Since his 1979 debut Look Sharp, Joe Jackson has into delved into a variety of genres, traversing through pop, jazz, Latin, even trying his hand at classical. While some of the twenty subsequent albums he’s released have been grandiose affairs, his latest effort, Rain, is stripped to the bare essentials…

Using a specially designed keyboard linked to a magnetic-resonance imaging machine, some Johns Hopkins and government scientists recently studied what happens to the brains of jazz musicians when they improvise. Their conclusion: During improv, “their brains turn off areas linked to self-censoring and inhibition, and turn on those that let…

Hillstomp’s bucket thumper and washboard scraper John Johnson once said, “The blues isn’t really about being sad,” but about using the music as a celebration, to bring yourself up and out of something. Johnson and guitarist/singer Henry Kammerer know a few things about lifting up spirits with their punk-infused, backwoods…

It can be odd to visit a place where you haven’t been for more than a decade. You get a picture in your head, and it stays there until you finally get another look at the real thing. I went to the Catacombs, in the basement of the Hotel Boulderado…

The musicians in Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey thrive on change. When bassist Reed Mathis and keyboardist Brian Haas formed the trio fifteen years ago, they focused on a blend of post-bop and post-James Brown funk, covering cuts by Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Prince and Maceo Parker. But with each album,…

I recently got a tip about a hip, safari-themed bar in south Longmont, of all places. Looking at the website of Tusk Safari Lounge, I envisioned a massive place with a jungle motif and a crocodile head sitting on the bar. The slogan alone — “drink, graze, chill” — was…

While listening to a live recording of Widespread Panic at last week’s Widespread Wednesday at Moon Time Bar & Grill (846 Broadway), I noticed a bumpersticker (one of many plastered on the beer coolers behind the bar) that read “Politicians and diapers need to be changed for the same reason.”…

On There’s Nothing Safe, Vendetta Valentine’s latest, the Los Angeles-based trio draws inspiration from George Orwell’s 1984, touching upon topics ranging from Big Brother to the falseness of government. The album, soaked in electro-pop and Pixies hooks, was produced with the help of famed sports talk-show host Jim Rome. We…

On the Claudia Quintet’s latest genre-bending album, For, composer and percussionist John Hollenbeck dedicates each of the disc’s eight songs to different people, from Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek and Dick Cheney’s daughter Mary to Vipassana meditation teacher S.N. Goenka. While “I’m So Frickin’ Cool” may have been written for Austrian…

Over the past few months, I’ve been running into people I haven’t seen in years, and it’s mildly freaking me out. At Vinyl (1082 Broadway) in February, I saw a guy who was on my little-league football team. A few weeks before that, it was a high-school classmate at My…

Over thirty years ago, long before Mick Jones joined the Clash and Tony James teamed up with Billy Idol in Generation X, the pair played together in the short-lived punk band London SS. Five years ago, the two reunited for a new project called Carbon/Silicon. Inspired by their shared love…

Four years ago, club owner Regas Christou transformed the former Jonas Brothers building at 1037 Broadway into the jungle-themed Serengeti, which then became the Shelter. On Friday, March 28, the space will reopen as Bar Standard, an Art Deco-themed, modern-day speakeasy — think Roaring ’20s and ’30s with a twist…

In the late ’70s, there was a power forward on the University of Toledo basketball team who was known more for the giant black growth on his shoulder than for his dominating ball-handling skills. That man’s name? Harvey Knuckles. As a kid growing up in Toledo, Ohio, Mike Wing was…

Denver-based Beatport.com pretty much dominates the world of electronic and dance-music downloads through its online store. The guys behind Beatport know the music inside out and have been booking some of the world’s best DJs for the past decade — so it seems only fitting that they’ve finally opened their…

The list of musicians who’ve played New York City’s Village Vanguard throughout its seventy-year history reads like a who’s who of jazz. Luminaries such as John Coltrane, Bill Evans and Sonny Rollins celebrated live albums there. Guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, who kicked off his musical career playing with Gary Burton and…

About halfway through David Allan Coe’s song “You Never Even Called Me By My Name,” he talks about how his friend Steve Goodman wrote the first part of the song and told Coe that it was the perfect country-and-Western song. Coe then goes on to say that he wrote his…

On the Tuesday before Father’s Day in 2006, Tia Fuller went to an audition that changed her life. Beyoncé was scouting for members of her ten-piece, all-female touring band at Sony Studios in New York. Although the tryouts started at 9 a.m., Fuller didn’t show up until 6 p.m. The…

Since Boulder is a college town, you’d think there would be more places to dance as well as drink, says Will Coleman. And with his latest venture, the two-level Elixir lounge at 1915 South Broadway, Coleman’s given the town just that. “Downstairs is really the hottest dance environment in Boulder,”…

True story. When I was in college, a girl asked me to kill her. Right after sex. I’d known her for about three hours (we’d met at an open-mike poetry reading). There was none of that post-coital cuddling for this gal. She said, “I just don’t feel anything inside anymore…

Last April, when jazz drummer Ari Hoenig returned to New York after playing a gig in Denver, he was greeted by an e-mail from a woman who wrote him a long, thoughtful note expressing how much she hated the music his trio played at Dazzle. He was a bit stunned…

When I check out a club for the first time, I like to keep a low profile. I’ll just slide into the place, grab a seat at the bar, order a beer and observe for a bit, getting a feel for the joint. But when I walked through the doors…