Jonathan Smith, aka Lil Jon, can recognize an opportunity when he sees one. Consider his reaction to a routine by skit-master Dave Chappelle, whose self-named program, Chappelle’s Show, has become a breakout hit on Comedy Central. During one episode, Chappelle portrayed Lil Jon as a de facto lunatic whose vocabulary…
I never really considered myself a singer,” says Year Future’s Sonny Kay with a laugh. “Especially not in Angel Hair. That would have been a little ridiculous.” Kay isn’t exaggerating. Angel Hair, an outfit he fronted in Boulder in the early ’90s, has since become legendary for its flesh-peeling, bone-scouring…
When Robert Smith commissioned his nieces and nephews to scribble the artwork for the Cure’s new self-titled album, he had three simple requests for them: Draw a good dream; draw a bad dream; and make sure to include the words “The Cure.” The results resemble the scrawled art parents lovingly…
There’s no disputing the historical importance of Live at Max’s Kansas City. Recorded in 1970 and released two years later, it was a serendipitous document of what wound up being the Velvet Underground’s last show with Lou Reed. The album, though, has always undeniably sounded like shit. Captured on a…
Dan “The Automator” Nakamura isn’t infallible, but he’s damn close. From Doctor Octagon to Handsome Boy Modeling School to Gorillaz, the respected beat-maker and producer has parlayed a string of innovative collaborations into almost universal critical applause. His latest project, a partnership with vocalist Daryl Palumbo of the emo-core juggernaut…
DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid has worked with and reworked artists as dissimilar as Arto Lindsay, Sublime and William Parker. He writes columns, books, copious liner notes and songs with enigmatic titles. He is also a visual artist credited with being one of the leaders of the “illbient” music genre…
Live at Bonnaroo is one man, one voice, one amplified acoustic guitar and tens of thousands of festival revelers in a big field in Tennessee. Having played with several groups at last year’s Bonnaroo Music Festival, Haynes, one of the busiest guys on the roots-music scene, managed to break from…
As a movement, emo is notably easy to ridicule. After all, its practitioners tend to be self-conscious, self-pitying, self-loathing and self-obsessed — a collection of traits even Narcissus would have a tough time topping. Fortunately, My Chemical Romance’s major-label bow avoids emo’s worst pitfalls (most of the time, anyhow) and…
A live, acoustic-leaning doughnut from the same series of shows that birthed the recently released Night of Joy, Über Cobra reminds us why the Panic came on the radar in the first place. The first two tracks, a bubbling take on Neil Young’s “Walk On” and the band’s own “Wonderin’,”…
From a marketing standpoint, Tyfoid Mary’s got a lot of things going for it, including a pun-friendly name and bandmembers who fit snugly within contemporary metal’s two most popular visual categories: bald and bold (singer Jerry Harper and drummer “Dugan” Demongey) and hairy and scary (guitarist Scott Seidl and bassist…
Many bizarre, X-Files-worthy theories claim that the earth’s center, rather than being a blazing chunk of molten ore, is actually hollow and populated by gnome-like necromancers and mystic elves. Fort Collins power trio Core of the Earth (playing Friday, August 13, at the 15th Street Tavern) sounds like it could…
How many times do I have to say it? Hip-hop doesn’t kill people. People kill people. Unless you’ve been sequestered in a shack in the middle of nowhere for the past two months, you’ve heard about the so-called “wilding” in LoDo back in mid-June. And by now you certainly know…
Sebadoh rolls into Denver amid rampant speculation about a possible full-fledged reunion, triggered by a short tour earlier this year and frontman Lou Barlow’s musings on the web. ” no plans as of yet,” he told an inquisitive reporter from Pitchfork Media. “But we’re feeling some tingle in that direction.”…
Laramie, Wyoming, is a far cry from the urban borough of Queens, New York. And yet Teenage Bottlerocket — Laramie’s biggest punk-rock export — is in spiritual accord with that most legendary gang of Big Apple pinheads, the Ramones. Born from the Homeless Wonders, a staple of the Front Range…
Few bands walk the genre tightrope better than Fear Factory (above). Combining death-metal intensity, industrial precision and vocals that can actually be deciphered, the act strikes chords with headbangers and the technology-obsessed alike. One has only to look at the band’s more notable moments: Demanufacture’s fury, Fear Is the Mindkiller’s…
In the context of the Curiosa Festival, an apparent attempt to build an Ozzfest-like event around the nostalgia-fueled rediscovery of Robert Smith, Mogwai (below) is the odd band out. In a lineup that’s chock-a-block with acts heavily indebted to the man with the pastiest complexion in show business, this Glaswegian…
If there’s an award for most-improved female death-metal band, the academy gives the satanic salute to Kittie. While 2001’s Oracle fell on the unlistenable side of awkward, Until the End, the outfit’s latest effort, proves this cat has landed on its feet. Built on a bottom-heavy Pantera crunch, melody seeps…
There, in a dark corner of the thrift store, trembling beneath a pile of Commodore 64s and busted answering machines, you might find a Casio. Never considered much of a serious musical instrument, the Casio keyboard is the type of cheap, disposable noisemaker you might have let your younger siblings…
Beauty may be only skin deep, but bad goes straight to the bone — for George Thorogood, anyway. But the slide-guitar guru wasn’t exactly “Born to Be Bad.” Before he started playing the blues, Thorogood played minor-league baseball — and if not for a pivotal concert by John Hammond in…
If any more proof was needed to bolster the claim that the public education system — and, indeed, society itself — is barreling straight into the crapper, behold Forth Yeer Freshman. The arch-nemesis of intellectuals and spellchecks everywhere, FYF has been wrecking eardrums and test scores across Colorado and the…
When electronic music was first gaining a foothold in America in the early ’90s, Denver’s Eric Galavis, or DJ Hipp-E, was at the forefront of the movement, throwing raves and deejaying as part of the Energy Posse and A&E Productions. Hipp-E essentially put Denver on the map. Now based in…
Darrell Robinson knows what it’s like to ride in the back of the bus. To be scorned, mocked, even spit on. But he suffered these slings and arrows not because of the color of his skin, but for the content of his record crates. Robinson is a house DJ, born…
