The white man or woman who plays the blues is often forced to confront a long-standing stereotype: the idea among blues-brained purists that only black artists can truly sing about pain, loss and heartbreak. Of course, music history begs to differ with this notion. Some of the most wrist-slitting blues…
There’s no getting around it: People’s reactions to certain kinds of pop music tend to change once they become parents and their offspring start consuming it. What was once innocuous, disposable, easy to ignore and often a guilty pleasure can suddenly seem strangely sinister if you’re not careful. Such worries…
Our dad thinks he knows all about ‘N Sync, but he’s wrong. ‘N Sync is the best. If you like ‘N Sync, you should listen to us. And if you don’t know ‘N Sync, you should listen to us, too. These are the songs on their new album: “Bye Bye…
For all the racket record geeks kick up about the lack of palatable garage rock these days, it’d be easy to think that the Makers haven’t been doing their thing for as long as they have. With a career spanning nearly ten years and several albums, however, the quartet makes…
After nearly a decade of losing at the big-time Nashville game, Shelby Lynne has a stunning new album, one promoted as her Declaration of Independence from the soulless, clone-crazy monster that is the contemporary country music industry. But I Am Shelby Lynne is also a manifesto, of sorts, for the…
Still is an unlikely choice to keep the woofers cranking and the party raging. It’s not particularly therapeutic for those who self-medicate with a few drinks and a gut-wrenching record. Nor will it help spread a political ideology. The work of Sue Garner and Rick Brown, Still is hard to…
Plenty of masculine R&B and hip-hop is little more than narcissistic posturing — a sweaty platform for self-styled superheroes who feel the need to tell you over and over again why they’re the toughest, the hardest, the sexiest, the most street. J-Shin, a 22-year-old smooch music specialist from Miami whose…
Mike Jourgensen — who operates both Noise Tent Studios and DU Records and serves as songwriter/guitarist for Abdomen — likes farm animals. Perhaps more so than the average person over five. And though he likes pigs, cats and turtles, fuzzy little lambs seem to be his favorite of all of…
It’s been a while since anyone outside of Minneapolis has heard anything much from The Jayhawks, who appear Saturday, April 29, at the Boulder Theater with Robert Bradley’s Blackwater Surprise. After the release of 1997’s Sound of Lies — and during a time when Wilco, Son Volt and some of…
Someone once said that jazz and cinema are the only art forms that Americans do better than anyone else in the world. It’s a sweeping — and presumably tongue-in-cheek — statement that ignores many American-perfected musical styles, bluegrass music among them. And while, generally speaking, Americans may not revere cultural…
It’s been a few years since the nationwide country line-dancing craze hit its apex with the release of Brooks & Dunn’s call-to-dance anthem “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” in 1992. But don’t tell that to the folks who frequent the Rodeo nightclub in the Thornton Town Center. Every Wednesday night, the country-and-Western-themed…
There’s a sticker circulating throughout the Front Range that most sharp-eyed music fans will have seen. It’s a black-and-white line-art photo of a face at a microphone emblazoned with the motto “Punk is whatever we made it to be.” Despite the teeny-bop conception of punk rock as an aggro-jockish excuse…
The definition of underground rap differs depending on whom you ask. To some, it’s a state of mind where one refuses to compromise for commercial dictates — to others, it’s just another clever marketing strategy peddled by industry playas and journalists. Though few words are contested more in hip-hop, the…
It’s a crisp Friday afternoon at the Circle-A Ranch, the working-class home and headquarters of local twanglers Mr. Tree and the Wingnuts. Soapy Argyle, singer/songwriter/ guitarist for the act, sits on his back porch and sips chilly cans of Milwaukee’s Best with drummer Shawn 4-On (“You know, like ‘four on…
Common, a rapper with a strong Colorado connection (his father and occasional co-star, Lonnie Lynn, is a former Denver Rocket who’s deeply involved in the local hip-hop scene), is one ambitious cat — and hip-hop sure as hell needs more of those. But on his previous album, 1997’s One Day…
It’s hard to know quite what to make of this attempt to fuse rap, grungy guitar and soft pop. If Green Gartside has a genius for anything, it’s integrating R&B forms into angsty pop/rock — yet in spite of his propensity for rhythm, it’s questionable whether this talent extends to…
Leave it to Pumpkinhead Billy Corgan to attempt in just over 73 minutes his own dark twist on what it took English poet John Milton several pounds of parchment to accomplish in Paradise Lost: explaining the ways of God to man. That the delightfully megalomaniacal Corgan doesn’t embarrass himself (at…
The recent explosion of Cuban music in the United States, provoked by Wim Wenders’s documentary film Buena Vista Social Club and a relaxation of the U.S. embargo on Cuban artists, has taken many joyful forms. For hardcore jazz fans, no one embodies that joy more than the extroverted pianist Jesús…
Ken Mueller was following doctor’s orders on October 11, 1999, when he transferred ownership of Durant Inc., the parent company of the Grizzly Rose country dance club, to Robert “Cowboy Bob” Berliner. A heart attack had forced Mueller to retire his decade-long title as the King of the Grizzly; rather…
Jacques Higelin, Thursday, April 27, at the Gothic Theatre, is not exactly a household name in this country, but in his native France, he’s among a handful of contemporary live performers who can both sell millions of records and entertain coliseum-sized crowds. A former stage and film actor and practitioner…
Fat Mama, Thursday, April 20, at the Gothic Theatre, with Ron Miles and Joe Lukasik Trio, and Friday, April 21, at the Fox Theatre, offers two live shows to fans who’ve missed the band since its East Coast relocation last fall. The collective’s ambitious experiments with jazz fusion have been…
An international man of mystery in his own right, Mike Meyers popularized a cartoonish bit of British culture as the velour- and medallion-wearing character Austin Powers. Thanks to his efforts, many Americans now associate the term “shag” with something much more titillating than a thick living-room carpet, and it may…
