Sometimes, a couple of good lines from a pop song can explain in a few words what otherwise might take an hour: “Consider for a minute who you are/Then decide it’s time to re-invent yourself/Like Liz before Betty, she after Sean/Suddenly you’re missing, then you’re reborn.” Neil Tennant’s pithy lyric…
The BellRays are pissed off. Independent thought is an endangered endeavor. That pisses them off. Modern politics are more akin to marketing Brand X over Brand Y than they are about solving problems. That also pisses them off. The music media insists on slapping labels on them. That pisses them…
After a decade of working to make a name for herself in the heart of the Denver music scene, local folk-country artist Celeste Krenz is heading for the bright lights of Nashville. But unlike all of those starry-eyed girls with guitars boarding Tennessee-bound Greyhound coaches, Krenz has no misbegotten hopes…
That Jennifer Lopez. I mean, whew. Look at her. She’s got hair like a wheat field in the wind and brown eyes richer than all the Rockefellers put together, and full, luscious lips just made to shout, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” And in the photo on the back of the package,…
This disc finds the former voice of Judas Priest straddling the classic metal stylings for which he’s revered in many quarters and more contemporary touches; Halford succumbs to a style that’s made multimillionaires of malcontents who were still sucking strained bananas when Rob and the lads were living after midnight…
The modern jazz giant Charles Mingus earned scant mention in Ken Burns’s lengthy but misshapen PBS documentary about the music, so newcomers in thrall to Burns’s view may not grasp Mingus’s enormous reach and influence. For thirty years he was a powerful bassist, a daring, big-scale composer and a philosopher…
When the Grammy Awards air later this month, Mr. Marshall Mathers will probably be asked to please stand up at least once; Eminem’s quadruplicate nominations seem to guarantee a win or four on February 21. But since The Marshall Mathers LP is just the kind of specimen Tipper Gore types…
Sage Francis, with Atmosphere, Child and 5th Column, Thursday, February 8, at the Boulder Theater, may not look like a poet in the Wordsworth tradition. Still, his work — a combination of battle rap and a poetry slam — has earned him a rightful place in the artful hip-hop underground…
In 1993, Dave Willey’s seven-month-old orange tabby killed a squirrel — a big, black one with pointy ears. The incident provided inspiration for “The Cat Song” and further motivated Willey to flesh out ideas he had gathered while busking across the Eastern Bloc. Almost a decade later, the Boulder-based multi-instrumentalist…
When Denver bluesman Otis Taylor first played the songs he wanted to include on his latest CD for Kenny Passarelli, his producer and bandmate, Passarelli was caught off guard by the dourness of the material. “He said, ‘This is so dark,'” Taylor remembers. But for Taylor, softening the tone wasn’t…
It’s Monday night — prime time — and Faith Hill, Tim McGraw and other stars glide across a Los Angeles stage, picking up trophies during the American Music Awards broadcast. Out in the audience, small clusters of songwriters become ecstatic with each announcement. In addition to feeling the rush of…
Original-recipe Rage was one of the greatest live acts of the past decade, and its handful of recordings over that period had plenty of juice in them, too — but there was always the sense that these guys needed to seriously loosen up. They’ve been called “the American Clash” so…
British birdwatcher Alison Goldfrapp digs spaghetti-Western soundtracks and can sing and whistle to beat the band. After providing vocals for both Tricky (Maxinquaye) and Orbital (Snivilisation), she expands Bristol’s artsy acid-jazz scene with a remarkable debut — one that waxes pure nostalgia for sultry torch songs (think Eartha Kitt, Sarah…
In its twenty-plus years of history, punk rock sure has undergone some drastic changes. Today, holding up Johnny Rotten’s lethal screams of “No Future!” against Blink 182’s poo-poo pee-pee jokes gives a muddled picture of the genre’s direction. If there’s a band that could be punk rock’s Rosetta Stone, it’d…
If you listen to commercial radio in Denver, you might be inclined to think that there were only about seventeen new albums released in the year 2000. (How else could the curious state of local playlists be explained?) But actually, the approximate number of CDs released in the United States…
Punk or dub? Dreadlocks or Mohawk? Spiked leather or braided hemp? Can’t make up your mind? Don’t: Just head over to the Soul Brains show, Saturday, February 3, at the Ogden Theatre. There you can mosh and praise Jah in one fell swoop. The Soul Brains — aka the original…
Marca Cassity, Thursday, February 8, at Denver’s Hard Rock Cafe, is a truly busy musical bee. Two years ago, Boulder’s infamous Women From Mars series — in which she plays a vital role — expanded to a weekly radio show of the same name on KWAB/AM 1490. As the show’s…
In the rap world, Long Beach, California, carries with it a certain stylistic connotation. When most hip-hop fans think of the town on Los Angeles’s southern edge, they think of hard-edged rappers laying down rhymes about gangster life set to that classic laid-back G-Funk sound. Not surprisingly, the all-white rap…
As anyone who’s ever suffered through a band audition can confirm, good musical help is hard to find. Players who are tolerable in confined spaces like tour vans and recording studios are scarce enough, never mind details like the compatibility of musical visions and styles. Of course, if you are…
Listened to at low volume, with attention focused on sounds — not words — Natural Selection makes what sounds almost like normal music. Permanent Teeth, its debut recording, abounds with airtight, verse-chorus-verse melodies that fit the pop-song formula with airtight precision. But listen more closely. Amid the electric, acoustic and…
Denver may not have all the urban accoutrements of the cultural meccas on the West and East coasts, but it does appear to be cultivating a substantial DJ-per-capita ratio; viewed from the sky, you can see them huddling in little flocks, turntables in one hand, headphones in the other, gathering…
The Causey Way is not a cult. Or so says this five-piece (give or take) from Gainsville, Florida. You can decide for yourself on Tuesday, January 30, at the 15th Street Tavern, when the band hits Denver to spread its “good word,” all in the name of converting wayward souls…
