Discussions about Desaparecidos on music-oriented Web bulletin boards — virtual forums where serious fans can dissect their faves 24 hours a day — indicate that it takes some work to pronounce the band’s name. “Day-suh-par-eh-see-dohs,” offers one helpful user at audiogalaxy.com. But perhaps that’s part of the idea behind the…
To paraphrase a famous musical meditation on solitude: As numbers go, two can be just as desperate, miserable and lonely as one. Over the past couple of years, several duos have shown us that simply equipping an outfit with both a boy and a girl does not guarantee anima-like harmony…
Talk about your feel-good stories. During his youth, Walser specialized in authentic country music before joining the National Guard. But in 1994, nearly four decades later, he retired from the service and reached for his guitar again. And even though he was considerably grayer and rounder than he’d been the…
Carl Cox may be one of the best Detroit DJs who actually hails from Manchester, UK. Not that the tribal-house guru hasn’t repeatedly blazed through Motor City during his quarter-century of jockeydom. It’s just that he bottles a particular blend of soul tech, futurescape electro and throbbing club vibe that’s…
With so many alter egos and in-jokes flooding Negativland’s Universal Media Netweb (social critic Crosley Bendix, psychiatrist Dr. Oslo Norway and the smarmy Weatherman among them), keeping track of who’s who is more of a nuisance than a necessity. Core member Richard Lyons sometimes bullies the pulpit in drag as…
In 1993, the Breeders surprised everyone by going platinum overnight and then imploding almost as suddenly. Nearly ten years later, it’s good to know that Kim Deal — former Pixies bassist, current multi-instrumentalist and perennial patron saint of smart indie pop — still believes in the band as much as…
Rachel Simring’s sultry husk of a voice is reason enough to head to either of her new band’s shows this week: Rachel’s Playpen appears Thursday, February 21, at Sportsfield Roxxx, and Friday, February 22, at Cricket on the Hill. Unfortunately for those who fear a triple threat, vocals are only…
Record collectors have long known that there’s more to a slab of vinyl than whatever music is captured in the circular depressions rotating beneath the turntable’s needle. There’s the kinesthetic appeal of the material, at once so fragile and yet so sturdy, and the almost meditative quality of those shiny…
Comeliness is the only credential most youthful heartthrobs need. After all, good genes and an attractive mug are more than enough to justify the video and magazine exposure that fills the brief careers of typical nouveau hunks or pubescent toy boys. But while twenty-year-old British swoon-inducer Craig David certainly benefits…
At the end of last year, many businesses and music fans declared victory when the Denver City Council approved an ordinance allowing patrons over the age of sixteen to play with the big kids at approved establishments that provide both booze and entertainment. The city had changed its all-ages enforcement…
In Jack Kerouac’s book Tristessa, the eponymous junkie heroine reflects the Buddhist tenet “Life is suffering.” San Diego’s Tristeza (Saturday, February 16, at the 15th Street Tavern, with Pinkku and VU) doesn’t take the suffering trip, but, like Kerouac, the combo does meditate upon the meaning of life with its…
Drummer Kenny James has done time in so many local outfits, from Sympathy F and the Samples to United Dope Front and Judge Roughneck, that one might think he has some sort of chameleon type of musical sensibility. The famously active local skinsman — who last appeared on local stages…
There’s a scene in the Coen Brothers’ movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? in which a promoter by the name of Mr. French drops in at a rural Mississippi radio station to see if he can track down the Soggy Bottom Boys, whose song, “I Am a Man of Constant…
Those of you without daughters or sisters born after 1990 may be in the dark about Aaron Carter. So here are the key facts. He’s the younger brother of Backstreet Boys hunkaroo Nick Carter. (Nick’s the blond one who was arrested last month in a Tampa, Florida, nightclub, either because…
It is a Monday night in LoDo, and a famous sky is melting. Over and over on a multimedia screen, the blue swirls and golden orbs of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” dissolve and re-form, accompanied by a fittingly kaleidoscopic live soundtrack. Shadowed before the dripping images, Denver jazz saxophonist Pete…
These days, Bill Doss, a key member of the Elephant 6 collective and a co-founder of Olivia Tremor Control, likes to refer to himself in print as “thebilldoss,” or, when he’s in a hurry, “tbd” — both good examples of how he’s able to freshen up familiar ingredients by giving…
Is our little Cornelius all growed up now? Keigo Oyamada’s newest album, Point, manages to preserve the wide-eyed sense of wonder that made his previous release so precious, but this time, he’s clearly on his best behavior. Cornelius’s last album, Fantasma, released in 1998, was one of those universally acclaimed…
Originally, Groundwork was a concert series built to raise money for a variety of sustainable, ongoing food projects around the world, including establishing orchards in Eritrea, producing natural honey in Armenia and building community-wide backyard livestock development in Sierra Leone. The group stayed true to its name by getting down…
How long does it take for a new art form to be embraced as legitimate by the music-listening public, a group that, as any modern radio programmer can tell you, is generally wary of change? Judging by the recent surge in the popularity of turntablism, about 25 years. Ever since…
W.C. Clark is one of those blues artists who is totally happy playing to faithful patrons in small clubs. In Austin, his hometown, he can regularly be found at modest East Side venues such as the Victory Grill and Charlie Playhouse. After roughly fifty years on the Austin blues circuit,…
Belly up to the Marshall stack when the local heroes of Abdomen inflict structural damage to pop architecture on Friday, February 8, at the 15th Street Tavern. Guitarist Mike Jourgensen nails hummable hardcore to the wall with the effects-laden skill of a master carpenter. Measuring psychedelic speed-metal to fit the…
Tan, rested and cocky, Tommy Womack returned to Nashville from a Carnival cruise late last summer with a bounce in his step. “The world was wonderful,” he says. “I got a copy of the new Dylan album in advance that nobody else had. I just met Bill Wyman at a…
