Many members of the local music community regard Dick Weissman, Friday, April 7, in the King Center Recital Hall on the Auraria Campus, as a wise man: A professor at the University of Colorado at Denver and author of the indispensable text, How To Make a Living in Your Local…
For years, it’s seemed, most hip-hop acts receiving good notices in the mainstream and alternative media have subsequently been rewarded with middling album sales and dim futures — which is one of many reasons why the rise of OutKast, appearing Friday, March 30, at the Fillmore Auditorium, with Ludacris, has…
On its debut recording, Memoirs From…, the Sad Star Café suggested that it had the chops to become a good guitar-rock band; the talent was there — it was obvious in singer Mark Sundermeier’s vocals and the dexterous playing of guitarist Kirk Schneider. The songs just hadn’t quite come together…
There’s a perception in this great land of ours that masterful singer-songwriter Nick Cave makes depressing music. But, as Cave points out, this opinion isn’t universally held. “It’s always Americans who say that,” he allows. He chuckles before adding, “The French never do.” Is this an example of what cultural…
In an old snapshot taken sometime in the late ’70s, Dusty Drapes and the Dusters crowd around a ’50s-era car, donning cowboy hats, boots and Western shirts. A sticker on the car’s bumper reads “Cowboy Cadillac.” In the foreground, bandleader Drapes (also known as Steve Swenson) and a young guitarist…
The current explosion in neo-Latin jazz has been set off largely by restless, brilliant pianists — the Cuban virtuoso Chucho Valdés and the Panamanian wizard Danilo Perez, to name just two. Their music is highly evolved and relentlessly multicultural — a spicy gumbo of Latin American, African and hard-bopping U.S…
There are something like two bazillion bats in Austin, Texas. On the underside of a bridge that divides north from south, the night-flying creatures shriek, defecate and hang upside down all day long in one of the largest bat colonies in North America. Once a day, around sundown, they make…
Throughout his four-decade career, John Hammond, Wednesday, March 28, at the Gothic Theatre, has been known as a gifted interpreter of the blues: In the early days, young Hammond channeled the raw power of artists like Robert Johnson and Mississippi John Hurt for a new audience, at once helping to…
No one’s totally sure about the origins of Mullethead, who perform Friday, March 30, with Cabaret Diosa, Burlesque As It Was and Liza Band at the Fox Theatre. Some people say the rocking bi-levelers were discovered while playing Motörhead tunes on the amateur stage at the Colorado State Fair some…
For a media whore like John Vanderslice, fifteen stinkin’ minutes probably aren’t enough. “I think a lot of bands are afraid of publicity,” says the 33-year-old indie rocker from Bethesda, Maryland, who presently resides in San Francisco. ” afraid that they’re prostrating themselves. Like they’re not supposed to be looking…
Eddie Hayes’s nom de plume — Aceyalone — suggests that the man himself doesn’t mind walking the path less traveled, and neither does his music, an intellectually stimulating blend of distinctive, often jazzy hip-hop with lyrics that reject the themes of material lust commonly spewed by too many of his…
Some questions for folks of a certain vintage: Remember growing up in the ’70s? Remember how embarrassing it was? Remember wishing you’d come of age in just about any previous decade, because at least none of them were defined by pet rocks, polyester and Peter Frampton? Remember any of that?…
It’s often thought that those without the skill to write moving, personal songs forgo the singer-songwriter route to concentrate on pop. While a good pop sensibility and poetic songwriting don’t always overlap, with Steady Pull, Jonatha Brooke proves they’re not mutually exclusive. On her first independently released studio album, Brooke…
When artists make a conscious effort to strike out and do something different, they are sometimes led into the fertile fields of creativity. But they often wind up in the same sonic cul-de-sacs already ruled by other, more interesting bands. For every Beatles, Talk Talk or Moby — each a…
The early line on Standards — that the disc would prove to be Tortoise’s most accessible release thus far — caused the heart of this particular fan to sink faster than stocks in the high-tech sector, and for good reason. The joys inherent in the soundscapes created by this thorny…
A couple of weeks ago, Backwash lamented Rock Island’s decision to stop hosting live local music on Thursday nights — among other things, owner David Clamage cited the difficulty of drawing music crowds to LoDo, an area now more associated with sports and dance clubs than with rock bands in…
Erykah Badu, Friday, March 16, at the Fillmore Auditorium, with Talib Kweli and Musiq Soul Child, arrived on the public stage in 1997, and since then her influence has been seen in established performers — the solo Lauryn Hill frequently displays the lessons Badu taught her — and worthy new…
The Indulgers really have impeccable timing. Soon after the release — and overwhelming response to — the band’s debut recording, In Like Flynn, the Celtic band began work on a followup; this month, when all the world turns its thoughts to the Green Isle and its many yummy beers, head…
Some bands want to change the world, and Dressy Bessy is no different. But the group’s methods don’t involve any force-feeding of philosophy: The only thing the players might shove down your throat is a candy cane. The band’s psychedelic cyberspace home, at dressybessy.com, vividly illustrates this point. Vocalist/songwriter Tammy…
England is just a weird place geographically,” says Paul Ortiz, aka DJ David Watts, attempting to pinpoint why the U.K. is so alluring to music-hungry Americans. “It’s an island that’s not really a part of Europe. And it’s a really small place, but they have all this wealth and power.”…
Twice a year, like clockwork, Red Holloway surfaces at El Chapultepec, the beloved wreck of a jazz club at 20th and Market streets. Denver musicians — especially saxophonists — always drop by for another dose of Holloway’s powerful, blues-inflected playing, a spread-wing style that reflects his past collaborations with everyone…
Upon its emergence in the early ’90s, the Dave Matthews Band was either critically ignored or dismissed by reviewers as yet another in a seemingly endless string of sincere, acoustic-oriented jam acts then headlining clubs in every college town in America. And even the decent numbers racked up by the…
