In Say It Loud!, an ambitious VH1 documentary about the musical accomplishments of African-Americans during the past century, LL Cool J talks about his first rush of fame. Stardom struck him full force at age seventeen, when his thrillingly cocky debut album, 1985’s Radio, became one of the biggest smashes…
Arthel “Doc” Watson, the legendary folk singer and guitarist, answers the phone at his home in Deep Gap, North Carolina, where he lives with his wife, Rosa Lee. “Hello,” he says. “Who is this?” I state my name and purpose and inquire how he’s doing. “If I complain,” he says…
What happens when a bunch of bona fide band geeks go on vacation? For members of Drum Corps International, the answer often involves a lot of cramming into confined spaces, public airing of bodily functions, plenty of communal nudity and a whole lot of marching around in funny hats. Each…
Like most of Paul Westerberg’s post-Replacements work, Stereo and Mono are most listenable when the artist conveys vulnerability without the sappiness he often mistakes for maturity. The curiously named Stereo, essentially a solo project featuring sparse instrumentation and slower tempos, sports the most effective examples of Westerberg at his post-Winona-dating…
Even before my first spin of Fed to Your Head had ended, I sensed that the album would inspire strongly contradictory feelings, and a brief prowl across the Internet confirmed my suspicions. An online reviewer at ink19.com likened Scorched Earth to “a third-rate Lenny Kravitz” and concluded with comments that…
David Barber spent his last day as president of the Colorado Music Association in the organization’s Broadway office, doing paperwork and staring at a computer screen. “I’m sitting here entering names into a database, basically, because no one else would,” he says. “But I think this is the last time…
Meet Sydney, Australia’s latest musical export, the Vines, a former Nirvana cover band currently shilling Highly Evolved (Capitol), a sneering foray into metal-tinged pop. Just a few short months after their stateside debut at the Coachella Music Festival, the Vines are winding their way across the country on their very…
Though Aloke Dutta, the writer, spiritualist and master of classical Indian tabla percussion, claims the headlining space at the Gothic Theatre on Saturday, July 27, opener Katalyst provides a compelling incentive for early arrival. The Denver band, which began as Wicked Groove six years ago, is a testament to the…
Our everyday experiences have more influence on our music than anything else does,” says Dan Matz, singer and guitarist of Windsor for the Derby, a group whose members split their time between upstate New York and Austin, Texas. “All sorts of everyday things inspire me. I could write a song…
Kyle “Scratch” Jones of the Philly-bred group the Roots thinks it’s just about time for the return of the beatboxer. He’s so confident that hip-hop heads will embrace the mouthy art that he’s just dropped a solo release, The Embodiment of Instrumentation, which showcases his ability as a producer and…
After years of quietly making music with impeccable underground cred, it would seem that Marc Bianchi and his longtime partner/sometime bandmate, Keely, have created a monster with their musical project, her space holiday. Last year, they released a second album, Manic Expressive, which received accolades from the music press on…
Optometry is hardly the first album to mingle jazz, hip-hop and DJ culture. It’s not even the first platter to do so on Thirsty Ear: In June 2001, Spring Heel Jack, a London duo that’s rightly viewed as an innovator in the drum-‘n’-bass subgenre, unleashed its own entry in Thirsty…
One of the less constructive myths to come from our recent Age of Self-Esteem is that anyone anywhere can be a genius, given the appropriate care and feeding of his or her tender muse. Bullshit. As the Pixies proved, genius is born like Athena, fully grown from the head of…
There’s a handwritten notice taped to the window of the Squire Lounge, a not-necessarily clean, well-lighted (with fluorescent bulbs) place on Colfax at Williams, just across the street from one of the city’s few 24-hour Taco Bells. In a Magic Marker scrawl, the sign advises patrons that, owing to a…
Jim Carroll’s ties to Colorado go beyond a few spoken-word performances at Boulder’s Naropa Institute with the late Allen Ginsberg. Thanks to the black trenchcoat worn by Leonardo DiCaprio in a disloyal film adaptation of Carroll’s 1978 cult memoir, The Basketball Diaries, Carroll found himself unfairly connected to the rampage…
Mosaic’s sound is not for the jamophobic: The band’s overarching embrace of blues, funk and even countrified rock lies squarely on the freewheelin’, groove-happy side of the stylistic divide. But the dueling-frontwoman dynamic that exists between vocalist Jessica Goodkin and guitarist/vocalist Wendy De Rosa works as a grounding agent: Goodkin,…
In the last ten months, the public image of the New York Police Department and former mayor Rudy Giuliani have undergone makeovers as drastic as those performed on tawdry daytime talk shows, where delinquent reprobates turn into model citizens with the help of some cosmetic rehabilitation. This point is not…
Joel Haertling doesn’t lack high-art credentials. A slight, brisk-mannered fellow with a weakness for vintage suits and snappy fedoras, he’s worked alongside director Stan Brakhage on a number of projects, even joining the well-known avant-gardist at a series of European festivals where celluloid offerings made by Haertling were also viewed…
With impeccable timing, Syd Barrett appeared at Abbey Road studios in the spring of 1975 after seven years in a sanatorium. His old bandmates were adding the finishing touches to “Shine On, You Crazy Diamond” — a tribute to Barrett’s drug-enhanced schizophrenia and the lengthy centerpiece of Wish You Were…
In some ways, artists whose debuts are lousy, or competent, or fairly strong but not fabulous, have an easier time of it than do performers who knock the cover off the ball during their first at-bat. After all, no one counts on acts that occupy the vast qualitative middle ground…
Can the music be called Brit pop if the musicians in question take more influences from the Mississippi Delta than from their Liverpool-area origins? Lacking a better term, Gomez describes its music as “psychedelic blues.” And while there’s no easy way to explain the trippy country-blues-electronica-folk-rock genre melt that defines…
Electronic-music promoters have had a tough go of things in Denver for the last couple of years, ever since a statewide crackdown on clandestine events pushed most parties up from the underground and into more conventional venues. Today’s club events may lack the spontaneous, kitchen-sink-and-disco-ball thrill of the golden age…
