JAAAAAMESBROWNNNNNNNN! Still superbad at 67, Papa can say it loud: “I’m old and I’m proud!” You dig? Don’t matter if he’s leadin’ the Famous Flames or just a high-speed chase across state lines: Soul Brother Number One be keepin’ it all explosive — like a…like a…pyrotechnical pompadour. Owww! Smokin’! So…

The Geds, Friday, January 5, at the 15th Street Tavern with the Jealous X Lovers and Karol, set the curve for proficient, back-to-basics R-A-W-K with an enduringly simple but effective equation: slam out three tough chords for ninety seconds and repeat. Always repeat. For Spell graduates Chanin Floyd and Tim…

The older Frank Black gets, the less he sounds like himself — something that probably happens to everybody at some point. But ever since Pudge let his monkey go to heaven, he flat out refuses to scream at traffic anymore. Or at the powers that be. He’s like a tired…

In the mid-’90s, Veruca Salt drew countless comparisons to the Breeders, and its hit, “Seether,” received massive airplay that put the Chicago band on the map with that Smashing bald guy for a while. Six years later, after a nasty split with co-founder Louise Post, singer Nina Gordon floundered for…

Fifteen fuckin’ songs! Bang for your buck! Puttin’ fuckin’ bounce in the mosh pit, motherfuck! Rollin’ wit Napster! Get the fuck back! Freddy D. is still pissed (yeah) — an’ he’s bustin’ out the smack! Cargo pants be saggin’ — spray-paint can be taggin’! Phat-mad mike skillz. Say: Fuck, yeah!…

For avant-garde composers Chris Cutler and Thomas Dimuzio, musical ideas are kind of like eggs in an earthquake: They hatch, they crack, they shatter and ooze, and they can leave your senses scrambled. One thing’s certain, ladies and yolks: The best place to be when the tectonic plate hits the…

During a long-forgotten episode of American Bandstand in the late ’70s, Talking Heads bassist Tina Weymouth told Dick Clark, “We want to change the face of music” — something even Clark’s plastic surgeons might have considered a stretch. It was a bold declaration for anyone to make on national television,…

How blue is your grass? Niwots own Pete and Joan Wernick, who perform in free concerts on Saturday, October 7, and Sunday, October 8, at the Denver Performing Arts Complex, combine masterful acoustic pickin with heartfelt vocal harmonies; its a one-two punch that has earned the pair the honorary distinction…

The monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein spoke French, ate nuts ‘n’ berries and became the Victorian era’s most romantic fugitive-on-a-dogsled. New Jersey’s walking dead should be so lucky. Brothers Sal and Dan Canzonieri recently discovered some old demos under their bunkbeds that they wanted the world to hear: seventeen “rarities”…

At first blush, Tim Rutili’s five-song EP about disaster, grace, dumb luck and fear of machinery might seem like a cynical prayer for peacenik John Lennon. Consider the hollow, resonating piano of the disc’s opener, “Electric Fence,” and its narrator’s vocal resemblance to the Fab Four’s often acid-tongued martyr: “Jesus…

In the rock-and-roll food chain, music producers get more grief than groupies. From tantrum-throwing prodigy Phil Spector and classical innovator George Martin to indie upstart Steve Albini and funkadelic mixmaster DJ Muggs, even the biggest hitmakers are eclipsed by the very artists they help launch to fame and fortune. There…

Dolomites provide a curious geographical anomaly, considering they’re Irish by way of Portland and take their name from the soaring limestone spires of the Italian Alps. But as pint-hoistin’ pub bands go, this acoustic quintet conveys as universally Celtic a feeling as getting shit-plastered on St. Paddy’s Day, or nigh…

Don’t expect the sons of Kyuss — an underappreciated band that drew comparisons to Nirvana in the early ’90s — to rise up lethargically like Lon Chaney Jr. and embarrass their ancestry. Sure, guitarist Josh Homme packs bowl after bowl of blooze-metal variations from the seedier side — admittedly equal…

Anyone who thinks the Confederate flag is better suited for burning than waving (let alone decorating one’s skimpy under-bodice — yeehaw!) had better tiptoe around Nashville Pussy’s latest disc like a Sturgis preacher on Labor Day weekend. But for all of its sinfully contrived bombast, High as Hell shouldn’t prompt…

What could possibly be better than sitting around the family hearth with a crackling fire and the Good Book, snatching deep and meaningful glances over Deuteronomy with uber-Christian Amy Grant? Maybe the little vixen just darned your socks or polished your Sunday snakeskins. Or fetched you a hot mug of…

The mythical Phoenix flapped its wings so hard it finally burst into flames. Singing a melodious dirge, this ridiculously flighty creature ended up burning to death — snap, crackle, pop — before rising up from its ashes happy as a lark. Renewed. Triumphant. Like Jesus with feathers. As tough an…

Let’s dispense with the easy digs first: The members of AC/DC are probably each old enough to be your grandpa. And at that age, the schoolboy getup preferred by Aussie axmeister Angus Young is less cute than disturbing, as are the sounds put forth by the presumably scarred mass that…

Legendary music writer Lester Bangs (1948-1982) was the hilariously loudmouthed James Joyce of Western civilization’s most dubious “literary” achievement — rock-and-roll journalism — who injected himself into every music review like a self-absorbed maniac, both delighting and enraging readers of Rolling Stone, Creem and the Village Voice (among other publications…

Taking cues from the late Argentine tango wizard Astor Piazzolla, the three conservatory-trained East Coast musicians who make up the Tin Hat Trio continue to tinker with “world music” — and boy, do they like to tinker. Recorded almost completely without overdubs, Helium marks the skilled followup to the group’s…

Pop tart Gwen Stefani — pretty as she can be, with a midriff for the ages — celebrated a special birthday recently: the dreaded three-oh. And by industry standards — those sad, governing, youth-obsessed, number-crunching principles — such a cosmic reckoning usually means one thing: Keep the salt lick and…

In medieval times, a form of recreational torture involved placing a condemned person’s head inside a heavy, cast-metal church bell and ringing it until he or she went insane. Forget about going deaf. We’re talking flipped-out, gone-down-the-road wacko, Nurse Ratched. Such nerve-shattering law and order instilled fear into a nation’s…

Forty years after his suburban upbringing in Freeport, Long Island — an adolescent nightmare that included electric-shock treatments at the age of seventeen — Lou Reed (born Louis Butch Firbank) still has plenty to be hacked off about. But with Ecstasy, his first studio album in almost five years, the…