Music

For those hoping to rub shoulders with Russell Simmons at Denver’s upcoming Hip-Hop Festival and Summit, the event may not be as def as expected. Hip-hop fans started anticipating big things last May, when Def Jam co-founder and hip-hop impresario Simmons stood next to then-mayor Wellington Webb, touting his Rush…

I’m watching some fucking commercial on television where there are multiple David Bowies running around,” exclaims singer Bobby Harlow. He and his bandmates in the Go just rolled into Los Angeles; they’re now licking their wounds and counting their losses after a bout with debauchery in Las Vegas the night…

Even now, especially in Europe, the first question we get is, ‘Well, you’re famous for not doing interviews, so why are you doing an interview?'” says Richard Colburn, drummer for dream-pop flag-bearers Belle & Sebastian. “That still stands today — and we’ve done tons of interviews the past few years…

Rock dudes who make minimalist electronic music on the side ought to be lined up, bent over and savagely molested with a twelve-disc Philip Glass boxed set until they bawl like Michael Jackson’s paperboy. Thankfully, Omaha’s indie-dance outfit the Faint isn’t exactly a rock band, and the group’s bassist, Joel…

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…

Like it or not, Tim Deluxe may soon be despised by many of the people who currently adore him. Why? Because his first full-length offers pleasures that should appeal well beyond the traditional dance-music parameters, making him a prime candidate for crossover success. And nothing pisses off aficionados of a…

Your new girlfriend is grabbing a refill from the backyard keg when she overhears one of your buddies slap you on the back and mutter, “So, you tapped that shit, huh, bud?” You frantically nod your head toward the porch and shout, “Shut the fuck up, dude. I never said…

People in the know realize that Future I.D. was released late last year. The problem is, most folks aren’t in the know, which helps explain why one of the best hip-hop discs ever to come out of Colorado hasn’t made more of a bang. This review is an effort to…

Across two decades of brilliant recordings and rousing live shows, Graham Parker’s music has kept one loafer in his U.K. homeland and the other in his musical inspiration: America. His new release puts both feet on the latter’s soil. Your Country is an All-American, country-flavored collection on the nation’s most…

Nolan Ryan probably had a pretty decent curve. But the thing that earned him a Hall of Fame plaque in Cooperstown and the respect of every hitter that faced him was his scorching heater. Likewise, an unassuming trio of fellow Texans, originally dubbed Magneto U.S.A., made a name for themselves…

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…

These days, indie rock is back in vogue with mainstream critics, who act as if the genre rose phoenix-like from the ashes of the ’90s grunge movement when Julian Casablancas decided that modeling wasn’t for him. The truth, of course, is that the style has been thriving all along in…

2 Live Crew’s 1986 debut, 2 Live Crew Is What We Are, left little doubt as to what this act was. Smack-dab in the middle of the Reagan administration and only a year after the Parents’ Music Resource Center hearings, the Crew assaulted the pop-culture collective with extremely graphic sexual…

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…

Tacoma is weird. It’s like Seattle’s dirty little brother,” declares Ben Verellen, singer/guitarist of Roy. “Back about a hundred years ago, there was this Tacoma versus Seattle thing, but when Seattle got the railroad terminal, it kind of took over and became this big city while Tacoma took a plunge…

Kevin Barnes won’t play along. I’m trying to break the ice with Barnes, Of Montreal’s idiosyncratic leader and auteur, with a game of word association I’ve created by cherry-picking some of his striking lyrics, adding words that are often used to describe his band and, just for kicks, tossing in…

Love hurts, but rock and roll can put you in the hospital. Take, for instance, Roger Miller of Boston’s praised-to-high-hell Mission of Burma. Being one of the loudest bands of the original post-punk era was enough to blow out his eardrums, and the resulting tinnitus was a major factor in…

The only way Franz Ferdinand, the latest in a long line of overhyped British imports, could justify the celebratory verbiage penned about the group by U.K. journalists would be if its members brought peace to the Middle East, eliminated global poverty and transplanted a fully functioning brain into Jessica Simpson…

No, Janet isn’t flashing a breast in Damita Jo’s liner notes, and she doesn’t have any songs about “wardrobe malfunctions.” However, heavy sexual references and innuendos are prevalent throughout the record. The eighth studio album from Ms. Jackson picks up where her previous album, All For You, left off celebrating…

“Denver rap sucks.” That’s a bold statement, especially when made before MCs like Dent and Black Pegasus, hosts of the April 18 DMC turntable competition at the Fox Theatre in Boulder, as well as such Mootown luminaries as Apostle and Kingdom (whose beef I wrote about in this space on…

Ms. Woo would make a fine role model for any musician looking to make a career in a city, like this one, that’s far from the industry power centers. Rather than begging the management of Boulder’s Fox Theatre to put her on the bill, she took a job there as…