Roy Orbison once sang about falling in love with a Devil Doll. Old Roy’s gone now, but we have a sneaking suspicion that if he was still kicking, he’d flip head over heels for Miss Colleen Duffy, aka Devil Doll, a sultry pinup-girl-gone-bad ingenue who’s graced the covers of countless…
Preeminent country pianist Phil Vassar has scored only a pair of number-one singles as an artist: “Just Another Day in Paradise” and “In a Real Love.” But the bleached-blond tunesmith — who favors T-shirts and faded jeans over traditional cowboy hats and boot-cut Wranglers and spent years perfecting his craft…
Descendents and All drummer Bill Stevenson, who’s also the proprietor of Fort Collins’s Blasting Room Studios, doesn’t consider himself a permanent part of the Lemonheads. “I think they’ve always had a sort of revolving lineup,” he says. But for the past year-plus, he and Descendents/All bassist Karl Alvarez have been…
Some musicians draw upon so many genres that it’s tough to rank them in importance, while others focus on a single approach with a fealty that borders on obsession. Primasonic falls into the latter category; its members always seem to be asking themselves, “What would Iggy and Joey do?” Yet…
In the past year and a half, Flawless and Fo Chief — the rapping and production duo known collectively as On Point — have made a big push in Denver’s hip-hop scene, and their latest effort, D-Town Extravaganza, is a culmination of that hustle. The twosome’s rhymes and production on…
Wu-Tang Clan’s fifth album, 8 Diagrams, comes at a time of group strife. Raekwon has called Wu ringleader and beatmaker RZA a “hip-hop hippie” and says the beats on the new album are too cerebral. And it’s true: While the minimalist production and movie samples evoke Enter the Wu-Tang (36…
OneRepublic’s Colorado connection is mighty tangential. Tulsa-born lead singer Ryan Tedder and guitarist Zach Filkins met while attending high school in Colorado Springs, and guitarist Drew Brown is from Boulder. But local fans had little to do with their rise to prominence. Indeed, the band’s been based in Los Angeles…
Christina Clinkscales sued Justin Jahn in August 2006, claiming the former Breckenridge bellman had sexually assaulted her a year earlier, when she was eighteen (“Out of Bounds,” November 29). Justin, who maintains that the sex was consensual and who earlier was found not guilty of sexual assault in criminal court,…
Head to Sutra on Thursday, December 6, to catch the kickoff of Step Up, a monthly night celebrating the edgy sounds of dubstep, glitch and experimental breaks. The highlight of this inaugural edition is Denver’s own CacheFlowe, aka Justin Gitlin. Tackling his compositions and mixes with a sense of abandon…
When the Emmas played their final show in June 2006, this town lost one of its longest-running, most entrepreneurial and prolific punk acts. Almost immediately, though, singer-guitarist Lisa Cook and bassist E-N Pumpernickel filled the void by forming Turbo Knife Fight. Building upon the Emmas’ raw, simple, elemental punk, Turbo…
A few weeks ago, a cousin told me about The Pick-Up Artist, this reality show on VH1 where a dude who calls himself “Mystery” and a few of his buddies teach ordinary guys how to pick up girls. Although it’s hard to take anything seriously when it’s coming from a…
Chris Brown, Exclusive (Jive/Zomba). “Take Me Down” symbolizes Brown’s eagerness to transition from kiddie-soul heartthrob to young-adult megastar; at one point, he sings, “It ain’t my first time/But baby girl, we can pretend.” Luckily, Brown’s got the goods, effectively holding center stage despite noteworthy guests such as Kanye West and…
“I kind of figured that we’d get bashed on this record some,” says VHS or Beta singer/guitarist Craig Pfunder about the band’s latest album, Bring on the Comets, which has garnered widely varied reviews. “But you’ve got to just go, ‘Fuck it.’ People hear what they want to hear in…
If there’s one artist who’s the least likely to release a Christmas album, it’s gotta be Aimee Mann, who’s built an entire career out of penning songs about heroin addiction and miscellaneous other forms of emotional agony. But that’s just what she did last year, and with the Aimee Mann…
These days, tons of bands try to be simultaneously sensitive and muscular — not to mention radio-friendly — with stirring guitar crunch, sweetly rendered vocal harmonies and heart-on-sleeve lyrics tackling the personal and the political. But few do it as well, or as genuinely, as Jimmy Eat World, which helped…
If you’ve even skimmed a music blog over the past year, chances are you’re already familiar with Vampire Weekend. Together for less than two years, the band has generated a substantial blogosphere buzz that has spread to more traditional outlets — NPR, Spin and even the New York Times —…
Looks like this may turn out to be a jolly season after all. Late last week, I got word that one of my all-time favorite hometown bands is getting back together. Sure, it’s just for a few nights, but I’ll take whatever I can get. When Drag the River was…
While I may always have a soft spot for the Bagel Deli (see review) with its cramped displays of Jewish deli essentials (Dr. Brown’s soda, bagel chips, Halvah and schmaltz), those looking for a wider variety of sundries could do a lot worse than the East Side Kosher Deli. Open…
Something about the Thunderbird Lounge (721 Quebec Street) makes me want to take off my shoes and get more comfortable, maybe hang my coat in the hallway closet and then grab a bite from the fridge. I’ve never been here before and know only the people I came with, but…
In the restaurant business, the holiday season goes one of two ways. Either it’s all quiet on the Western front, complete with men in the trenches and hastily whispered prayers, or it’s a last-minute flurry of chaotic action — an eleventh-hour push to get open, get set, get closed or…
I’d spent most of a lazy Saturday avoiding the commitment of deciding where to eat that night. Laura kept asking, kept pestering me to make a decision — wanting to know what kind of freaky, dumb-ass experience her darling husband would settle on this time: raw fish, testicles, chicken-fried steak,…
American Art Invitational. Art, like politics, can be divided into liberal and conservative camps, with contemporary art representing the left and traditional art the right. But unlike politics, where the baton can pass back and forth between the two opposites, the art world has been run decisively by the liberals…
