For my money, the sounds of the 21st century were best created about twenty years ago — from the blips and bleeps of video games and the cold, sterile emanations of analog synthesizers. Unapologetically artificial, they connoted a promising future filled with jet packs, moon vacations and dinner in tablet…
Mike Jerk, of Denver’s Soda Jerk Records, and Jason Cotter, singer for local punk outfit the Family Men (who perform this Friday night at the 15th Street Tavern), are the two-man force behind the fantastically understated punk-rock mecca that is The Raven (2217 Welton). Unapologetically ramshackle, the ornithologically monikered club…
The Teenage Frames, with Hemi Cuda, Saturday, January 8, at the 15th Street Tavern, capture the snarled-lip attitude and punk posture of the Clash, New York Dolls and Ramones — not to mention their guitar licks. With the help of Steve Albini and Mike Hagler manning the boards, the latest…
The Dave Watts Motet, with Jive and Los Guarancheros, Saturday, January 8, at the Boulder Theater, celebrates the release of its new CD, Breathe, as well as the joys of life in a band that jams more than Smuckers. Led by the impressive drumming of Boulder’s Watts, who’s done time…
Elvis’s Retirement Bash and 65th Birthday Party, Saturday, January 8, at Dick’s Last Resort, celebrates what would have been the King’s official entry into his golden years and Social Security eligibility with an evening of food, music and enough pelvic gyrations to steady a space station. Consider the pork chop,…
1999 may not have produced the one great record that will forever define the last year of the century, but it did manage to offer a substantial slew of good-to-great ones in every genre. And with all of the major-label conglomerations and roster-slimming seen in the past twelve months, we…
Gwarmageddon is upon us, and since the battlefield of Armaged’don (Revelation 16:16) comes ready-prophesized as “overwrought with a rabid gathering of Neil Diamond fans,” the Ogden Theatre beckons a much safer place to be this New Year’s Eve. Oderus Urungus and his band of foul-mouthed space pirates are bringing their…
Boss 302, with the Down-N-Outs, Friday, December 31, at the 15th Street Tavern, reunite for the first time since the scrappy quintet officially left the garage for good in March. It’s not a complete reunion, however: Mike Jourgensen of Abdomen and William Hodo (formerly of Missouri’s Steerjockey) will fill-in for…
Back on her first album, 1975’s Pieces of the Sky, Emmylou Harris recorded a song called “Boulder to Birmingham.” Until that album, Harris had been known mainly as the harmony singer for Gram Parsons, the hippie country artist credited with inventing the genre of country rock. But two years earlier,…
Jamal Muhammad has a good falsetto. It’s not quite on the level of Earth, Wind and Fire frontman Philip Bailey, but it’s solid, and this is really unexpected. Because the last time Jamal Muhammad opened his mouth, there was nothing sweet in his voice. That was four years ago, when,…
You’ll learn more about the seven deadly sins watching Gilligan’s Island than listening to Ice-T’s latest sloth-ass mess. Consider this: Each episode of G’s follies features a gluttonous Skipper who gobbles everything in sight, a short-fused Thurston Howell III who blows his wrathful stack like clockwork (he and the greedy…
Our recent holiday CD roundup (“Time of the Season,” December 9) was intended to be as complete as possible, but a handful of Yuletide discs undercut this goal by arriving after deadline. Among them were Kenny G’s Faith: A Holiday Album, which I wasn’t nearly foolhardy enough to spin (a…
The Buenos Aires-born pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim has assembled a formidable array of talent for this elaborate bow to the art of Duke Ellington. Arranger Cliff Colnot has deftly adapted classic Ellington/Strayhorn big-band arrangements for a “chamber jazz” group half the size of Ellington’s peerless aggregation, employing sumptuous new…
For some, tickets to Neil Diamond’s not-really-even-close-to-being-sold-out New Year’s Eve performance at the Pepsi Center may seem like a viable gift option for the music lover who has everything — or a really expensive, ironic gift for the malcontents among us. (A simple Charlie’s Angels lunch-box might do the trick.)…
Nicholas Tremulis, with Sonia Dada, Wednesday, December 29, through Friday, December 31, at the Fox Theatre, entered the sometimes seedy world of Chicago jazz and R&B clubs as a performer at the age of thirteen, and he’s been recording music since he turned a wizened seventeen. Tremulis released two rock…
Blister 66, with Sick, Twitch and Dropsound, will headline the first-ever White Trash Christmas at the Bluebird Theater on Thursday, December 23. But this is one holiday party that Mr. Claus might just sail right over, as it’s more than likely that the boys in these bands have been a…
Buzz Bomber and the M-80s know the drill when it comes to blue-collar nights on the highbrow town, pistol-whipping themselves and whoever’s left standing with a crass, beer-fueled brand of punk-spirited music and buffoonery. Playing manic sets like fast-order fry cooks, Bomber and the band offer musical grub that’s both…
As far as the guardians of cool might be concerned, Robert Mirabal has a couple of things working against him: First, his most recognizable accomplishment is his inclusion in John Tesh’s One World video for the Public Broadcasting System, a colorful and accidentally amusing piece of footage that finds him…
The Internet is a capitalist’s dream come true: Slap up a virtual storefront, talk someone into giving you a product to sell, then sit back, relax and watch the dollars roll in. Everyone’s getting involved — “dot-com” is almost as ubiquitous as “the” these days — but only a handful…
Ever since the Grammy Awards made Beck safe for mainstream consumption, longtime fans from the Bongload Record days have most likely watched his every slack-happy move with a mixture of awe and guarded contempt. Give a guy more greenbacks and gadgetry than Santa Claus in a bull market, and it…
In recent years, it has become clear that reggae stars rank just behind teenagers and sheep as the creatures most likely to follow the group mentality. Consider two recent trends: an explosion of Bob Marley tribute material and a shift in dancehall music to socially conscious themes. Buju Banton spurred…
The punchy, introspective melodies of Sunny Day Real Estate are often clean and pretty enough that you shouldn’t mind playing them for your mother. Yet the band has always maintained enough dark Seattle rain in its sound to wash away the sugar-coating of pure pop. Sunny Day has also cemented…
