Sister vocal act Les Nubians learned firsthand the meaning of the word “multi-culturalism” at an early age. Helene and Celia Faussert, born to a French father and a Cameroonian mother, grew up in an interracial household influenced by both African and European traditions. They were raised in Bordeaux, France, and…

Before there was a band of the same name, the Hemi Cuda was an automobile that Chrysler manufactured in the mid-Fifties. At first the car’s appeal lay in simple economics: A new engine design offered jacked-up power but didn’t require fancy gas. By the early Seventies, though, the car had…

Denver has never been widely associated with an essential rap scene. The city’s proximity to the Continental Divide leaves it just a scaled-map millimeter or two from the dead center of the country, a fact that means bad news for sushi lovers and puts rap musicians in a geographically dictated…

Playing house band for the oppressed worldwide is one way that Ozomatli, an eleven-piece, L.A.-based, genre-splicing outfit, wants to party in 1999. By proudly wearing a “politics for the people” philosophy on its sleeve, the multi-cultural group is a pre-millennial answer to the infamous question posed by Los Angeles denizen…

King Rat has found inspiration in the most un-punk of places–namely, the 1979 hit movie Breaking Away. The movie chronicles a young man’s struggle with his identity as a “townie” in a Midwestern college town. In the film, the lead character faces obstacles as he attempts to realize a dream…

When Vyshonn Miller was a little boy, he learned to stick close to his big brother, Percy, as much out of a survivalist instinct as out of brotherly love. Well-respected in the community for his hustling prowess and basketball skills, Percy was someone people tended not to mess with, even…

The Donnas Get Skintight (Lookout! Records) Fresh out of Rock and Roll High School, these California girls unapologetically ooze piss and vinegar while chomping on their bubble gum. Blitzkrieging bopping to teen-queen ditties that mix hormone-charged rebellion with a fresh sense of humor à la Ramones, these four girls named…

“The punk you see around now is the glam metal of the Nineties,” says Josh Lent, the vocalist for Clusterfux. “It’s almost to the point where it’s embarrassing to say you’re a punk, because people think of that cute little kid bouncing up and down with the pink mohawk wearing…

John Williams Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace–Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Sony Classical) The week before the film that birthed it arrived in theaters, the Episode I soundtrack entered the Billboard sales charts at number three, vaulting past Shania Twain and Britney Spears and lingering behind only Tim McGraw…

Duane Johnson Jr. occupies two worlds that most people see as mutually exclusive. By night, he is Defari Heru, a rising hip-hop star whose impressive debut album, Focused Daily, was recently issued by Tommy Boy Records. But during the day, he is simply Mr. Johnson, a 27-year old geography and…

It’s a scenario perfectly suited to Celebrity Deathmatch, MTV’s blood-and-clay tribute to the war between the stars. In one corner would stand the men of REO Speedwagon, an arena-rock act that made the Eighties sound even worse than they would have otherwise with gruesome hits like “Keep on Loving You.”…

“I think one of the scariest audiences is four-year-old kids,” says Chuck Cuthill, jug player for the 32-20 Jug Band. He should know. Last fall, Cuthill, guitarist/ kazoo player Dan Kase, washtub bassist Aaron Thomas and multi-instrumentalist John Hickham appeared at the Montessori Institute Children’s House in Denver before a…

In October 1997, Sista D began making In the Mile High City, a disc that she hoped would become a life preserver for her mother, who’d battled heroin addiction for years. But something happened the following February that nearly derailed the project: Her mom died. “I really had a hard…

“I don’t have nothing to prove to no one in Colorado,” claims DJ Chonz. “I already proved it.” He’s right. The 21-year-old beat master has already amassed numerous accolades for his prodigious talents as a turntablist, including positive writeups in The Source, Rap Pages and Blaze, but he hasn’t quite…

How did the members of Wretch Like Me become such rude, obnoxious punks? They had a great teacher: Bill Stevenson, drummer for All and the Descendents and former timekeeper for Black Flag. Stevenson has been friends with the Fort Collins-based bandmembers for ages, and he’s still providing them with valuable…

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,…

In the bluesy cult duo called Doo Rag, Bob Log III handles guitar and vocal duties while his twisted partner, percussionist Thermos Malling, pounds on everything in sight. Malling, however, isn’t part of Log’s current solo tour–and Log admits that keeping a beat without him has proven to be a…

Joel Abell, guitarist for Gina Go Faster, feels that the Denver music scene has fallen to new lows. “It’s pitiful,” he says. “There’s no camaraderie anymore, and we can’t even find anybody to play with. It’s ridiculous. All the bands are gone now, and there aren’t any new ones coming…

Fans of Rancid feel that the group is one of the last real punk bands, while detractors accuse the quartet of being a band of poseurs. But no one ever called the combo a wedding band until this summer, when Rancid members did the unthinkable: They performed at a wedding…

“The first thing that defines an artist who is local,” says Montbello rapper Bumpy Chill, “is to do a show without using anyone else’s beats and then see how the crowd reacts.” The Don Kronicals, which pairs Chill with his cousin, Aurora’s L.O., has had no problems passing such tests…

Barry Adamson As Above, So Below (Mute) With this disc, the criminally underrated Adamson takes a risky plunge off his ivory tower of instrumental ambience. This composer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist has compiled a decade-long discography as emotive as anything produced by the planet’s foremost musical anti-heroes, yet the verbal explorations…

Turntablists–DJs who turn mixing and spinning into hip-hop performance art–have made a big noise in San Francisco and New York, but they’re just now getting the attention they deserve in many other cities. As a result, most locals don’t realize that Denver DJ Jam X is widely regarded as one…