Remember that song “Last Night, a Year-End Top Ten List Saved My Life”? Of course you don’t. The music itself — not some perfunctory list — is what makes you laugh, pulls on your heartstrings and gets you thinking. Aside from mix tapes made by old lovers and friends, an…
Music got downright deadly in 2003. Some of the great ones went up to that big gig in the sky — icons and legends like Johnny Cash, Barry White, Warren Zevon, Elliott Smith and Wesley Willis — while the RIAA took off after grandmas and single moms around the country…
Go home and hump, already. It’s become painfully obvious that many of you have never been given a primer on the rules of rock. That’s the only way I can explain the moronic shit that I’ve witnessed these past six months. And now, as we approach the biggest alcoholiday of…
Sometimes there’s no better indication of how old you’ve become than finding yourself sneering over the success of someone younger than you. Peter Cincotti surely has been the recipient of many such grumblings since becoming a jazz phenom at the age of twenty with his self-titled debut release. Receiving praise…
Zombies are shambling, reanimated corpses that drip with decay and a cold, bloodless contempt for all human life. Zombie Zombie is like that, times two. For the last couple of years, this local foursome has been assaulting the country with a surreal mingling of costumes, noise and apocalyptic hallucinations of…
In Groove, the hit Sundance film that documented one night in San Francisco’s underground rave scene, Forest Green offers a glimpse of why that city can’t get enough of her explosive talent. Early on, Green’s voracity propelled her from private lessons and performances through university courses in a mélange of…
It’s an unseasonably warm Sunday, and the Denver Broncos and the Kansas City Chiefs are embroiled in a bare-knuckle, winner-take-all slugfest. Clinton Portis has just scored his fifth touchdown of the day. Earlier, ex-Bronco-turned-Chief Eddie Kennison had accused his former team of being scared and promised to “put something on…
There’s a very little-known installment of the Shaft movie series where Richard Roundtree’s funky detective gets sent to bust some pimps and pushers on a space station circling Alpha Centauri. Artificial gravity hasn’t been invented yet, so our man Shaft floats weightless with a fishbowl over his head while he…
Anyone who doubts that there’s a connection between the sorry state of the music industry and this year’s onslaught of Christmas CDs probably still believes in Santa Claus. Then again, record companies do, too. Why? Holiday recordings generally appeal to consumers in their mid-twenties and older — a demographic that’s…
There’s nothing like being neutered. Last week, en route to my bi-weekly estrogen injection, I stumbled on a flier exposing my recent emasculation. Talk about a manic Monday! Thanks to some expert sleuthing by the crack investigators in the Blister 66 organization, I’ve now been outed. And as if that…
From a New Orleans tradition as old as the bordellos of Storyville, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band continues to reinvent Dixieland jazz with ace musicianship, dynamic interplay and horns aplenty: two trumpets, two saxophones, one trombone and a sousaphone that fattens the bottom end like a wedge of mud pie…
Sick of bells ringing and angels winging, not to mention ghosts who just like to help people? Do you use Nightmare Before Christmas as a warmup before House of 1000 Corpses to really get into the spirit of the season? Then you must be a fan of the murder-metal masters…
Multiple-personality disorder gets such a bad reputation; everyone seems to forget all the good it can do. Take, for example, drum-and-bass crusader Stakka, who, in the years since his birth (under the name Shaun Morris), has used innumerable identities to distinguish the varying dementias of creative energy that have colored…
It’s easy to see why autumn is a lot of people’s favorite season. For one thing, it isn’t so goddamn hot. Summer simmers down to a chilly lull, leaves put on a patina of rust, and the smarter mammals bury themselves in hibernation. At its heart, though, autumn is palpably…
Seated around a cluttered coffee table in a Congress Park home, the four members of Denver’s New Ancient Astronauts are engaged in a lively but tangent-prone bull session. Among the evening’s many unexpected digressions: Were rocks the planet’s first musical instruments? Was Journey the first emo band? Is Michael Jackson…
Gas, grass or ass — nobody rides for free. Ever wake up one morning to find your vehicle gone? Straight-up jacked while you weren’t looking? Last week, thousands upon thousands of struggling minstrels around the world did. On Tuesday, December 2, the hospitality shuttle they’d been cruising in — otherwise…
Every time some subterranean sound decides to paint itself up and whore itself out to the hoi polloi, there’s a legion of bands left behind to rock away in obscurity, more out of love for the music than the lure of record contracts and movie-star girlfriends. Take, for example, Radio…
Mary Flower wasn’t among the artists featured in Martin Scorsese’s recent cinematic homage to the blues, but several of her heroes were. Flower, a disciple of blues architects including Blind Lemon Jefferson and Robert Johnson, has honed her own Piedmont-style perfection over the past decade. A former folkie who took…
Oscar G’s past may be a little murky, having mixed magic with his partner Robbie Falcon as the “Murk Boys” and founded the Murk underground music label, but his future is on the rise at Rise, where he’s performing this Friday, December 12. G’s Billboard-busting “Dark Beat” has been labeled…
Sucking Satan’s dick can really change a person. Just ask Rodney Mitchell, a guy who’s been taking his lumps for years playing music in what he calls “nobody’s underground” — the limbo between obscurity and fame that most people know as the world of independent rock. Frustrated and finally fed…
Aesop Rock is the self-deprecating antihero of indie rap. Amazed that anyone has taken an interest in his music, Aesop, who was born Ian Bavitz on Long Island in 1976, isn’t out to save rap; he’s content just carving out a little niche for himself and his friends at his…
If you’ve ever poked your head in the IDM romper room, the first thing you probably noticed were the petulant children — Autechre, Squarepusher, Aphex Twin — demanding attention, throwing Ritalin-deprived tantrums with their fractured, glitchy logarithms. Meanwhile, over there in the corner, you might have seen those Plaid lads…
