Bizarre Resurgence Ladies and gentlemen, America — yes, that America, “Horse With No Name” America — now has a MySpace page. Something should be done about this, and it should probably be violent. This Song Will Change Your Life Matisyahu’s cover of “Message in a Bottle.” The Police are threatening…
By choosing to call himself Joseph Israel, the reggae-loving singer-songwriter born Joseph Montgomery Fennel seems to be sending a clear message about the belief system he favors. But, as he concedes, “it’s more complex than that. I was raised a Baptist, and as I continued to grow, Bob Marley’s music…
When XTC’s Andy Partridge is reached via phone for a rare chat at his home in England, he’s doing exactly what you’d expect the prolific studio musician to be doing. “You caught me having a secret strum on the guitar,” the 53-year-old says cheerfully. “I just blundered into quite a…
The pull of Denver’s music scene must be very strong for Andrew Murphy. I mean, why else would the guy continue to run a Mile High-centric label from more than 1,200 miles away? Murphy, the proprietor of Smooch Records, says the motivation behind this labor of love hasn’t changed since…
“The Pleasures of Your Company,” Jared Jacang Maher, January 11 Whose Pleasure, Dudes? Well, thanks for letting me know never to spend a dime at Pleasures, due to its association with Mike Wheeler. This poor excuse for a human being seems to have no other goal than the degradation of…
Dear Mexican: I’m a sixty-year-old Chicano and proud. Why do young Chicanos keep imitating blacks? They dress like blacks, talk like blacks, listen to black music and hang with blacks. Aren’t they proud of their own culture? Why don’t they embrace Hispanic ways and learn about Hispanic history? Say It…
Since the beginning of time, man has yearned to frolic on city buses. Paleolithic paintings from the Lascaux cave in France clearly depict nomadic hunter-gatherers sitting in orderly rows on a giant stone slab the size of a bus, with the one in front wearing a wild boar as a…
Living in Denver is suddenly hip, what with Allen Iverson, The Real World and the 2008 Democratic National Convention coming here. And now this city is the landing spot for an international supercouple: Danny de Zayas and Nina Barry. “We’re just excited to explore a new city,” Nina tells Westword…
“John Moredock,” the pseudonymous scribe behind Try-Works, a blog at TryWorks.org, never minced words when it came to slamming the media. Consider a November 29, 2006, post that lambasted a piece by the Rocky Mountain News’s editorial-page editor. Riffing on the item’s subtle title — “Fuck Vince Carroll” — Moredock…
All of the couches in DC10 are white leather. But the couch in the middle of the nightclub is the only one shaped like a circle. Inside that circle sits a table, and on the last Wednesday of December, on that table sat some expensive champagne. Several Denver Nuggets were…
Let’s face it: It’s a new year, the weather hasn’t been so great and the recent spate of snowstorms delivered a below-the-belt punch not only to small retailers, but to galleries counting on the bounty of the season. The folks at the Chicano Humanities and Arts Council, 772 Santa Fe…
A good torch song should make your heart weep. Think a glittery-dressed woman lounging on top of a piano, crooning about lost love. Now envision that songstress as a gay Jewish drag queen in 1970s New York. Although the medium may be different, the message within the song is the…
Lyons author Sandi Ault has her fingerprints all over Wild Indigo, an auspicious debut mystery novel inspired by Ault’s love of the northern New Mexico landscape and its tangled Indian/Hispanic/Anglo cultures. Open the book and you’ll soon understand that there’s a good measure of Ault’s own personality in the protagonist…
It’s that time again — time for teams of four people from around the world to pool their resources and prepare to attack a twelve-foot-tall, twenty-ton block of machine-made snow. Their mission? To change the block into a work of art in a mere five days, using only their ingenuity…
Aspen is as gritty as a picture, thanks to the Red Bull Illume Image Quest 2006, the first-ever international action-and-adventure sports-photography competition whose finalists go on display today at the base of the Little Nell Run on Aspen Mountain. “We really wanted to honor and celebrate the photographers in the…
Although he isn’t a physical match for the late Paul Robeson — the powerful African-American singer, actor, civil-rights activist, McCarthy-era blacklistee and All-American athlete — local performer Russell Costen found plenty of ways to embody the big man’s energy when Shadow Theatre Company first staged Philip Hayes Dean’s biographical one-man…
Colorado has caught Civil War fever, a direct result of the Forever Free: Abraham Lincoln’s Journey to Emancipation exhibit’s stop in our fair state. Now you can beef up your knowledge — and your personal library — at the Civil War Book Sale, taking place today from noon to 5…
The history of cabaret is a fantastic mixed bag said to have gotten its start in the Montmartre district of late-nineteenth-century Paris, specifically when the famous bohemian hangout Le Chat Noir opened its doors to a motley crew of artist types eager to share their talents in a casual environment…
Every American over the age of fifty vividly remembers seeing the pictures of Jacqueline Kennedy in her bloodstained pink suit after her husband was assassinated. But in Jacks, award-winning playwright Lys Anzia delves far below the surface of what happened to the First Lady that day, as well as the…
Yesterday afternoon, after making my daily pass by the Darrent Williams shrine, I drove by the old Ritter/O’Brien campaign headquarters at 11th and Bannock. And what did I see but First Lady Jeannie Ritter, loading furniture into the big, green family van. Not supervising — although she had a few…
From time to time, the space that we devote to a story in print just doesn’t do the subject justice. Such is the case with Drew Bixby’s piece this week focusing on Daytrotter.com, which is why we’ve opted to post the rest of his interview here in its entirety. When…
In a Denver Post article published today, Representative Tom Tancredo’s decision to consider a presidential bid (symbolized by his plan to form an exploratory committee) was described as a “quixotic quest,” and that’s a nice way of putting it. Granted, Tancredo, whose announcement about the committee was overshadowed everywhere but…
