As a “content provider,” Backwash feels a moral obligation to shun reality programming on TV, and I await the day when American networks exhaust the public’s appetite for ready-made voyeurism and have to start hiring actual writers. But I gotta confess, I love American Idol, which entered its second season…
In far tougher economic times than these, American homesteaders often burned their houses to the ground just to retrieve the nails — then moved somewhere new with the hopes of rebuilding. Catherine Irwin, co-leader of the Kentucky-bred roots outfit Freakwater, borrows this idea of hardscrabble existence as a metaphor for…
With much of the world dangling over an abyss of terror and war, now may be the most tense time in recent history to be alive. As if in spontaneous reaction comes Black Black Ocean. While most indie-rock bands whimper and cringe, the Denver quartet (which appears Saturday, February 8,…
Denver’s Alliance Plastique claims its goal is to connect “artists, producers and the proletariat” — which means you. The group’s humble Web site, www.apnow.net, sums up its stance against trendy dress-up games and “a bunch of sceney retards.” Not a haven for the nouveau anything, AP’s Panopticon, Sundays at the…
It’s tough to believe, but just ten years ago, musicians from Seattle routinely received more attention than did performers from practically any other locale. And why not? Thanks to the success of Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains and many of their peers in the so-called grunge movement, talent scouts looked…
“So, are you going to fuck us over, then?” Such is Coldplay singer Chris Martin’s greeting, proffered with a warm smile and a clasp of the arm. Before assurances can be offered, he’s sashayed into his Los Angeles hotel room, where clothes spew out of a suitcase and over the…
The dark constellation of singer-songwriters formed by Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave and Tom Waits is no place to go poking around if you can’t stand a little self-indulgence. So pomp-averse listeners beware: Crooked Fingers may well get on your nerves. The third installment of this earnest enterprise from former Archers…
Sanity isn’t a prerequisite when it comes to making good music. Syd Barrett and Roky Erickson are only two of many performers who’ve created intriguing songs in spite of — or perhaps because of — minds that don’t operate in ways most of us regard as normal. In that sense,…
Ryan Policky is one of the very few Denverites who didn’t spend last Sunday watching football. He was too busy getting ready for a gig at the Church. Policky’s band, Pure Drama, which performs only a couple of times a year, recently added two members, bassist David Ferguson and drummer…
Bad Brains — rechristened in the late ’90s as Soul Brains to reflect a more positive vibe — has long been one of the most innovative bands to rock the planet. Influencing everyone from the Beastie Boys to Mos Def, the band burst out of the D.C. punk scene in…
This is a good year for Colorado tenor saxophonist and composer Fred Hess — and for jazz fans who appreciate harmonically adventurous cutting-edge music, impeccably played. Hess is releasing two new CDs on the Tapestry label this month — one recorded during a piano-less quartet date in Rochester, New York,…
Vitamin D and Sean Biddle of Floorfillerz have been so busy lately, it’s difficult to actually pin them down: D’s cut “That Latin Track” was the Muzik label’s song of the year, while Biddle’s “Malfunktion” scored spins on MTV; the two have also joined to form the Colorecordings label. But…
Here’s a music-journalism secret: Interviewing performers in their second language can be more enlightening than quizzing them in their first. Why? Folks familiar with English, say, are generally adept at using the idiom to skirt subjects, spin responses or appear frank without truly unwrapping their souls in the slightest. In…
I like to find a way to pull the audience into the creative process, whether they want to go or not,” says Dr. Gregory T.S. Walker, chuckling slyly. A six-and-a-half-foot-tall violinist/composer who won’t hesitate to drench folks in the orchestra seats with a water cannon in order to include them…
Rhode Island was founded as a dumping ground for criminals, no-goods, drunks and lunatics exiled from tony enclaves like Boston and New York. Like everything else, its musical legacy has been difficult to define. What the heck is Rhode Island music, anyway? The Blackstone Valley Sinners hope to include “country”…
The folks at Owned & Operated, the Fort Collins label founded in 1997 by members of the punk band All, say their Upland subsidiary specializes in “roots rock.” But this description fits the latest recording by Grandpa’s Ghost — based in teensy Pocahontas, Illinois — like the glove into which…
Marble Orchard contains many of the elements that make up some of Denver’s finest minor-chord melancholy roots-rock bands: the warbling vocals, the haunting odes and a sincerity of delivery. Who knew that the Queen City of the Plains would inspire so many dark, chamber-style, country-flavored acts? Unfortunately, this band’s traditional…
Denver-based tenor saxophonist Keith Oxman has recorded four previous CDs for Tom Burns’s plucky, perennially underfunded Capri label, based in Bailey. But Brain Storm, Oxman’s first release in three years, signals perhaps the biggest leap forward for a player, composer and teacher (he directs East High School’s student big band)…
Sporting titles such as “Purity in Pornography,” “Waiting for the Hearse,” and “My Gorgeous Façade,” Omnivoyeur resurrects ’80s synth-driven goth for a subculture that seems refreshingly indifferent to the notion that the style may never rise from the ashes. Vocalist Joe Pazo’s tongue is too busy stimulating other body parts…
Although the patient isn’t comatose, its condition isn’t particularly stable, either. At a state-of-the-union-style meeting on Sunday, January 19, Colorado Music Association president Tommy Nahulu and the five other members of COMA’s board of directors took the stage at the Soiled Dove to respond to questions and criticism and defend…
Def Jux Records now delivers what Rawkus did in the late ’90s: daring, experimental, raw hip-hop. Anchored by label founder El-P’s futuristic vision of symphonic paranoia, Def Jux has introduced rap audiences to an impressive crew of East Coast-based artists, including Aesop Rock and Cannibal Ox. Four-time Boston Music Awards…
Joseph Brenna and his fans have much to celebrate on Saturday, January 25, when the guitarist performs at Nederland’s Acoustic Cafe. The most obvious is the release of Inventing Time, an instrumental recording he co-wrote and produced with Rob Gordon, founder of the Boulder-based indie label What Are Records?. At…
