie Serveert, to the pop-music audience as a whole was 1992’s “Tomboy.” The tune’s title is an appropriate one; on it, the singer’s voice exudes a friendly, genderless, Huck Finn quality. Dust Bunnies, her band’s latest album, indicates a…
“I guess you could call us a garage-punk band,” says Mike Maker, vocalist and spokesman for Spokane, Washington’s Makers. “I could see why some people would think that, because of the way we look and the way we sound. But I hate to call ourselves that, because I hate most…
Like countless groups before it, Denver’s Electric Summer formed on a university campus. But there’s a difference between the average college combo and this punk-rock quartet. You see, the school in question is Teikyo Loretto Heights University, a southwest Denver institution that’s primarily populated by students who are natives of…
Radish Restraining Bolt (Mercury) Hate to break it to you, Kurt, but this is what the movement you popularized has come to–imitations of you by a fifteen-year-old kid from Texas. Ben Kweller is his name, and he’s got your style nailed. The throaty vocals, the distorted guitars, the punchy songwriting,…
When asked why he plays the music he does, blues singer-songwriter Guy Davis quotes a line borrowed from Son House: “The blues chose me.” When he elaborates, however, his words are his own. “In whatever I do, I intend to continue to play the blues. It’s just a part of…
