Banking on the dreams of would-be lyricists who answered want ads from “hitmakers” in the back pages of tabloid-style magazines, several low-budget song factories (based mostly in Nashville and Hollywood) once offered fame and fortune to any red-blooded Yankee willing to submit unwashed verse for “professional” studio consideration. “No special…
“People get intimacy in so many ways, from so many things,” says Christiaan Howard, creative director for Afterdarkkmedia, an interactive fetish-promotion company based in Denver and Los Angeles. “And intimacy intimidates a lot of people. Most women don’t experience true passion. They experience a lot of assholes who just want…
Last spring’s Great White tragedy might have put the kibosh on industrial grinders and all the pretty sparks that they can make indoors, but Denver’s Log has plenty of other makeshift instruments to enhance its stage show — including megaphones and an amplified two-by-four. Otherwise, two full drum kits (manned…
The abrasive San Diego-based noise quartet the Locust receives fan mail on a fairly regular basis. In fact, the group’s press release uses the following anonymous love letter as its lead paragraph: “Go tweak yourself to death, you rich, big-headed rock stars. You are nothing but a bunch of image-concerned…
“I don’t do standup,” Andy Dick insists by phone from Los Angeles. “Please! I stand there. I’m up on stage. But that’s about as close as I get to anything that’s called ‘standup.'” Best known from prime-time shows like Less Than Perfect and NewsRadio, in which he plays accident-prone dweebs,…
Former Philippine First Lady Imelda Marcos’s infamous collection of shoes — over 1,500 pairs, some never even worn once — forever branded her an abomination when the revolution came a-knockin’ in 1986. Thank your lucky loafers, then, for Buckner Orphan Care International’s Shoes for Orphan Souls, a charity that has…
Nashville native and drummer turned frontman Eric Shiveley has probably heard enough Michael Stipe comparisons to choke a horse — or any animal from Chronic Town to Dead Letter Office, for that matter. But Shiveley’s vocal resemblance to Athens’s most notoriously tortured soul is worth noting — as is his…
If Joseph Hill could challenge George W. Bush to a sound clash — a popular reggae competition in which opposing selectors and mike-chatters match wits in boasting, toasting and hyping up a crowd from opposite sound systems — the 55-year-old reggae legend would take the high road. As Culture’s fiery…
Harnessing the spirits of all slain and martyred chickens through the inverted KFC bucket on his head, guitar virtuoso Brian Carroll still leaves fans of wank rock slackjawed. As Buckethead, Carroll’s masked and mutant alter ego, the former Napa Valley, California, resident has come a long way from getting his…
Who wouldn’t give his right arm to be ambidextrous? Jeremy J. Jacobsen, that’s who. Using all four of his limbs to make strange, worldly and beautiful racket, this multi-dexterous Chicago transplant can play drums, keyboard and guitar simultaneously — while singing. He can play steel drum while tap dancing. And…
“I’ve never thought of my own show as raunchy,” hard-edged comic Sandra Bernhard says by phone from her office in L.A. “I’ve always thought of it as pretty reflective of our times. There’s always sexuality and stuff that I think is relevant. And I still have deep concerns about our…
Sounding more like an aural sketch pad of ideas rather than the fully realized followup to his 2002 self-titled debut, Andrew Broder’s Ether Teeth nonetheless sustains the Fog founder’s personal lo-fi charm from beginning to end. Soothing moodscapes and mopey sing-alongs abound. Pastoral psychedelia strides hand in hand with subtle…
Tortoise co-founder Doug McCombs no longer bristles at the term “post-rock.” But during the mid-’90s, he and his musical cohorts from the Windy City — fellow co-founder/drummer/ keyboardist/vibe player John Herndon, producer/drummer/vibe player John McEntire, percussionist Dan Bitney and guitarist Jeff Parker — couldn’t read one single review about their…
Sometime after Pong’s golden age, a Japanese video-game designer named Toru Iwatani pulled a single wedge from a circular pizza, envisioned an eyeless, pellet-munching little fella, and baptized him Pac-Man. Aside from launching multiple cartoon programs, trading cards, lunchboxes and a godawful hit song called “”Pac-Man Fever,” America’s favorite slow-witted…
Aurora native Matthew Moon does the best with what he has: an artlessy sincere voice and a knack for writing songs that flirt convincingly with mainstream FM rotation. Having slugged it out in sports bars and ski resorts, Moon sure knows his way around the jagged side of a blown…
Which lucky lady gets to be wined and dined by Mr. Biggs? Mack Daddy is large. Mack Daddy aims to take you shopping, girl. Buy you everything. Take you away in a convertible under cherry rain. After a glass of Beaujoulais and a Tic Tac, he’ll draw your bath. There…
Drowning in oceans of lust, wailing hopeless lovers’ oaths and going toe to toe with oblivion itself can take its toll on a guy — especially one with a Sicilian heart condition. Fortunately Nick Urata of DeVotchKa counteracts such reckless conduct by issuing consistently beguiling sonic tapestries that weave together…
Today’s mash-up craze — where artists graft the a cappella version of one popular tune to the well-known instrumental backing of another — inspired a “band” like Columbus, Ohio’s Evolution Control Committee to up the ante beyond anything that London’s Freelance Hellraiser introduced to dance floors last year. Simply pasting…
Dennis Flemion sounds irritable and flabbergasted for close to two hours — a marathon by interview standards, especially since the founder of the Frogs prefers to keep to himself. “Look, Prince never did interviews,” Flemion says flatly. “I don’t want to talk to anybody. I’m not getting anything, so I’m…
Taking blues, reggae, country and avant-garde down a back alley of alternate guitar tunings might seem a fool’s errand to most folks, on par with Zig-Zag rolling papers sponsoring a NASCAR event. Yet for Neil Haverstick, who’s spent the last fifteen years trying to subvert the Western Hemisphere’s over-reliance on…
I like the fact that I’m not a frontman but I’m doing it anyway,” says Paul Fonfara of his current musical project, Painted Saints. “I got sick of being in all these bands and being the forgotten guy on the side and not getting any credit. I think that’s one…
As the frontman for Dang Head, Boulder recluse Jamie Smith pens songs of heartbreak, devastation and occasional joy, crafting punk-informed rural music that’s as suitable for the back porch as for the garage. He calls it “noise folk” — a nifty term that shortens the distance between modest creature comforts…
