In our continuing effort to make the world more amenable to the foibles of drinkers, the Institute of Drinking Studies is preparing a proposal for the National Institute of Health that’s certain to get us a large discretionary grant, since health care today is all about prevention: prevention of heart…
Okay, so the big man may not have granted all the Christmas wishes I outlined in this space two weeks ago (although I’ve heard there’s some interest in the pros’ market idea), but I don’t mind — because someone gave me the massive, two-volume set of cookbooks from El Bulli…
There are some restaurants where the world does not intrude — rooms where time does not pass, weather does not change, current events go unnoted. Often inadvertently, these restaurants have successfully stopped time — a trick that mad scientists and evil super-geniuses have been attempting since forever with dark matter…
“I write my life as it progresses, as it gets worse — whatever,” says Aaron Yates, who headlines on Saturday, January 6, at the Fillmore Auditorium under his nom de plume, Tech N9ne; Blaze opens the show. “I’m like a fan inside this cat called Tech N9ne, who writes this…
Is it getting hot in here, or is it 3Oh!3? Early in 2006, the Colorado hip-hop scene received a smack in the face from Sean Foreman and Nathaniel Motte, two pasty-faced Boulderites ready to get the party started. With barking flow, Casio beats and frenetic live energy, the duo known…
For nearly a decade, the giants of electronic dance music, a cold-blooded cadre mostly from northern Europe, lumbered across the earth. Tiesto, Paul van Dyk, Paul Oakenfold, Seb Fontaine, Judge Jules and Fatboy Slim dominated small suburban dancefloors and Ibizan caverns alike with crafty disco assembled from chest-rattling basslines and…
Hey, dude. So here’s my mixtape that’s been twelve months in the making. Sorry it’s taken a while, but reality often moves at the same molten pace as a couple of the bands culled here. While the new folksters get accolades for their freaky psychedelic tendencies, there’re plenty of heavy…
The criterion for this list was simple: Only the hardest, heaviest metal albums were considered. Bands who play a hybrid style of metal that is not thrash, speed, death, black metal, hard-core, grindcore or some amalgamation thereof were not included. What follows is pure effin’ metal. Bang your head off…
Latin/Anglo Crossover is what Latin American artists have always dreamt of and what American artists are starting to realize they need to pull big sales numbers out of a shrinking market. Crossover success means jackpots in both concert tickets and CD sales, so expanding a fan base across genres, countries,…
Recordings of DJ mixes have been multiplying like e-mail spam over the past decade. The sheer volume of said releases is overwhelming, and it makes one wonder: Who the hell is buying them? There must be a demand if labels keep issuing the things as if the music industry has…
Another year, another wave of quirky British bands pouring into the States. It’s got all the makings of a new British Invasion. Well, except for one thing: the invasion. For every Bloc Party and Franz Ferdinand that succeeds in North America, there are dozens more that barely make it across…
This story, as originally conceived, was supposed to be a compilation of the year’s best boxed sets and other reissues. But then it hit us: In today’s shuffle-driven iPod world, with the pace of pop culture moving at breakneck speed, it’s pointless to make such temporal distinctions. The past is…
The Nashville way of making music is unlike any other, comparable only to the studio system of Hollywood’s golden age — a closed system of songwriters, producers, record labels and artists that creates most of the sounds you don’t want to admit you listen to on the radio when no…
It was, according to no less an authority than the New York Times, the year rap went regional. There was plenty of recent evidence to support this claim, beginning with the suddenly paltry record sales racked up by some of hip-hop’s heaviest weights. There was a lot of historical evidence,…
In 2006, the pop-singles market continued to dominate, in no small part because the pick-and-click mentality of online music stores and ring-tone sites gave consumers unparalleled freedom to Choose Their Own Musical Adventure. What suffered in the meantime was the quality of pop and rock albums. These platters frequently spawned…
Now is a bad time to be a giant music corporation, but ethically challenged music fans couldn’t ask for better days. Bootlegging has always been about catering directly to the fans, and the Internet breeds the best bootleggers yet: bigger and stronger and faster than ever before, the better to…
2006 in Review, December 28 The Devil and Mr. Jones Honestly, you put Mike Jones, that meth prostitute, on Westword’s final cover of the year? Certainly someone is more deserving! Have you no shame? Better yet, have you no taste? Erik Erikson Denver Whoa, baby, what a year! Alan Prendergast’s…
Dear Mexican: How did the patron saint of México get a name derived from Arabic? El Moro Judío Dear Jewish Moor: You’re referring to the Virgin of Guadalupe, the brown-skinned apparition of the Virgin Mary whom tradition says appeared before the Aztec peasant Juan Diego in December 1531, just outside…
Dusk. Day 376 of a torrential downpour of white vitriol, spat from the angry heavens. The camera pans in on a humble home in the Baker neighborhood of Denver, Colorado. A large purple recycling bin sits on the porch, filled to the brim with beer cans. It needs emptying, pathetically…
TV or not TV: After an episode of Trading Spaces featuring her home aired this past Saturday, Westword contributor and burlesque star Michelle Baldwin offered this first-person report: I have realized the greatest dream of every attention-starved American. I was on reality TV. It wasn’t MTV’s booze-fueled LoDo soap opera,…
December turned Denver into a giant snow globe, sealed off and insulated from the rest of the world — but with a whole lotta shaking going on. The shakiest sight was just off Speer Boulevard on New Year’s Day. An Off Limits operative driving out of downtown just after 8…
He slipped into Denver unannounced, just another traveler on his way to wherever. No fanfare, no welcome party. A man alone, on his way to identity and destiny. It was a brief stay, just ten days in the summer of 1947, a side note in a journal. But this man…
