“People are just really thirsty for straightforward fuck-you rock,” says Rick Sims, former member of the Didjits and the Supersuckers. And with his new project, the Gaza Strippers, that’s precisely what he delivers. He describes the group’s previous headlining gig in Denver as “a borderline fucking riot,” which was just…

Public Enemy He Got Game (Def Jam) Like Michael Jordan when he gave up shagging baseballs in the hot Alabama sun in favor of reclaiming his NBA crown, Public Enemy is attempting the most unlikely of comebacks. And while it’s too soon to say if the outfit retains the moves…

Garbage Version 2.0 (Almo Sounds) Given how many copies of Garbage’s first disc flew off the shelves, you know that critics are sharpening their skewers over this one. But Version 2.0 is so steely that such jabs will likely bounce right off it. Producer/drummer/mastermind Butch Vig may have worked his…

Is Sonic Youth the Grateful Dead of indie rock? At first the question seems laughable. Whereas much of the Dead’s appeal can be traced to the accessibility of the assortment of American music that inspired it, Sonic Youth has consistently challenged its audiences by drawing upon influences that exist on…

Big Gipp, one of the four Atlantans behind hip-hop’s Goodie Mob, knows all about bad choices. “I had a cousin who was out there in the gang life in Denver,” he says. “And I had another cousin who got shot, and I’ve got a cousin who’s doing fifteen to life…

“We’re not sending no gangsta message,” asserts Denver rapper Nyke Loc. “Like, we’re not claiming anything, because I never claimed nothin’. I never told you I was Blood nor no Crip. I never dissed no set. We make gangsta rap, but without the gangsta mentality. It’s gangsta rap like a…

Neutral Milk Hotel In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (Merge) You’ve read a lot in these pages about the Elephant 6 collective and how this shifting cadre of musicians from a number of cities gets together on a regular basis to make weird and wonderful songs under several different banners,…

Dave Self, one of the DJs behind the hip-hop collective called Den One, didn’t grow up in a rap-loving household. “My stepmom and my dad were like, ‘What is this Run PRQ and the Beastie Boys? What is this shit? This is just a fad,'” he recalls. “And I would…

Denver’s garage-music scene owes much of its vitality to guitarist/vocalist Michael Daboll. As a member of the defunct trio Element 79 and a onetime part of 360 Twist! Records, a locally based label that’s issued a series of excellent recordings by worthy international acts such as Billy Childish and Thee…

Percussionist/DJ “Field” Marshall Goodman is a member of a band called the Long Beach Dub All Stars. But when he’s interviewed these days, the number of questions about his current group generally come in a distant second to the amount of inquiries about the act with which he was previously…

Although Denver doesn’t have a reputation as a national hip-hop mecca, Jeffrey McWhorter, aka Kingdom, believes it’s only a matter of time before the scene is acknowledged–as long as the artists and fans in the community support one another. “You’ll never see me talk down any rapper in Colorado,” he…

Joe Queer, leader of the Queers, is a veteran of the punk-rock wars, but that doesn’t mean he’s stopped making enemies. A recent example involves Converse, the sneaker giant, which slapped the Queers with a cease-and-desist order after the band appropriated the company’s corporate logo for a series of T-shirts…

“I think Berlin is the best city in Germany,” says Patric Catani, who collaborates with Gina D’Orio in the Berlin-based electronic agitprop duo known as EC8OR. “But it is also the worst.” On the surface, this statement is an obvious contradiction. But as Catani and D’Orio know, it’s also appropriate…

Boom Christopher Paige, guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist for the Denver-based Society Burning, comes from a musical family; his father has a background as a percussionist. So how does Dad feel about Boom’s band, an industrial trio that eschews a living, breathing timekeeper in favor of a drum machine? “He hates us,” Paige says…

Jerry Only, bassist and co-founder of the Misfits, knows all too well that being an influence doesn’t pay the bills. Founded in 1977, Only’s band, which was led by singer Glenn Danzig, inspired a generation of punk and metal musicians during its six years of existence. But the ghoulish group’s…

“We’re not a band for vegetarians, you know,” says Kyle Loving, guitarist and frontman for Denver’s Ray-Ons. “But if you like meat and potatoes, I think you can dig it.” True enough, there are no frills on the Ray-Ons’ menu–just the rocking riffs offered up by Loving, the elastic bass…

According to Devon Rodgers, drummer for Register, “I think you’d become more famous starting your own sporting team than you would by becoming a musician in Denver.” Fortunately, fame isn’t the primary motivation for Rodgers and his married bandmates, guitarist/vocalist Dan Owens and Josie Fluri. Rather than mimic currently popular…

According to Alec Empire, a key part of Germany’s incendiary Atari Teenage Riot, the act’s songs are “not like popular music, which is there to entertain. We want to destroy the fake harmony that’s created by the music and the entertainment industry and the government.” That’s hardly the only revolutionary…

Atari Teenage Riot Burn, Berlin, Burn! (Grand Royal) For those of you who think that the culture industry’s commodification of packaged rebellion destroyed punk, you might find hope in this agit-prop sonic assault–but to do so, you must be willing to make the leap from old-school analog punk to what…

Last year, Jason Thirsk, onetime bass player for the Los Angeles-based punk quartet Pennywise, shot himself in the head and died. It was the kind of terrible event from which many groups never recover. But as Pennywise vocalist Jim Lindberg tells it, the other members of the band were determined…

With the programmers at MTV playing far fewer music videos than they have in years past, simply getting a clip onto the network is a victory of sorts for young bands on the rise. But for the ska-punkers in Detroit’s Suicide Machines, breaking onto the airwaves has been a mixed…

Radish Restraining Bolt (Mercury) Hate to break it to you, Kurt, but this is what the movement you popularized has come to–imitations of you by a fifteen-year-old kid from Texas. Ben Kweller is his name, and he’s got your style nailed. The throaty vocals, the distorted guitars, the punchy songwriting,…