Folk singers can get away with taking their craft into unconventional places: On downtown sidewalks, in subway stations and in restaurants at lunchtime, they open their guitar cases and unleash their voices, good or bad. So many people associate folk music with the mellow, sensitive fare of street buskers or…
To the millions who adore her, Jewel Kilcher is America’s songwriting sweetheart, a musical soulmate with an angelic face and karma to match. A look from her baby-dolled eyes or a note from her pouty lips can send legions of fans into swooning fits of “oohs” and “ahhs.” But for…
Kool Keith Black Elvis/Lost in Space (Ruffhouse/Columbia) When we last checked in with Kool Keith, who joins DJ Spooky on Tuesday, September 14, at the Fox Theatre, he was appearing on this year’s independently released First Come, First Served in the guise of Dr. Doom, a loony serial killer with…
Those who regularly attend Denver Joe’s Monday-night shows at Cricket on the Hill usually know what they’re in for, and the stragglers and neighborhood folks who happen by quickly find out. Amid a gloriously gritty country-music backdrop, the well-seasoned — and typically well-sauced — guitarist launches insults and zingers at…
U-God, 9 p.m., Sunday, September 12, at the Fox Theater, as part of the Wu Next Generation Killa Bees Tour with the Wu Syndicate and Shyheim, is one of the last members of the Wu-Tang Clan to drop a solo joint. Redemption, a seventeen-track offering that features collaborations with fellow…
Hugh Ragin, 8 p.m. Friday, September 10, at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, joins three other local luminaries in a tribute to Lee Morgan for this month’s installment of the “Steinway and Stained Glass” series, which happens the second Friday of each month. If Ragin’s latest CD, An Afternoon in…
Like many rock-music lovers who came of age during the Seventies, I grew to despise the songs of Barry Manilow, and the passage of years has not yet shown me the error of my ways. But even those of you who think that “It’s a Miracle” deserves banning by the…
For much of this decade, the members of Superchunk have preferred to make their music in the studio rather than perform it on the road, touring only when it couldn’t be avoided. Maybe it’s because it’s difficult for a band with a notorious perfectionist streak to hand over its songs…
Denver has never been widely associated with an essential rap scene. The city’s proximity to the Continental Divide leaves it just a scaled-map millimeter or two from the dead center of the country, a fact that means bad news for sushi lovers and puts rap musicians in a geographically dictated…
Various Artists Return of the grievous angel — a tribute to Gram Parsons (Almo Sounds) Before his death of an overdose in 1973 (he was 26), Gram Parsons worked with the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers and put out a couple of moderately interesting solo albums that supposedly influenced…
The place was crawling with chicks. Short, fat, tall, thin — they came in droves, making their way from the farthest reaches of distant suburbs and cities, traversing vast parking lots on foot. They came en masse like pilgrims, toting Indian blankets and sealed bottles of Evian. Some brought daughters,…
Gilberto Gil, Sunday, September 5, at Jazz Aspen at Snowmass, Tuesday, September 7, at the Fox Theatre in Boulder and Wednesday, September 8, at the Gothic Theatre in Denver, has taken his Fifties inspiration from fellow Brazilian and bossa nova legend Joao Gilberto several quantum leaps further. The guitarist, multi-instrumentalist,…
The Perry Weissman 3 at Seven South, Friday, September 3, were recently selected to perform at New York City’s infamous CMJ Music Festival later this month, and it’s raised a bit of a problem. A good problem, to be sure, but a problem nonetheless. The five-person band, which includes the…
Was it Magnet, Spin or Pulse! that first coined the insidious term “stoner rock” in an effort to describe a new sound emerging from the desert — the sound that’s at times lethargic yet prone to getting loud and sonorous at the crack of a high hat? Personally, I’m hoping…
Playing house band for the oppressed worldwide is one way that Ozomatli, an eleven-piece, L.A.-based, genre-splicing outfit, wants to party in 1999. By proudly wearing a “politics for the people” philosophy on its sleeve, the multi-cultural group is a pre-millennial answer to the infamous question posed by Los Angeles denizen…
Like a lot of guys who spend their lives toiling away in the oft-thankless world of unsigned local bands, Chuck Tinsley is looking forward to the day when music will make him rich — or at least provide him with a comfortable income. But as a guitarist in the Denver…
Trish Murphy Rubies on the Lawn (doolittle/Mercury Records) With her new release, Austin-based singer/ songwriter Trish Murphy has leapt a considerable distance. On Rubies on the Lawn, Murphy stretches her coffeehouse folkster beginnings across a decidedly more accessible landscape to create an impressive, from-the-heartland pop gem. Rubies is a scrumptious…
Just us folks: Chances are good that those who’ve frequented downtown and Capitol Hill coffeehouses during the past eight years have, at some point, been privy to the quiet stylings of singer/ songwriter Micah Ciampa. After a prolonged stint as a member of the local folkie roster, however, Ciampa has…
L7, Thursday, August 26, at the Bluebird Theater, recently shrunk to a trio when bassist Gail Greenwood left the band for geographical reasons (the band lives in L.A., Greenwood doesn’t). No matter. It doesn’t take a specialist to create the kind of raw and raunchy music these gals are famous…
Thinking Plague, 8 p.m. Wednesday, September 1, at the Mercury Cafe, released In Extremis last fall — and collected the kind of global critical praise that forces the skeptics among us to reread it as a reality check. Much like its three predecessors, the release led admirers to speak of…
You cannot pick your parents. This is one of life’s few truths, and it propels us all into a biological crapshoot wherein some are truly born lucky — and others just seem like they are. Julian Lennon didn’t ask to be born the son of Cynthia Powell and John Lennon…
There’s a good reason that so many members of the public see music critics as twerps: Plenty of us are. Scribes with pretentious stripes routinely disregard the stuff that real people enjoy hearing (regardless of its quality or lack thereof) in favor of the outré (regardless of its quality or…
