Jeff Parker, guitarist for Tortoise and Isotope 217, has never much liked conforming to expectations. “I went to school in Boston, at the Berklee School of Music,” he says. “I was in the jazz scene there–and the thing for a young jazz musician from Berklee to do was to go…
Just in case you’re curious, the music press often strikes me as an elitist institution, too. Not that I think critics should use popularity to determine who is deserving of coverage; on page 73 of this week’s issue is a piece I wrote about a pair of cult acts, Tortoise…
In this space last week, Pat Martin Bradley, executive director of the Association For Independent Music, said the new-age genre is among the strongest performers in the indie market. She’s right, of course: With only a few exceptions, major companies have shied away from new age, leaving the field open…
Black Oak Arkansas lead singer Jim “Dandy” Mangrum and his family have just spent the night huddled under a mattress in their bathtub as a string of tornadoes blew through their west Tennessee town. But when the time for an interview rolls around, he’s ready to rock–and why not? After…
“There aren’t any other women out there besides us who play hard and play fast and play proper but still possess a sexy, feminine quality,” proclaims Corey Parks, bassist for the Georgia-based rock outfit Nashville Pussy. “Most girls who can really rock out are dykes. They get all decked out…
Scott Scholz is to musical ambition what Boris Yeltsin is to vodka consumption. Rather than taking the predictable course and putting together a band dedicated to the realization of his ideas, the 21-year-old student at the University of Denver’s Lamont School of Music has formed his own movement: Neon Renaissance…
“And now, the end is near/And so I face the final curtain…” These lines–the first two from “My Way,” co-written by, of all people, Paul Anka–have proven irresistible to commentators desperately trying to sum up the life of Francis Albert Sinatra, who died last week at age 82. TV journalist…
DJ Cam The Beat Assassinated (Globetrotter/Sony Music International) Throughout last year’s Mad Blunted Jazz, DJ Cam conjured up hip-hop revelations on the DJ Shadow tip–meaning that he dispensed with lyrical excursions in order to explore the instrumental and orchestral possibilities of mixing and sampling. But although this approach was artistically…
Most of the biggest shows of the summer concert lineup are headlined by stars from the Sixties and Seventies or by Nineties artists who sound like they’re from the Sixties and Seventies. In other words, everything new is old again, as you’ll discover in the following look at the connections…
If you’re not a record-industry insider, news that the Association for Independent Music convention is being held in Denver from Wednesday, May 13, through Sunday, May 17, likely ranks just below a repeat of Full House on the excitement scale. But folks familiar with the ins and outs of the…
Is Sonic Youth the Grateful Dead of indie rock? At first the question seems laughable. Whereas much of the Dead’s appeal can be traced to the accessibility of the assortment of American music that inspired it, Sonic Youth has consistently challenged its audiences by drawing upon influences that exist on…
Compact discs’ victory over vinyl wasn’t merely a revolution of format. The change in sound quality, which at first furrowed brows, has altered the way musicians write, record and market themselves and has changed listeners’ opinions about what sounds “right.” Today wax recordings are more likely to disconcert: The way…
Denver’s Little Fyodor doesn’t care if audiences are laughing with him or at him. “That’s what your parents tell you to keep you from doing anything foolish,” he claims. “And what I’m doing is rather foolish.” Perhaps–but Little Fyodor’s musical excursions are foolish in ways that are often fascinating. For…
‘Tis the season for the announcement of summer concerts–and usually by the time they make it into print, the details surrounding them are fairly firm. But that’s not the case with KTCL’s Big Adventure, set to take place on May 30, and the Fox’s Seventies Saturday, scheduled for June 6…
Ray Wonder Good Music (Nons Records) Daybehavior Adored (Nons Records) Ask most American listeners what they think of music from Sweden and you’re apt to receive a diatribe about Abba for your trouble. But this pair of discs from Swedish combos shows that there’s more of interest going on in…
Death is a big part of Cheri Knight’s life. A former member of the Blood Oranges, an acclaimed but obscure roots band that dropped off the branch a few years back, she is finally getting noticed by music lovers nationwide thanks to The Northeast Kingdom, an album on the E-Squared…
Three million children nationwide have been identified as having “special needs,” but the term is so broad that it covers disorders from autism to lisping. Such kids generally have at least one thing in common, though: It’s often difficult for them to learn in a traditional classroom setting. Likewise, they…
Big Gipp, one of the four Atlantans behind hip-hop’s Goodie Mob, knows all about bad choices. “I had a cousin who was out there in the gang life in Denver,” he says. “And I had another cousin who got shot, and I’ve got a cousin who’s doing fifteen to life…
To date, San Francisco’s Brian Jonestown Massacre has received more press for the mock scuffle its members initiated with Portland’s Dandy Warhols than for their swirling, sprawling and sizable discography. And while the band claims to have backed off from its anti-Dandy campaign in order to shift the focus to…
A lot of people have done a lot of whining about Ticketmaster, the monolithic firm that Pearl Jam attacked several years ago. However, most people in the music trade have remained in bed with Ticketmaster anyway; even Pearl Jam is allowing tickets for its upcoming Fiddler’s Green appearance to be…
Tortoise TNT (Thrill Jockey) The next time a musician tells you that the reason he’s recycling other people’s sounds is that there are no new ideas in the world, hand him this CD. Tortoise, an instrumental sextet made up of Chicago musicians associated with innovative acts such as Eleventh Dream…
David Fox knows a thing or two about the high mortality rate of Denver bands. Fox, a longtime booster of Denver music, co-founded Alley Records in 1994, and since then, he and his partners, Mike Nile and Chris Cardone, have signed seven Colorado acts: Cosmic Pond, Dave Delacroix, Avatar, Body…
