Elea Plotkin, Wednesday, August 22, at the Soiled Dove, plucks a piano rather than a guitar as her primary instrument, exchanging the strum-strum sound associated with singer-songwriters for a cleaner, bluesy feel. On Plotkin’s second album, Little Rockets, slated for release this week, she tries her tinkling hand at a…
Dolly Zander recognizes the mailman making the rounds on the 1000 block of Sherman Street, where we sit drinking coffee on a recent morning: He’s so-and-so, the former guitarist for such-and-such, a band that played around town for a while but dropped from sight years ago. In his regulation blues,…
Aggressive Persuasion is but one of ten bands on a scintillatingly scary bill touted as “The Immaturity Show” and slated to hit the Aztlan Theatre on Saturday, August 11. Though the Pueblo-based quartet’s origins reinforce the values of the nuclear family — the band began shortly after leader David Bryant’s…
Somewhere in their office on York Street, the three owners of nobody in particular presents are having to find room for their Herculean huevos. On Monday, nipp’s Jesse Morreale, Doug Kauffman and Chris Swank filed an anti-trust lawsuit against Clear Channel Communications, Inc., the radio/entertainment behemoth that has been swallowing…
It might have seemed like a mini-metal marathon last week, when an unusually dense lineup of some of Denver’s more hard-hitting bands took the stage at Sports Field Roxxx, the East Colfax venue that has become one of the city’s metal meccas: One by one, the musicians assaulted crowds with…
Alex Lemski’s mind is a little like the jazz music he promoted as founder and president of Creative Music Works: It’s associative, non-linear, complicated and, right now, swimming with activity. But after eleven years of hard work on behalf of progressive music in Denver, Lemski is leaving town for good…
In the jungle canopy of Belize grows a moisture-loving fungus — a member of the Geotrichum family, to be exact — that has recently been caught in the act of attacking compact discs, munching on their plastic and aluminum with a glee that only a fungus can know, destroying whatever…
As one of Denver’s longest-running local outfits, Jux County has more than earned the right to perform during the LoDo Music Festival on Saturday, July 14: Guitarist/vocalist Andy Monley, drummer Ron Smith and bassist Chris Pearson (an ever-present local fixture who splits time between Jux, the Czars and Sarina Simoom)…
Jack Johnson has an almost obscene number of things going for him. A professional surfer in his teens and a filmmaker in his twenties, Johnson only recently discovered his talents as a pianist, songwriter and vocalist. Good thing he did: Johnson’s self-titled debut album is a soulful, pleasingly simple collection…
If you’ve gotten in the habit of heading up to Nederland for that mountain community’s Monday-night Acid Jam — an activity that sounds all the more appealing as Denver swelters — you might want to leave early next week so that you have time to figure out just where those…
Howard Booker Bridges III, with Chronophonic, En tu Oblivion and Clockworked, Wednesday, July 11, at the Soiled Dove, first became familiar to local audiences as a member of 11th Hour, Askimbo and Catalyst. But the decision to branch out as a solo artist has provided the most illuminating platform for…
Reason Number 894 why signing with an established record company is not always a good thing: Established or not, the company sometimes does wacky things, like filing for bankruptcy and leaving its signees in a strange state of professional purgatory. That’s a lesson Chris Daniels and the Kings have been…
Rhino Records has just released the second volume of the infamous Nuggets collection, a treasure chest of the finest, strangest and most obscure garage-rock recordings of all time. Whether or not the Down-N-Outs, who perform Saturday, June 30, at Seven South, with Dressy Bessy, owe their style to a careful…
Whenever they’re blowing up Mile High Stadium, it’s not soon enough — and the 24,000 sweaty fans who converged on the arena for last week’s Ozzfest would probably agree. As one of the last shows ever to grace the stadium where John Elway ascended to sainthood, Ozzfest was an appropriately…
In the liner notes to Ties That Bind, singer-songwriter Sally Shuffield’s second CD, there are antique photographs surrounded by dried rose petals and Chantilly lace — presumably, the people pictured are somehow related and dear to Shuffield’s life and experience. There’s a feeling of reflection, a reverence in the presentation…
Though it’s been nearly two years since Alison Krauss released a record of her own — 1999’s widely acclaimed Forget About It — the prodigal bluegrass vocalist has never veered far from the country-music spotlight. Most recently, Krauss was among the brightest lights on the soundtrack to O Brother, Where…
The security guards at the City and County Building looked ready for an invasion Monday night. At around 6:30 p.m., legions of tattooed, multicolored music types arrived en masse for a public hearing on a Denver City Council ordinance that would open the city’s 350-plus cabarets to anyone over the…
Stephen Labowskie figured it was going to be a pretty good day. It was June 14 when Labowskie and other early arrivals were to begin converging on the Telluride Bluegrass Festival 2000, a four-day picking marathon that was expected to draw 10,000 music fans per day. Like many festivalgoers, Labowskie,…
Over the phone, I hear the woman present the Beta Band’s John Maclean with a difficult choice. “Would you like chocolate-covered peanuts or…pistachios?” Maclean doesn’t hesitate: It’s peanuts all the way. His thickly accented publicist asks me if I would mind giving her charge a moment to enjoy one or…
Sometimes, Jason Janz just cannot get Marilyn Manson out of his head. “I decided a while ago that I couldn’t listen to his songs anymore. It bothered me the way they lodged in my brain. I’d sing them to my wife, around the house: ‘I don’t like the drugs, but…
Since forming last summer, Hi-Fidelity, Thursday, June 7, at the 15th Street Tavern, with the Gravity Index and Los Federalis, has become one of Denver’s more appealing arbiters of the garage-rock gospel. Fronted by vocalist/guitarist Joaquin Liebert, the band’s live set is peppered by a batch of irresistibly crunchy pop…
For the record, “The Big Unit” is the nickname of Randy Johnson, pitcher extraordinaire for the Arizona Diamondbacks, whose Bank One Ballpark is just a bunt or two away from the original Alice Coopers’town in Phoenix. For Denverites who scoped the menu during last week’s grand opening of this city’s…
