Michael Roberts didn’t do me any favors as my predecessor in this position. For one, he promised, though not in print, that he would review every single local release to pass through the Westword office, no matter how fleeting the mention. And so he did. Whether or not they liked…
GZA, at the Fox Theatre on Tuesday, August 24, drops lyrical moves that will keep you in check. Touring in support of his third release, Beneath the Surface, this elder statesman of the Wu Tang Clan executes lines that are both visual and abstract. For instance, the title track asks,…
Oyoyo, Friday, August 20, at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, is a Denver-based five-member percussion ensemble specializing in traditional African folk music. Leader Emei Ezidinma is Nigerian; “oyoyo” is the Yoruban word for “beauty.” The group, however, uses a pan-African assortment of instruments: the talking drum, the kalimba (thumb piano),…
To white-bread America in 1970, the blues was an alien form of music. Ignored by the folks on Main Street, the genre was embraced mainly by record-store-hunting folkies, retro-minded rockers and weed-smoking academics. That is, until B.B. King’s “The Thrill Is Gone” came bleeding through the nation’s quadraphonic speakers and…
Like most guys in high school band, the members of Skavoovie and the Epitones didn’t have dates for their junior prom. But it wasn’t because they played tuba or marched around in ill-fitting uniforms with caps and ornamental braiding. Instead, they were too busy with a gig as the evening’s…
After almost fifty years in the spotlight, Mose Allison remains a pianist, singer and songwriter with a dilemma. It seems that the blues roots of the Tippo, Mississippi, native clash with his current jazz edification to create something of a crisis of categorization. Though Gimcracks and Gewgaws, Allison’s most recent…
King Rat has found inspiration in the most un-punk of places–namely, the 1979 hit movie Breaking Away. The movie chronicles a young man’s struggle with his identity as a “townie” in a Midwestern college town. In the film, the lead character faces obstacles as he attempts to realize a dream…
When Doug Bohm migrated from Chicago to Denver in 1994, he quickly found a niche as a gothic industrial concert promoter, a gig that afforded him time to pursue an interest in electronic music with the bands Post-Mortem Stress Disorder and Fish Music. Today, as a director of Bands for…
When Vyshonn Miller was a little boy, he learned to stick close to his big brother, Percy, as much out of a survivalist instinct as out of brotherly love. Well-respected in the community for his hustling prowess and basketball skills, Percy was someone people tended not to mess with, even…
If you listen closely, you can probably still hear the distant sound of champagne corks popping over in the Denver offices of Universal Concerts. After six months on the auction block, employees are breathing a bit more easily following an announcement that the company has been sold to House of…
In their heyday in the Seventies, Southern rock giants Lynyrd Skynyrd were the baddest of the bad, a devout hell-raising outfit that helped put their chosen genre of mayhem in the ears of America. Pushing a wall of sound that borrowed from blues, British rock and country, the band’s Dixie…
If you were to encounter Tim Sweet at a cocktail party and casually ask him what he does for a living, he probably wouldn’t provide a tidy answer. After a moment of furious internal deliberation, he would offer a combination of the following: He’s a sculptor, a DJ, a music…
Tortoise and the Ex In the Fishtank (Konkurrent/Touch and Go) The only commonality between Tortoise and the Ex, apart from the fact that both are remarkable ensembles in their own right, is that they thrive on unusual collaboration. The Chicago post-rock rhythmatists of Tortoise, for instance, backed Brazilian eccentric Tom…
The notion that the music industry is corrupt certainly isn’t new–rock history is rife with scandalous tales of shifty, smooth-talking label weasels sticking it to unsuspecting musicians in orifices best probed only by proctologists. Sal Canzonieri, guitarist for New Jersey’s legendary punk-and-roll forefathers, Electric Frankenstein, has heard them all. As…
The Donnas Get Skintight (Lookout! Records) Fresh out of Rock and Roll High School, these California girls unapologetically ooze piss and vinegar while chomping on their bubble gum. Blitzkrieging bopping to teen-queen ditties that mix hormone-charged rebellion with a fresh sense of humor à la Ramones, these four girls named…
Underneath the dulcet pop sensibility of Robyn Hitchcock’s vast repertoire lurk some potentially unsettling images: having one’s soul dry-cleaned, balloon people exploding, supping with the Devil and men with lightbulbs for heads, to name a few. And while such lyrical offerings might compel the curious to probe the seemingly twisted…
Denver resident Dave Granger is a radio junkie who’s not afraid to make waves in order to satisfy his addiction. So when the former disk jockey, production man and programmer with KTCL-FM/93.3 FM burned out on corporate rock and “too many dick jokes” on the commercial dial, he decided to…
Coming to a strange town and trying to get at least a superficial handle on its music scene in a very short time is not quite as complicated as it may initially appear. In much the same way that you expect to see the same fast-food restaurants line the roads…
A quarter-century or so after its genesis, hip-hop has finally been acknowledged by the mainstream–but that doesn’t mean that all of the misconceptions about it have been exploded. Generations of Americans continue to think of the genre not as an art form, but as a sociological symptom of the big-city…
Tom Waits Mule Variations (Epitaph) Old Tom’s career has followed the rarest of trajectories: He started out pretty good, only to get better. But how is Mule Variations? Unfortunately, it’s pretty good. To understand why what would be a fine achievement for most artists is actually a mild disappointment for…
Barry Fey and Chuck Morris met in 1972, when Fey was the undisputed king of Denver concert promotion. After Morris joined Fey’s company, Feyline, in 1975, they became all but inseparable. Fey was the best man at Morris’s wedding, and he bankrolled the start-up of Morris’s management house, Chuck Morris…
Evidence suggests that Fort Worth’s American Analog Set may be effective in managing killer combinations of adult stress and juvenile attention-deficit disorder. Case in point: A six-year-old boy was recently observed repeatedly tossing a red plastic Slinky down a spiral staircase, vandalizing the banister and kicking approximately two-thousand Lego pieces…
