“We don’t like rock dudes,” exclaims Britt Daniels, guitarist, vocalist and guiding force behind Austin’s Spoon. “We like lots of musicians. But the whole ‘rock dude’ thing, I don’t know. These days, it seems like bands do a few cool songs and everybody gets interested in them, and the next…

Los Lobos Colossal Head (Warner Bros.) David Hidalgo, Louie Perez and the rest of these East L.A. renegades made their first fabulous album, How Will the Wolf Survive?, in 1984. By the Light of the Moon and The Neighborhood followed in 1987 and 1990, respectively, and although they differed from…

“We’re basically just a ham-fisted punk band,” declares Matt Wright, lead singer for Seattle’s Gas Huffer. “But I like to think that there’s a little finesse to our music, too.” There is, but it may not be apparent upon first listen. After all, the four-on-the-floor ditties produced by Seor Wright…

Rudy Ray Moore Greatest Hits (The Right Stuff) Most white folks haven’t heard of Moore and that’s a shame, because he’s inspired a lot of the best music and comedy to spring from the African-American culture over the past thirty years. It’s almost impossible to imagine either Ice Cube or…

The centerpiece of the living room shared by the members of Five Iron Frenzy is a battered, garage-sale-reject of a coffee table that’s littered with precisely the kind of flotsam you’d expect to find in a punk-rock crash pad: gig fliers, dishes, dog-eared back issues of Maximum Rock ‘N’ Roll…

“When we started out, our major goal was to do a regular night at the Holiday Inn,” says the Gambler, drummer for Denver’s Ruby My Dear. “That would be the pinnacle of success for us.” “And if we really made it,” pianist Simon Cushing adds, “a night at the Brown…

“Everybody in the band has different tastes,” confides Tim Cloherty, singer and chief songwriter for SoHo pop group the Rake’s Progress. “So when we write songs, we just sort of throw all the ingredients together into a big Rake’s Progress casserole and hope for the best.” The final concoction produced…

Drummer Colby Mancasola and his mates in the band Knapsack discovered a surefire way to pick a record company. “Basically,” he says, “we just looked at our record collections and said, `Okay, we own these four or five albums on Alias.’ And then we looked at label B and went,…

With a new album, a new label and a national tour, Los Angeles punk-rock legends the Lazy Cowgirls seem to be making a major comeback. But there’s something wrong with this picture–because the band never really left. “We keep reading about how we broke up,” says Cowgirls vocalist/ frontman Pat…

Hugh Swarts, one fifth of Oakland, California’s Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, is having a tough time adjusting to the digital age. In fact, the guitarist/vocalist/percussionist hasn’t even purchased his first compact disc player yet. “I’m kind of atavistic in that way, I guess,” he concedes. “I don’t really like…

The New Bomb Turks, Saturday, November 11, at Mammoth Events Center, with Lag Wagon, Samiam, No Doubt, Pietasters, Teengenerate, Strung Out, Buck-O-Nine, Slapstick and the rest of the participants in the Board As Usual ’95 festival, hail from Columbus, Ohio, a sleepy university town known primarily for being, well, home…

By definition, Boulder recording artist Jayson Munly Thompson, aka Munly, is a singer-songwriter: He writes and sings his own material, he plays guitar, and–most important–he does it all by himself. Ask the twentysomething musician what he thinks of the tag, however, and you’re likely to get an earful. “It’s kind…

Some musicians become successful despite themselves. Take the members of the Presidents of the United States of America, for example. The trio’s self-titled debut for Columbia Records includes the announcement “We’re not going to make it!” while another lyric admits, “There are a million better bands/With a million better songs.”…

Low, with Soul Coughing, Friday, September 27, at the Ogden Theatre, likes to take things slow. Really slow. Imagine the Cowboy Junkies performing from the depths of the LaBrea tar pits and you’ll get a rough idea of what this trio of minimalists from Duluth, Minnesota, is all about. Long…

Bracket, with SNFU and the Joykiller, Friday, September 8, at the Glenn Miller Ballroom, contradicts the pundits. The band is proof positive that at least some of today’s corporate punk-rock acts are actually better than their forefathers of a decade or two ago. On 4-Wheel Vibe, the band’s second release…

Foo Fighters Foo Fighters (Capitol) First off, let’s make one thing clear: This debut long-player from former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl’s new band isn’t the “new Nirvana album,” as many of the rock geeks out there have been claiming. Nor is it one of those alternative “supergroup” things that have…

Everclear’s Art Alexakis doesn’t buy into the tortured-rock-star syndrome. “A lot of bands are kind of whiny, if you ask me,” says the vocalist/guitarist. “If you’re playing guitar and getting paid for it, that’s a pretty good job, I think. I’ve worked plenty of jobs, and I know a good…

“I think people will enjoy our music most when they’re on their third beer,” says Matt Squires, bassist for Denver’s dream popsters Gray Parade. “When they’re just kind of settling down and getting comfortable.” “Yeah,” adds guitarist Joel Richardson, “when the couch starts to swallow them up and they don’t…

Bassist David Sims has no idea where his act, the Jesus Lizard, fits in with the rest of this year’s Lollapalooza main-stagers. “We’re certainly not the headliner,” he notes. “And I don’t know if I could convince you we’re one of the girl bands or one of the rap groups…

For most music aficionados, the terms “punk” and “folk” exist at opposite ends of the musical spectrum. But for self-described punk folksinger Ani DiFranco, the two genres are practically one and the same. “In my mind, they aren’t all that different,” insists the 24-year-old New Yorker. “I mean, the whole…

The Apples Fun Trick Noisemaker (spinART) Last year, Apples frontman Robert Schneider told Westword he wanted to write “uplifting” songs that had a “transcendent quality” about them. Judging from Fun Trick Noisemaker, the act’s spinART debut, Schneider and the rest of the Apples (drummer Hilarie Sidney, guitarist John Hill and…

Uncle Joe’s Big Ol’ Driver, Wednesday, June 7, at the Mercury Cafe, plays the kind of meat-and-potatoes rock and roll that critics tend to love or hate depending upon how much they had to drink the night before. Chick Rock, the Drivers’ sophomore opus (on Headhunter Records) is no exception…