I sometimes wonder why so many hardworking bands, in Denver and everywhere else in the world, continue to regard the acquisition of a major-label contract as the singular goal of their musical careers. Especially after all we’ve heard: the consequences of a once-sprawling universe of imprints consolidated into only five;…
To fully prepare for a performance from the Brothers of the Baladi, who appear Friday, September 13, at Swallow Hill, you’d need to study a daunting number of phrase books: The Portland-based quintet performs in Turkish, Persian, Arabic, English and whatever other languages best serve the festive, eclectic feel of…
Leave it to Pete Wernick, aka “Dr. Banjo,” to come up with a musical hybrid that combines bluegrass with early jazz. After all, as a member of Hot Rize, he was fond of running his banjo through an electronic device called a “phase shifter.” “That got a surprisingly favorable reaction,”…
It’s like a wacked-out comedy sketch from an All That episode. The four hot young hunks of the R&B boy-band sensation B2K are hanging out backstage after their set, clowning around, exchanging high fives, playfully dousing each other’s rock-hard abs with a shaken celebratory bottle of orange soda (but being…
Amid all the weird and predictable frivolity of Elvis Week 2002, a curious seminar was held at the Fogelman Executive Center at the University of Memphis on August 15. The panelists of “Is Elvis History? 2002 and Beyond” included famed music critic and keynote speaker Greil Marcus; Presley’s most celebrated…
For the youth of America, rebellion becomes trickier every year. The radical is the norm, tattoos and piercings are more mainstream than not, and the parents of today’s kids might well be rebel kids themselves. “My mom’s favorite band is U2,” says Eddie Clendening, the barely 21 frontman for the…
Reggae is a musical approach with a captivating history — one whose less-publicized precursors and tangents are often as interesting as its more widely known achievements. But in this country, most folks know little about reggae’s rich past other than that Bob Marley put out some good records. This narrow…
Otep raised a prosthetic pig’s head high in the air and commanded the crowd to worship her. “Soldiers, you have entered the church of Otep,” she said, flipping her multi-hued hair around and grunting not so girlishly. The solitary female performer on the Ozzfest tour, Otep had exactly twenty minutes…
It’s not easy being a Morrissey fan. He’s been without a label since shortly after his last proper album, 1997’s Maladjusted, failed to impress record buyers, and a shakeup at Mercury records left him without a contract. So when he takes the stage at the Colorado Springs Music Hall on…
Having weathered a number of lineup changes, hiatuses and a name change, esovae is standing — and sounding — stronger than ever: Years of musical tribulations and triumphs have served to refine the quartet’s songwriting. Led by the vocally striking and visually stunning Marilyn Taylor, the band presents an esoteric…
When Morphine frontman Mark Sandman died of a heart attack on stage in 1999, he left behind friends, loved ones and an exceptional body of musical work. He also left behind a curious batch of crudely rendered cartoons drawn on everything from cocktail napkins and bowling score sheets to fancy…
Grand Junction, on Colorado’s Western Slope, has numerous claims to fame. It’s the largest community between Denver and Salt Lake City and, thanks to uranium tailings that once were sprinkled across the area, the most radioactive, too. Additionally, the city boasts the state’s only surviving Wienerschnitzel drive-through — a point…
If El Tri’s Alex Lora gets his way, after the nuclear holocaust, his band will be kicking out the jams for the cockroaches and Keith Richards and continuing to be a voice for the Mexican people. It’s hardly an inconceivable proposition, given Lora’s unnatural career longevity, which can be attributed…
Anyone who pays the slightest attention to popular music knows that punk rock hasn’t been the typical nihilist’s soundtrack of choice for many years, so don’t bother stopping the presses. But there remains plenty of irony in the degree to which the genre has been mainstreamed. Whereas punk acts were…
When listening to current R&B, one might marvel at its distinct lack of anything resembling either rhythm or blues. Modern-day studio auteurs like D’Angelo, Raphael Saadiq and even the abstract Madlib have certainly helped reanimate the tradition of classic Stevie Wonder-esque production, though their antiseptic arrangements usually end up pumping…
Hot Club of Cowtown’s latest release is a jaw-dropping, head-shaking collection of stripped-down Western swing, cowboy jazz and saloon send-ups. Ghost Train expertly mines the two extremes of American folk music — joy and despair — while significantly improving upon the group’s three prior recordings. What lifts Ghost Train above…
Not long after midnight on Saturday, August 3, a pair of young men whipped out handguns outside La Rumba, firing bullets into the air as clubgoers spilled out of the venue and into the night. Save for a shot-out car window — and the near-cardiac reaction of some Golden Triangle…
Hot Snakes have quite a serpentine history. Singer/guitarist Rock Froberg fronted Pitchfork and Drive Like Jehu, two late-’80s/early- ’90s San Diego bands that stabbed jarring shards of guitar and fanged invective into sinuous post-punk rhythms. Jehu’s other guitarist, John Reis, is now notorious as Rocket From the Crypt’s frat-rock ringleader,…
The Colorado Country Music Hall of Fame Fourth Annual Festival has earned the sort of official endorsement that arts groups dream about. Governor Bill Owens christened the third full week in August “Country Music Week,” recognizing the cultural value of the nonprofit CCMHOF and its yearly celebration of in-state twang…
Anyone who wants proof of the sorry state of mainstream country music needs only to look at the struggling career of thirty-year-old Allison Moorer, who by all rights should be a major star by now. The Alabama-born singer and songwriter made a big splash in 1998 when her heartfelt ballad…
Throughout the ’90s with Mazzy Star, Hope Sandoval’s voice combined with David Roback’s shimmering, darkly psychedelic slide guitar to create some of the most memorable indie music to come out of Los Angeles’s so-called paisley underground. It wasn’t exactly a rocket ride to the top: The band’s flirtation with recognition…
This week, Backbeat writers clear out their N-Z files and assess a batch of new releases from area artists. See the August 8 “Local Color” for reviews of acts in the A-M group. O’er the Ramparts Waves of Static The Ramparts should have cleaned a bit of lint out of…
