When most of us were ten years old, we were playing Space Invaders, watching out for cooties and splashing in the occasional puddle left by afternoon summer rain. When Conor Oberst was ten, he was composing songs about Space Invaders and the joys of stomping around on rainy days. Unlike…
Four years ago BR5-49 was being hailed as the new Nashville guard, proof that country music’s fat cats had finally come to their senses. After gaining a rabid following as the house band at an unlikely venue on the fringe of Nashville’s music scene — a combination boot store/ saloon…
It’s almost a given that if you put a tape recorder in front of a band and ask its members questions about their place in the music universe, sooner or later there’s bound to be excessive speculation on every aspect of the music industry, from analysis of the current rock…
Tara Jane O’Neil’s solo debut is many things at once, all of them unusual. It is the soundtrack to seasonal affective disorder, the clamor of a Midwestern smorgasbord of slow-cooked indie rock, the hum of cognitive dissonance coming from a wanderer with one foot in small-town soil and the other…
The brilliant hard-bop trumpeter Woody Shaw went largely unsung in the course of his short, troubled life, but his work is now enjoying a welcome revival — thanks in large part to the efforts of the uncompromising reissue label 32 Jazz. In the last three years, producer Joel Dorn has…
There’s always a slight arrogance dogging even the best singer/songwriters. After all, it takes at least a trifling of ego to think anthologizing your life holds enough intrinsic interest to garner audience approval. There’s an even greater air of arrogance attached to surname-dropping rock figures — often, those who ditch…
Since the death of Tupac, the incarceration of Suge Knight and all the bad blood associated with the alleged Mafioso-like business tactics of Death Row Records, the West Coast has gradually lost its reign over the rap world. Recent albums by Kurupt (despite its hateful diatribe against DMX, which he…
When it’s trying to appeal to businesses that are thinking about relocating to Colorado, the Denver Chamber of Commerce is quick to cite a surge in the city’s population. The numbers, however, don’t reflect the veritable exodus of local musicians — including Slim Cessna, Fat Mama and members of the…
John Scofield, with the Derek Trucks Band, Thursday, April 13, at the Gothic Theatre, has been loosening up a little bit more with each passing year — and that’s a good thing. The albums this undeniably gifted guitarist made following his ’80s residence with Miles Davis were always listenable and…
Guitarist Wendy Woo, Sunday, April 16, at the Fox Theatre, is among a handful of local musicians who regularly perform together in the “Women From Mars” series — where possessing the Y chromosome is a secondary requirement to being talented. The series, sponsored by KWAB radio and organized by Woo,…
Stanley Kubrick recognized that outer-space imagery and stirring music were a sensual match — he mated spacescapes and classical styles to hypnotizing effect in 2001: A Space Odyssey. DJ Skunk, Saturday, April 15, at the Gothic Theatre, is one of six DJs who will endeavor to do the same in…
Chicago is a city known for neighborhoods with unique little names that distinguish one from the next; among them can be found the artist/hipster/Hispanic mishmash of Wicker Park and the ethnic, working-class potpourri of Lincoln Square. There’s also Uptown, a cultural blend as overrun with students from nearby Loyola University…
Gun-toting revolutionaries say the darndest things. In the case of emcee Brother J.C. Crawford — a smooth-talking customer who, like a vanilla version of James Brown, flipped out the unwashed masses of Detroit, Michigan — a legendary 1968 Halloween night call to arms at that city’s Grande Ballroom launched one…
If workers at the United States Census 2000/ Denver Bureau had really been thinking, they would have moved their tables from the entrances of Alfalfa’s and the Cherry Creek shopping center and placed them in front of the Pepsi Center last Thursday and Friday nights. That way, the combined total…
The concept behind the widely ballyhooed Mr. Barman is all but irresistible. After all, the current hip-hop scene is a testosterone circus, with one rapper after another swaggering into the center ring to declare that he’s a street-smart urban prince, a mack daddy extraordinaire, the El Supremo of Pipe Laying…
For a brief moment in the ’70s, James Talley appeared poised for stardom. His songs of hard-working Americans were championed by critics and even caught the ear of Jimmy Carter. Despite all the attention, though, units didn’t move, and soon Talley, who had previously done everything from graduate work to…
Lampchop, Kurt Wagner’s ten-man Nashville clique, backed Vic Chesnutt on last year’s The Salesman and Bernadette, a truly strange album featuring country, white soul and electronic droning played for emotional unreadability. For Nixon, the band has expanded to seventeen pieces for some solid tuneage. On its own, though, Lambchop is…
Michael Christie is not unlike many of the musicians in Denver. In his free time — a commodity severely limited by repeat trips to places like Zurich and Sydney — he and his buddies get together and, ya know, jam a little. The difference, perhaps, is that Christie prefers a…
Though the group Ulali, Thursday, April 6, at the Old Main Chapel on the University of Colorado campus in Boulder, is named after a songbird, don’t expect its members to chirp like Anne Murray in concert. The trio is composed of Pura Fe Crescioni, Soni Moreno and Jennifer Kreisberg, and…
Drummer Tom Tilton and pianist Joe Bonner continue a 25-year relationship with Spring Impressions in Jazz, Friday, April 7, and Saturday, April 8, at Vartan’s Jazz Club, a program that promises both creative arrangements and a fresh instrumental approach. Bonner, who has played with such giants as Pharoah Sanders and…
As evidenced by the recently released documentary Beyond the Mat, wrestling, in all its violent glory, is for adults. And local wrestling — not that bawdy WWF-Hollywood crap — is the real deal. Luckily, in Denver we have the Central Wrestling Organization to satisfy our lust for blood. For those…
Anyone who’s ever complained about the difficulties of escaping the shadow cast by a parent should be shamed into silence by the story of Femi Anikulapo-Kuti. After all, Femi’s dad, the late Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, wasn’t just a star in his native Nigeria and many other African nations. He was a…
