Jewel Spirit (Atlantic) In the current edition of Rolling Stone, journalist Neil Strauss tries to portray Jewel Kilcher, who appears on the issue’s cover, as a far more complex personality than the one who seems to be behind her music–not a thimble-deep hippie chick who’s peddling the hoariest of cliches,…
While collaborating with Lois LaFond and the Rockadiles, Denver blues matriarch Hazel Miller asked, “How come I have so much fun with your band?” In attempting to answer this question, LaFond, a Boulder resident who’s celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of her group with the release of its sixth album, Lois…
‘It’s a late August night at the Bluebird Theater, and El Vez, the self-proclaimed “Mexican Elvis,” is commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of Elvis Presley’s 1968 comeback TV special as part of his “gospel show.” After escorting from the stage his four lovely Elvettes (Priscellita, Gladysita, Lisa Maria and Que Linda…
Find herein a six-pack of information nuggets. They’re bite-sized–and the NBA owners haven’t locked them out. Nugget 1: Denver’s Soak is playing the name game. According to longtime Soak drummer Donnie Maul, the group was formed in 1994 and subsequently went to the trouble of trademarking its appellation in Colorado…
Most boomers grew up in households that were Christmas-album deprived. Their parents had only a couple of seasonal platters (something by the Boston Pops or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, perhaps, or maybe a promotional sampler or two they’d picked up at the neighborhood B.F. Goodrich tire store), and they played…
“Jazz is dead,” says Fred Hess, founder and leader of the Boulder Creative Music Ensemble (BCME). “It died in the Sixties. We had fusion for a while, and there have been some other things. There have been a lot of individuals doing this and that, but there’s no jazz. These…
Don’t get me wrong: I have no intention of claiming that chain music stores of the oversized variety are entirely bad. For folks living in the suburbs, for instance, the sudden appearance of outlets with mammoth inventories moments from their homes is nothing but good news. But a recent visit…
“There are times in a DJ’s career where you can see that they’ve just lost it; they’re all about the money,” says Greg Diehl, better known as DJ Dealer. “And there is money out there for the higher echelon of people. Those kind of people get paid well, but a…
Alanis Morissette Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie (Maverick/Reprise) When it comes to Morissette, there’s definitely such a thing as too much information. The gazillions who bought her American breakthrough disc, 1995’s Jagged Little Pill, were probably inspired to make their purchases as much by her “You Oughta Know” confession about giving…
If Stabbing Westward has a guiding muse, it’s a donkey named Eeyore. According to lead singer Christopher Hall, “I was depressed a lot growing up, and I just thought I was this miserable Eeyore-ish person.” By way of underlining his claim, he adds, “I think I got that word out…
Country music in the Nineties is Alan Jackson inexplicably hyping Ford trucks via a rewritten version of “Mercury Blues,” a venerable number covered during the early Seventies by Steve Miller (a space cowboy rather than the ropin’ and ridin’ kind). It’s Shania Twain, a singer whose producer/husband/Svengali, Robert “Mutt” Lange,…
You’ve heard it before: Howard Stern is coming to Denver. But this time, it may actually happen. Stern’s controversial show, which originates in New York City, is set to begin filling the morning slot at KXPK-FM/96.5 (The Peak) at 6 a.m. on Monday, November 30, and the station’s interim program…
Sheryl Crow The Globe Sessions (A&M) A friend of mine hears the Rolling Stones in Sheryl Crow’s new disc. But at the end of the twentieth century, any rock-and-roll album featuring bluesy, four-quarter-time, guitar-driven social commentaries in which a singer yells lines like “All the white folks shake their asses”…
Vamp Dogg may sound like a gangster, but he insists that he doesn’t make gangsta rap. “I’m not into that shoot-’em-up, bang-bang kind of stuff where you’re pretty much killing through the album,” he says. “That’s fake. If you walk into the bank and kill everyone or shoot some cop,…
Like Burt Reynolds, Depeche Mode tends to be viewed as either comically irrelevant or deserving of more praise than it usually receives. But no one denies the staying power of these doomy dance-pop veterans. The band has been around for eighteen years, yet the act’s current worldwide jaunt in support…
Delbert McClinton has delivered close to forty years of all-American rhythm and blues and roots rock, and he’s penned more than his share of moneymaking songs. But when it comes to his relationship with labels, he’s snakebitten. “Every record company I’ve ever been with since 1973 has folded except one,”…
Liz Phair Whitechocolatespaceegg (Matador) To set the record straight: Liz Phair (who headlines the Ogden Theatre on Sunday, November 22) was never my blow-job queen. That white upper-middle-class girls wanna get freaky and then dissect their conquests after the fact was hardly a titillating discovery. Nonetheless, Phair still struck me…
In all likelihood, my November 5 article on Rick James had nothing to do with his recent hospitalization–but just in case it did, I’m sorry. Really sorry. To fill in the gaps for those of you who pick up Westword mainly to read the personal ads: The profile in question…
“Let’s face it–negativity sells records,” says Taboo, one of the three emcees behind Black Eyed Peas. “It’s wack, but it does. Negativity sells movies; violence sells a lot of things. Sex and violence are two of the biggest things that turn humans on.” That may be true, but the men…
“We’re waging a war against the disappearance of the full-service gas station,” says Tarmints drummer A.J. Hathaway. “It’s the same thing we’re doing with records, man. You pull up to my door, you know what to expect. I’m delivering you quality. You know it, I know it–no problem. You’ll come…
It’s a local-recording blitzkrieg. Look out below. Grace is a project built around the songs of longtime Denver scenester Tom Mestnik and his compadre in Moot, bassist Bob Gumbrecht. The band’s CD, Music With Knives, feels like an early Genesis album, what with consecutive songs that mention lambs (“Grey” and…
Bob Mould The Last Dog and Pony Show (Rykodisc) With enough sweet hooks to gaff a pod of whales, The Last Dog and Pony Show delivers everything that a clever record should. Unlike Peter Murphy and Morrissey, two other cutting-edge lead singers whose work since leaving their groundbreaking Eighties groups…
