Oakhurst describes its own tuneful stock-in-trade in simple terms: “porch music.” But beneath that neo-old-timey mountain sound is yet another jug band shuffling in the wings — a more aggressive one…with amps and everything. Plugged in, the quintet raises its warm camaraderie to the boiling point of a roots-rock outfit…
After being stabbed by an angry chorus girl in Helena, Arkansas, in the mid-1940s, Joe Willie “Pinetop” Perkins gave up playing slide guitar because the tendons in his left arm were severed during the incident. Thankfully he could still tickle the ivories, and soon he distinguished himself as the Mississippi…
It’s hard to imagine that until 1893, regular Coloradans could gather in a public square, spread out a picnic lunch and actually watch condemned outlaws swing. Frontier justice, partner, garglin’ on the end of a rope. Yet for the four modern-day members of Horsethief, this self-titled five-song EP serves less…
“It’s like a live B movie,” Fanny Fitztightlee says of Ooh La La, a Denver-based burlesque outfit that she co-founded with fellow peeler Kitty Crimson. “But it’s faster-paced, and the story line is easier to follow. We do everything from fan dancing to fire breathing to pillow fights. We’re more…
The University of Denver does more than churn out lawyers year after year. Every spring, when the budding crocuses rear their fragrant heads, when the back molars of horny coeds grind in collective misery, the keepers of the sheepskin offer relief from cramming for one last Frisbee Golf final. The…
Sandwiched between a Baptist church and a police station in Water Valley, Mississippi, the otherwise nondescript office of Fat Possum Records has endured its share of hard luck over the years: Crippling debts and distribution nightmares once prompted the label to issue an embarrassing remix pairing best-selling artist R.L. Burnside…
When DJ Danger Mouse (Brian Burton) crossbred Jay-Z with the Beatles, he did more than give every anal-retentive lawyer from Roc-A-Fella Plaza to Abbey Road reason to lick their chops. In one conceptually brilliant move, Burton managed to bridge two disparate generations, giving fans of both the former’s Black Album…
After seeing Sonic Youth perform in Kiev as a teenager, Eugene Hütz caught a glimpse of his own future: fronting a multi-national New York-based band of ragtag immigrants. Raised on gypsy street music, plus any black-market recording that he could find from the Birthday Party or Einstürzende Neubauten, the Ukrainian…
Don’t let the warm, wooden tones of the marimba fool you: Every sound, shade and nuance heard on this disc originates from an electronic drum (Ed for short). And through the calculated miracle of digital touchpads and proper fingertip placement, Ed chirps and urps its way through an infinite combination…
“I think John Kerry missed his calling,” Jello Biafra says by phone from San Francisco. “Now that Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing aren’t making those low-budget Dracula knockoffs, they need a new one. And FrankenKerry would’ve been perfect! I can’t get it out of my mind that he voted for…
Right now, the song stuck in my head is ‘Send in the Clowns’ — the Judy Collins version,” says Mark Kozelek from a hotel phone in New Orleans, where he’s scouting for real estate. “I heard that in an antique shop yesterday down on Magazine Street, and everything just kind…
In the early ’70s, when Funkadelic decried gluteal oppression with their smash hit “Free Your Mind…And Your Ass Will Follow,” bumpers and grinders the world over realized the unlimited possibilities between mind and body. And behind every subsequent jig lurked a booty-addled alchemist like Dr. Funkenstein in the wings, beaker…
Randall Frazier calls the music of Orbit Service a “soundtrack for a dying world.” But as the band’s frontman and founding member, Frazier isn’t your typical gloomy Gus. When he was a teenage goth, for example, bouncing between psych wards in Eastern Texas and Denver, suffering from auditory hallucinations and…
It’s been nearly five decades since Bo Diddley wrote “Who Do You Love?,” a rock-and-roll classic that perhaps best sums up youth’s reckless disregard for mortality: “Tombstone hand and a graveyard mind/Just 22 and I don’t mind dying.” Diddley recently celebrated his 75th birthday; needless to say, Papa Bo may…
Considering that John Vanderslice’s jagged pop and conceptual story-songs have stranded him everywhere from the loneliest tips of Antarctica to Mommy’s cluttered basement, it’s hardly surprising that his fourth album explores brooding territory. But surpassing previous efforts in terms of sonic design, craft and coherence, Cellar Door (the two words…
Quebec City transplant Jay Munly Thompson has been known to tell his share of whoppers, like the one about losing an eye while running with a gang of Irish Catholics. Or how brain-damaged heavyweight prizefighter Gerry Cooney (“The Great White Hope”) not only babysat him during the ’70s, but took…
Throwing an equal ratio of temper tantrums to doomsday confetti, this rotating eight-piece from San Diego — featuring members of Red Aunts, Hot Snakes, the Screws, the PeeChees and Rocket From the Crypt — mistreats vintage gear in the name of fun and toxicity, fox-core gyrations and simple, unadorned garage…
SAT, 2/28 When Louis Armstrong was asked to define jazz, he said, “Man, if you gotta ask, you’ll never know.” Like all good four-letter words, “jazz” rolls fluidly off the tongue with poise, passion and sizzle — and when Les Ballet Jazz de Montréal takes over the University of Denver’s…
“With improvising, rehearsal is all you’ve done in your life up to date,” insists Fred Frith. For the 55-year-old avant-garde legend, that’s probably enough to fill a museum. Guitarist and co-founder of prog-rock collective Henry Cow (a project that lasted from 1968 to 1978), Frith has toured with over a…
Ignoring the punk era’s disdain for guitar gymnastics, Mike Jourgensen is one ax-wrangling contortionist — whether he’s immersed in technically blinding, top-of-the-neck solos or fuzzed-out squalling at stun-gun volume. Jourgensen’s latest self-named incarnation, backed by bassist Elie Kimura and kit basher Scott Young (Pil Bug, Hound), shifts slightly in direction…
The Barrys serve up an enormous and unruly combo platter of geek punk, idiot blues and experimental pop on their 74-minute self-titled debut. But generous sonic portions of analog-enhanced hijinks is not what sets them apart from most Denver-based bands: Committed to revolutionizing rock and roll the way McDonald’s revolutionized…
In a perpetual state of disaster as a result of ongoing famine, drought and political corruption, Zimbabwe has still managed to export some of the world’s most infectiously joyful music: complex sounds characterized by soaring melodies, intricate vocal harmonies and the kind of polyrhythmic percussion that can induce a collective…
