Lupe Fiasco Hypes Hillary You would think that since Lupe Fiasco is from Chicago, raps about the plight of Black men, and is politically to the left, that he would put his support behind his hometown homeboy, Barack Obama. But apparently the Chi-town rapper is putting his money on Hillary,…
People are always telling me not to take things personally. “You gotta have a thick skin,” they say. “It’s not about you,” they insist. This usually follows someone saying or doing something particularly hurtful to me, and the advice just pisses me off. But then I find myself saying the…
Bubba Sparxxx The Lost Tracks FMS 00:00-00:45 of “Never Scared” I never totally understood the point of the “Lost Tracks” albums. These are songs that didn’t make the cut for whatever reason before and I’m entirely unsure what makes them worthwhile now. “Never Scared” is about as bottom of the…
I’ve blathered before about how music is an emotional experience and how, for better or worse, songs have a way of attaching themselves to the pivotal moments in our lives. I’m convinced this is especially true of our formative years, that small window of time when we’re the de facto…
Mike Marchant is trying to get his head straight. About a month ago, the Widowers frontman was mugged while walking to his home near City Park. The assault happened in the middle of the day, but Marchant’s recollection of the incident is as black as night. “Apparently, when you have…
I hate to say it, but most of what I know about wine I learned from Sideways. I saw the film several times a week when it played in theaters a few years ago. I felt like I was Miles, the mildly pathetic, frustrated writer and wine geek played by…
If Mark Darling’s name conjures visions of a Jane Austen romantic lead, the association is artistically befitting. The music made by Darling and his drumming kid brother, David, is swooningly romantic, sweepingly dramatic and stunningly poetic. Like a delirious, forbidden encounter between Nick Drake and Jeff Buckley in the afterlife,…
There’s plenty of confusion surrounding Cross Canadian Ragweed. For one thing, the band’s not Canadian; its name conflates those of Oklahoma-based bandmates Grady Cross, Cody Canada and Randy Ragsdale (joined by Jeremy Plato). Moreover, members of this other CCR have enjoyed impressive success on the country charts — their latest…
While remedies may vary, there’s no better antidote for a post-NYE hangover than a few days of bed rest followed by an all-night dance session. Something about all that sweating when you should be sleeping seems to really purge the toxins and provide a sweet jump start for the new…
While Reverend Peyton is a big dude with a booming voice, his band really isn’t that big in numbers. There’s the Rev himself, who plays a mean slide on his resonator guitar; his wife, Washboard Breezy, who scrapes the hell out of a washboard; and his younger brother, chugging away…
Prefuse 73 — the production alias of Guillermo Scott Herren — pushes the outer boundaries of hip-hop into the terrain occupied by Aphex Twin and Autechre. Slippery snippets of micro-edited samples dance elegantly for a few measures, then stop and chatter away in alien tongues. Elsewhere, jittery beats unkink and…
Mounted on cheesy, rudimentary, ’80s-style synth samples and sputtering drumbeats, the wiseacres of Pittsburgh’s Grand Buffet spent a dozen years honing their craft. While the scent of nerd is strong in the prolific pair, their off-kilter attack and literate litanies recall King Missile or They Might Be Giants more than…
Here’s a selection of the best of last week’s music blogging from around the Village Voice chain: To count down the end of the year, how about lists counting down the best things of the year? Yay! This list is by Grant Snider, and so is this accompanying cartoon…
Oklahoma-based Cross Canadian Ragweed, which stops by the Grizzly Rose on Friday, January 4 (see the appropriate Now Hear This item for more details), is an anomaly: a big-selling country band that can’t get played on country radio because its music supposedly isn’t country enough. CCR’s frontman, Cody Canada, takes…
Like most New Year’s Eve outings, the anticipation of this show outdid the event itself…
Volumes have been written about how good these two Denver legends are live, so here’s a pictorial taste of what you missed this weekend. DeVotchKa @ Mercury Cafe Slim Cessna’s Auto Club @ Bluebird Theater…
To anyone who says there isn’t any dope hip-hop coming out of Colorado: you need to have your ears checked. I’ve compiled a list of what I think were the 20 hottest songs from Colorado hip-hop artists in the last 12 months. They range from mixtape joints, freestyles, album cuts,…
Jay-Z fades to black Everyone in the hip-hop world pretty much knew it was going to happen, but Jay-Z made it official on Christmas and turned in his two weeks’ notice as president of Def Jam Records. “I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have served as president of such a culturally-defining…
I don’t want to bore you with too many personal details of my crazy 2007, so I’ll simply say that any year that includes being laid off and getting divorced is one for the record books. It’s been overwhelming at times, exhilarating at others, and frequently depressing. But the new…
After listening to a cumulative 41 hours of 97.3 KBCO’s online streaming Christmas music over the past few days, I found myself grappling with a very important question: Where was “A Hazy Shade of Winter” by the Bangles? Well, that’s not a Christmas song, you may counter. But you’d be…
Over the past decade, year-end critic’s lists have multiplied faster than the worry lines on Ben Bernanke’s brow. By now, both the Internet and the magazine rack at Barnes & Noble are brimming with head-spinning, eye-glazing permutations of praise. If you want to parse the ranking of those records in…
Earlier this year, I marveled at how my entire iPod playlist was devoted exclusively to the music made here. That was back in February, and considering that we were only two months into the new year, that might’ve seemed like a moment of breathless hyperbole. At the time, the ink…
