For a man whose band is attempting to recapture a spot atop the hard-rock heap after nearly a decade of commercial doldrums, you might expect Cult singer Ian Astbury to work every press opportunity like a twenty-dollar hooker on speed. Instead, he devoted a seemingly inordinate portion of a recent…
Chuck Snow is a little frustrated — and you can hardly blame him. After nearly two decades of toiling in the music scene in Colorado Springs, he still struggles to land good gigs and sizable audiences, which hardly seems fair considering his history. From 1984 to 1997, he led one…
Marilyn Manson’s pissing match with God continues — stop the presses! For a guy who’s written almost as many suicide anthems as Barry Manilow (when’s the last time you heard “It’s a Miracle” and didn’t want to bump yourself off?), yesterday’s dog-eared nemesis — still regarded as a “shock rocker”…
What a sad state of affairs. R.E.M., whose sound helped revolutionize college radio and whose subsequent success proved that bands embraced by that medium were marketable beyond it, is now such a dim part of the pop-music firmament that lead singer Michael Stipe could get publicity for Reveal, the group’s…
For ten years now, Jim Lauderdale has been one of the savvier gents among Nashville’s hipster fringe. He’s released a series of well-received C&W-rooted discs that delve into various forms of country, twanged rock and bluegrass (including his 1999 collaboration with Ralph Stanley, I Feel Like Singing Today). He’s also…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Jonny Greenwood would prefer not to be here; this I know. Talking on an intercontinental phone call to yet another journalist about how great Radiohead, in which he plays guitar, is and how important Amnesiac, the band’s new record, is in the face of the cultural poverty that’s replaced the…
Those who fear that jazz is dead or dying or in a weird state of suspended animation need look no further than the Rodriguez family to find the heart of the music beating true. Ignore the bickering over styles and stances that presently keeps musicians and fans spinning their wheels:…
Pneumonia was a long time coming. Recorded in 1999, it was a casualty of the Universal-Polygram merger that killed the group’s Outpost label and left the alt-country standard-bearers in limbo for the better part of three years. The good news: Pneumonia was worth the wait. The bad news: The long…
Putting out an extraordinarily generous two-disc collection based upon a 21-year-old LP that was hugely unsuccessful at the time of its release and hasn’t moved many more copies since seems ridiculous at first — and upon closer analysis, too. But what’s likely to be bad news for Matador, the company…
Simon Joyner is a brooding, introspective singer-songwriter who neither sings nor writes songs. It would be more descriptive to say that Joyner writes poems and delivers them in a manner that approximates singing — but just barely. His voice falters at every chord as though unsure whether or not a…
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…
Along with Doc Martin, Christopher Lawrence, June 14 at The Church, has helped make the Los Angeles club scene respectable. Yet unlike Martin — who’s famous for his excursions into deep house — Lawrence focuses primarily on the trance genre: the techno offshoot built around beautiful synthesizer lines and hypnotic…
Yeah, Red Rocks is old — officially sixty years old this year and closer to sixty million years old in actual fact. But is there a better place to see a big concert? Anywhere? On the planet? Maybe: Supposedly those shows staged in front of the pyramids in Egypt are…
Boise, Idaho: Much has been made of the fact that Doug Martsch and his band, Built to Spill, are based there, as if a vast chasm yawned between the coasts where no one in the music industry could possibly reside. And like his neighbors — gun-happy militia members, snowboarders and…
It’s Friday night in St. Louis, and inside the Pageant Theater, 2,000 people are soaking up a powerful message from Fred LeBlanc, drummer and vocalist for the New Orleans-based outfit Cowboy Mouth. Sporting a T-shirt bearing a one-word caption — INTENSE — LeBlanc prowls the edge of the stage, microphone…
Why an interview with comedienne/actress Janeane Garofalo in Westword’s music section? Plenty of reasons. For one, she entered the public consciousness largely through appearances on MTV, whose long-running animated series Daria should be subtitled Janeane at 16 (Garofalo hosted Behind the Scenes at Daria for the network last year). For…
Jamaican dancehall music has always mirrored the evolution of American rap. This includes the rash of violent, hate-filled lyrics that got Tipper Gore in such a tizzy back in the early ’90s when rappers like Ice-T released diatribes against police, women and assorted other objects of contempt. Dancehall stars, too,…
Remember that weird childhood game of sitting in the dark on Halloween, passing around “human body parts” — carrots for fingers, peeled grapes for eyeballs and chilled spaghetti for guts? The mere power of suggestion (combined with too much candy corn) could make for a rollicking evening of disgusting fun…
