Ultimate Music Xperience, Saturday, March 23, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, March 24, from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., at the Soiled Dove, is a marathon audition for acts hoping to play the annual People’s Fair, which funds the mighty civic efforts of Capitol Hill United Neighborhoods…
Performers frequently overflow with contradictions, but few are as consistently enigmatic as keyboardist Herbie Hancock. He’s won steady acclaim in the jazz arena, as well as intermittent scorn for venturing outside it — but that hasn’t stopped him from eagerly delving into popular styles as disparate as classical and hip-hop…
Given the pedigree of Le Tigre’s three players, it’s not surprising that they’re poised as she-roes for feminists of generations X and Y. Kathleen Hanna, unofficial leader of the riot-grrrl movement spawned in the Pacific Northwest in the early ’90s, formed Le Tigre in 1999 after the dissolution of garage…
Imagine yourself an astronaut adrift in space. Your ship just blew up. You’ve been jettisoned into emptiness with only an eggshell of oxygen between you and eternity. After that first sunburst of panic, an icy resignation washes over you. You look down at the spacesuit enshrouding your body. You read…
Becoming a critics’ fave can be like moving into a posh but virtually inescapable prison cell, and Chambers is apt to wind up with such a sentence. After all, her music is often described as “alternative country,” which has proven to be as big a turn-on for mainstream record buyers…
With Ryan Adams currently anointed as the commercial savior of roots rock, can Hoge’s ascension be far behind? Since taking up music professionally in the late ’90s, the singer has already evoked favorable comparisons to Van Morrison, Bruce Springsteen and every other sweaty bar-room bard to come before or after…
Madame Andrews possesses a heavenly voice that’s mightier than Goliath yet as supple as Halle Berry’s skin. Known as the “Gospel Queen of Denver” — a title that she says was bestowed upon her by the Lord through a divine communiqué — she has spent a couple of decades as…
Leftover Salmon fans have done their band proud. When word spread that banjo player Mark Vann had lost his bout with cancer on March 4, the band’s post office box in Nederland began to swell not only with cards of condolence, but with checks and other pledges of financial support…
Lake Trout bewildered audiences full of jam-band fans when it asked Marky Ramone and Jerry Only of the Misfits to join the band in a performance at Relix Magazine’s Jammy Awards in New York last year. The Baltimore five-piece has been named as a co-conspirator in the electro-jam movement, along…
An underground East Coast MC made good, Talib Kweli has rightfully earned his title as a hip-hop headliner. But before the rapper takes over the Glenn Miller Ballroom in Boulder on Saturday, March 16, some local groups will show that Colorado doesn’t have to import talent in order to put…
Daniel Johnston has just returned from his first British invasion — a transatlantic journey that had all the personal importance of a trip to Mecca. “I just got back from London, home of the Beatles,” he says over the phone from the house he shares with his elderly parents in…
A bohemian former model and current It Boy on the local gay-club circuit, Ben Fowler has spent half his life abroad and has a Euro suaveness that renders him a teensy bit out of his element in Denver. He’s one of those creative types who bubble up in the cultural…
As far as underground hip-hop goes, DJ Babu has got all the bases covered. He makes mixed tapes, produces records, collects vinyl and bangs around in clubs, both as a solo artist and as a member of a couple of stellar crews. At the moment, however, he’s homed in on…
The Blasters, the pioneering roots-rock band from blue-collar Downey, California, were part of the early-’80s L.A. punkabilly scene that also spawned Los Lobos, X, the Germs and others. Led by brothers Phil and Dave Alvin and famous for their incendiary live shows, the Blasters recorded just three studio albums and…
Harvey Sid Fisher is not the sort of performer who usually turns up on the 15th Street Tavern stage on Saturday nights. For starters, he’s in his sixties — a proper gentlemen with a wildly fluffy, mad-genius-style coif who wears suits (preferably of the powder-blue variety) to his gigs, likes…
The idea of artists overcoming adversity is a modern theme du jour, with dreary storylines custom-made for television documentaries. Yet it’s hard to imagine any comeback more unlikely than the one achieved by Steve Earle, who appears in a solo acoustic set at the Fox Theatre on Thursday, March 7…
Boubacar Diébaté was, literally, born for music. The native of Senegal, West Africa, is part of a family of griots — traditional musicians who view music as the most important tool of communication and cultural preservation. Now he’s a drummer and master player of the kora, a harplike instrument that…
DJ Ty Tek sits in the back room of Casa Del Soul, the modest yet packed retailer that hawks albums, clubwear and other gear to aspiring Denver spinners. The scene is part vinyl hot spot, part mini-Warhol Factory for the turntable set: A booming house track plays noisily in the…
In spite of a half-minded president, a slew of bad haircuts and a Me-centric mindset, a few memorable and artistic things managed to slip through the conservative cracks of the Reagan era. Confoundingly, much of the substantive musical activity of the ’80s came out of Minnesota, a frigid and often…
While past Jonathan Richman albums have revealed the singer to be many things — Velvet Underground groupie, interstate situationist, champion of affection, eater with gusto — his newest release adds another entry to that resumé: artist. The back cover sports his scrawled pastel depiction of an elfish figure seated on…
The members of Mushroomhead want everyone to know that they had the idea first: cluttering a stage in goofy masks to usher in the end times with mediocre metal. And while fans of Des Moines’s abrasive Slipknot howl from the balconies of hardcore injustice — accusing Mushroomhead of being a…
Tracing the arc of Richmond Fontaine’s career, you can’t help but notice that while the band’s sound has evolved from brash to more subdued, confessional-style country rock, its subject matter has essentially stayed the same. Fontaine’s ethos was captured best by the title of a live album the band released…
