Coming to a strange town and trying to get at least a superficial handle on its music scene in a very short time is not quite as complicated as it may initially appear. In much the same way that you expect to see the same fast-food restaurants line the roads…
A quarter-century or so after its genesis, hip-hop has finally been acknowledged by the mainstream–but that doesn’t mean that all of the misconceptions about it have been exploded. Generations of Americans continue to think of the genre not as an art form, but as a sociological symptom of the big-city…
Tom Waits Mule Variations (Epitaph) Old Tom’s career has followed the rarest of trajectories: He started out pretty good, only to get better. But how is Mule Variations? Unfortunately, it’s pretty good. To understand why what would be a fine achievement for most artists is actually a mild disappointment for…
Barry Fey and Chuck Morris met in 1972, when Fey was the undisputed king of Denver concert promotion. After Morris joined Fey’s company, Feyline, in 1975, they became all but inseparable. Fey was the best man at Morris’s wedding, and he bankrolled the start-up of Morris’s management house, Chuck Morris…
Evidence suggests that Fort Worth’s American Analog Set may be effective in managing killer combinations of adult stress and juvenile attention-deficit disorder. Case in point: A six-year-old boy was recently observed repeatedly tossing a red plastic Slinky down a spiral staircase, vandalizing the banister and kicking approximately two-thousand Lego pieces…
What’s in a name? According to Scott Pilgrim, guitarist for Portland, Oregon’s favorite surf instrumentalists, Satan’s Pilgrims, damned near everything. “When people hear the name ‘Satan’s Pilgrims’ the first time around, they usually assume we’re some kind of punk or heavy-metal band,” he explains. “They honestly don’t know what to…
With techno booming from every ESPN promo and truck commercial on the air, it would be easy to assume that electronic music is the only sound capable of getting Nineties kids on their feet. But Gary Norris and Patrick Robinson know better. These vinyl-crazed young men have built a sizable…
Techno never completely invaded America, in part because the electronica revolution could not be televised. Ed Simons and Tom Rowlands, better known as the Chemical Brothers, are a case in point. Their music has plenty of personality and bravado, but the pair are hardly seen in their own videos and…
Cibo Matto Stereo Type A (Warner Bros.) The latest serving from Cibo Matto has a tough meal to follow. The band’s debut, 1996’s Viva! La Woman, was a smorgasbord of wonderfully twisted hip-hop for the Food Channel set: selections included “Apple,” “Beef Jerky,” “White Pepper Ice Cream” and a cover…
Dick Weissman, who’s lived in Denver since 1972, is a performer, the chairman of the music and entertainment studies department at the University of Colorado-Denver, and an author of several books, including The Folk Music Sourcebook (with Larry Sandberg), Music-Making in America and The Music Business: Career Opportunities and Self-Defense,…
“The punk you see around now is the glam metal of the Nineties,” says Josh Lent, the vocalist for Clusterfux. “It’s almost to the point where it’s embarrassing to say you’re a punk, because people think of that cute little kid bouncing up and down with the pink mohawk wearing…
When musical superlatives are dished out, they usually come with qualifiers attached–the greatest rock and roll group, the top hip-hop act, and so on. There’s no shame, then, in ACubanismo!, an outfit fronted by brilliant trumpeter Jess Alemany, being characterized as the finest traditional Cuban combo on the scene today…
Last week in this space, we took a musical trip through the first half of the twentieth century–one tune at a time. This week the journey continues. In the list below, each year between 1950 and 1999 is twinned with a pop song that says something about the music scene…
Teletunes is one of the longest-running music-video programs in the country: It began appearing on PBS affiliate KBDI-TV/Channel 12 under the handle FM-TV in February 1981, a full six months before MTV debuted. But after more than eighteen years, it may–may–be headed to the scrap heap. Furthermore, transitions taking place…
Roommates Juliet Shango and Yukiko Moynihan just got fired from slinging hash at a Washington, D.C., eatery. As Moynihan puts it, “I’m just sitting at home, jobless.” Fortunately, the summer’s sultry weeks won’t find these young women moping about an apartment sans air conditioning where help-wanted ads are used for…
Composer and accordionist Guy Klucevsek makes music of a very high order–but in some ways, he sees his work as kid stuff. In 1988 he was asked to appear on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood because, as he writes in a bio wittily titled Accordion Misdemeanors: A Musical Reminiscence, the program’s producers…
Mathematicians know the next millennium doesn’t begin until January 1, 2001, but at this point, that hardly matters: The citizenry at large has decided to party a year early, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it. And what better way to anticipate the celebration of such a benchmark…
A lot has changed in downtown Denver over the past two decades or so, but there’s been at least one constant: Soapy Smith’s Eagle Bar, at 1317 14th Street. For 23 years, Dick Bacon and his wife, Beth, have run the watering hole, which has earned a deserved reputation as…
Ron Bucknam regularly plays his guitar for the benefit of pastry-noshing literati at the Tattered Cover Bookstore, and his country-swing band, the Barncats, puts a charge into folks at VFW halls. But behind this modest musician is another one–an introspective virtuoso who has bravely, maybe foolishly, dedicated himself to the…
Here’s a statement that demonstrates a keen grasp of the obvious: Most local record companies fail because of a lack of money. Realizing this, Le-Jon Vivens, LaQuin Starks and Steve Jackson, three of the men behind Under Pressure Records, went to the trouble of lining up backers before launching their…
Argan South Moroccan Motor Berber (Barbarity) I know that a lot of you have been burned by world music: You’ve picked up a supposedly catchy album after reading a rave review by a writer with a couple of tattered tour guides and a vocabulary with a glandular condition only to…
On wax, Bantam Rooster’s T. Jackson Potter comes across like a certifiable head case, whooping and hollering like a man on fire and twisting his vocal cords into all sorts of intriguingly weird positions. But away from the mike, the native Michigander is amiable, soft-spoken, even inhibited–the polar opposite of…
