The concept behind the widely ballyhooed Mr. Barman is all but irresistible. After all, the current hip-hop scene is a testosterone circus, with one rapper after another swaggering into the center ring to declare that he’s a street-smart urban prince, a mack daddy extraordinaire, the El Supremo of Pipe Laying…
For a brief moment in the ’70s, James Talley appeared poised for stardom. His songs of hard-working Americans were championed by critics and even caught the ear of Jimmy Carter. Despite all the attention, though, units didn’t move, and soon Talley, who had previously done everything from graduate work to…
Lampchop, Kurt Wagner’s ten-man Nashville clique, backed Vic Chesnutt on last year’s The Salesman and Bernadette, a truly strange album featuring country, white soul and electronic droning played for emotional unreadability. For Nixon, the band has expanded to seventeen pieces for some solid tuneage. On its own, though, Lambchop is…
Michael Christie is not unlike many of the musicians in Denver. In his free time — a commodity severely limited by repeat trips to places like Zurich and Sydney — he and his buddies get together and, ya know, jam a little. The difference, perhaps, is that Christie prefers a…
Though the group Ulali, Thursday, April 6, at the Old Main Chapel on the University of Colorado campus in Boulder, is named after a songbird, don’t expect its members to chirp like Anne Murray in concert. The trio is composed of Pura Fe Crescioni, Soni Moreno and Jennifer Kreisberg, and…
Drummer Tom Tilton and pianist Joe Bonner continue a 25-year relationship with Spring Impressions in Jazz, Friday, April 7, and Saturday, April 8, at Vartan’s Jazz Club, a program that promises both creative arrangements and a fresh instrumental approach. Bonner, who has played with such giants as Pharoah Sanders and…
As evidenced by the recently released documentary Beyond the Mat, wrestling, in all its violent glory, is for adults. And local wrestling — not that bawdy WWF-Hollywood crap — is the real deal. Luckily, in Denver we have the Central Wrestling Organization to satisfy our lust for blood. For those…
Anyone who’s ever complained about the difficulties of escaping the shadow cast by a parent should be shamed into silence by the story of Femi Anikulapo-Kuti. After all, Femi’s dad, the late Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, wasn’t just a star in his native Nigeria and many other African nations. He was a…
Eric Bachmann recently had a revelation. He realized that he liked writing songs. He liked writing them so much that he came up with a name for a new project — Crooked Fingers — and wrote an entire album full of tunes, with verses and choruses and Bachmann singing like…
Martha Stewart recently introduced her spring line at Kmart. Lovely, it is: full of pastels and flowers and festive little patterns that are meant to invite all kinds of feelings of renewal and meditations on the rebirth of all living things. (Not to mention feelings of inadequacy if the dishtowels…
Many fans of underground or cult performers are purists of an especially intractable type. Not only do they take pride in the fact that their favorite sounds are like sandpaper on the eardrums of the majority of listeners, but they’re flat-out offended when said music is tinkered with to up…
Usually when the lives of “white trash” are evoked at all, they’re played for laughs (Southern Culture on the Skids springs to mind), some particularly degenerate brand of tragedy (Will Oldham), or both (any number of Bloodshot Records bands). Phil Lee, on the other hand, works the expected trash stereotypes…
Jazz artists of every stripe in recent years have tried to tackle the colossal musical legacy of the late John Coltrane. Despite varying degrees of success, the proliferation of contemporary players willing to take on the Coltrane challenge is a giant step in the right direction. At a time when…
There are roughly 1,061 miles between Denver and Austin, Texas. It’s a journey that takes the average driver — traveling at the recommended speed, of course — about twenty hours to complete (or, to be more specific, 1164 minutes if you follow the route provided on www.mapquest.com, which takes you…
Culminating pop-bop sensibilities, Joshua Redman, Sunday, April 2, at the Gothic Theatre, is a tenor tour de force. Redman’s maturity as a leader and his sophisticated arrangements have earned him unprecedented accolades from the jazz community since 1991, when he won the prestigious Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Competition. Now,…
Munly, aka Jay Munly, aka Jayson Munly Thompson, Friday, March 31, with Maraca 5-0 and Hoochie at the Raven, plies a variety of kitchen-sink Americana that gives a wonderful new meaning to the phrase “gross domestic product.” Originality must have been the most abundant of the many strange elements saturating…
Springtime in Denver brings with it the promise of sporadic rain and snow. While that’s good news for skiers, it’s an unwelcome guarantee of more slush and gloom for those who are ready to revel in sunshine. Caribbean Playtime, Sunday nights at Calypso Caribbean Beach Club & Cafe, provides an…
Hip-hop in Denver, says the MC and rapper known as Apostle, is all skeleton and no meat. All foundation but no house. The dream of unity if not yet the reality. “You go into any mom-and-pop store in Denver, I swear everyone’s a rapper,” he explains. The challenge, then, is…
“I like trying to remain mysterious,” says Michael Schwartz, whose turntablist nom de plume is Mix Master Mike. “It’s like hitting and running — hit the spot, then go home and work on the formula until my next call comes, and I get a chance to show people real hip-hop…
Richmond Fontaine is best known for its haunting country-punk sound and the troubled characters that populate its songs. But while the talented four-piece from Portland, Oregon, is enamoured of dark themes, the band hasn’t succumbed to the same bad fortune that fascinates its lead singer. “I feel more comfortable with…
Here’s more proof that C&W authenticity doesn’t mean jack anymore. Kelly Hogan, whose past gigs have included stints with the Jody Grind and the Rock*a*Teens (not to mention a day job doing publicity for the very label that released this disc), is no one’s idea of a homegrown country chanteuse…
It’s easy to be amazed by Voodoo, D’Angelo’s long-anticipated followup to 1995’s Brown Sugar. The album speaks to ancestors, both musical and historical, as experienced as on the prayer “Africa.” And it does so in language that those ancestors would surely understand. You can imagine the spirits of a rich…
