Pete Alexander, bassist and co-frontman for Denver’s Damn Shambles, knows a thing or two about eating up his group’s profits. “We were playing at the Market Street Lounge, and some guy comes up to me and says he wants a CD,” he remembers. “I said, ‘Ten bucks,’ and he says,…
“Our audiences are smaller than, say, country’s or rock’s,” concedes Del McCoury, as exciting and authentic a bluegrass performer as any presently drawing breath. “And I’m sure a lot of bluegrass people would like to get more coverage or popularity. But I kind of enjoy it this way–because I’ve been…
It’s a story as old and tired as Liam Gallagher’s liver. A group releases an album on an independent label. Shortly thereafter, said combo is dubbed an “indie” band and in turn receives undying praise from the rock-and-roll press and indie-rock devotees who admire its staunch “DIY sensibilities.” But unfortunately,…
The anticipated Denver concert-promotions war has not yet begun in earnest, but the field of battle is already crowded with potential combatants. The January 22 Feedback column contained information about the new partnership between veteran Colorado promoter and manager Chuck Morris and Bill Graham Presents, a major San Francisco enterprise…
Although Denver doesn’t have a reputation as a national hip-hop mecca, Jeffrey McWhorter, aka Kingdom, believes it’s only a matter of time before the scene is acknowledged–as long as the artists and fans in the community support one another. “You’ll never see me talk down any rapper in Colorado,” he…
A few years back, I spent an afternoon with Pat DiNizio, the leader of the Smithereens, in Hartford, Connecticut, killing time before a radio interview. At a time when everyone else was replacing their record collection with CDs, DiNizio was looking high and low for a turntable to accompany him…
Roni Size Reprazent: New Forms (Talkin’ Loud/Mercury) Plenty of electronica artists are taking the Prodigy route: i.e., they’re attempting to split the difference between dance music and pop in the hope of coming up with hit singles that will still work in Clubland. Size, for his part, is moving in…
Way back in our January 1 issue, I wrote about Sire Records’ decision to license Tone Soul Evolution, a fine CD by the Apples that was originally emblazoned with the spinART logo. Now Sire has climbed into the sack, business-wise, with another Denver artist: Sherri Jackson, whose eponymous debut on…
Timbaland and Magoo Welcome to Our World (Blackground/Atlantic) Tim Mosley, aka Timbaland, is a producer who has stepped into the spotlight a la Sean “Puffy” Combs–but unlike the Puffster, Mosley seems to understand his limitations. Rather than positioning himself as an egomaniacal rap word-slinger, he keeps the focus on the…
Joe Queer, leader of the Queers, is a veteran of the punk-rock wars, but that doesn’t mean he’s stopped making enemies. A recent example involves Converse, the sneaker giant, which slapped the Queers with a cease-and-desist order after the band appropriated the company’s corporate logo for a series of T-shirts…
Something’s rotten in the music industry, and Ian O’Dougherty, guitarist/vocalist for Denver’s Uphollow, thinks he knows what it is. During performances, he says, most local and national musicians he’s seen lately have spent more time looking down at their hands than at the audience members with whom they’re supposed to…
San Francisco’s Charlotte Kaufman, whose nom de plume is the Baroness, is an exemplar of a rare species: the female DJ. But even though she’s the only woman in the Hardkiss Family collective, a group that’s considered legendary by many participants in global electronica, neither of her names is of…
Released in June 1966, the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds was regarded at the time of its appearance as a commercial disappointment. As author Timothy White reports in The Nearest Faraway Place, his detailed 1994 biography of the band, representatives of Capitol Records, the group’s label, were frankly baffled by the…
Low Estate, the scorching second album by 16 Horsepower, is reaching retailers in the United States this week, but it’s already a success beyond these shores. Says the band’s leader, singer-songwriter/multi-instrumentalist David Eugene Edwards, “It’s been out in Europe for five months or so, and it’s doing really well–better than…
In a working-class town north of Columbus, Ohio, a few years back, the rowdy patrons were drinking beer out of buckets–using straws–when the bartender clanged a ship’s bell and announced, “I want all of you to hear this sax player!” Such an introduction would have left most instrumentalists fearful that…
By day, Billy Sheets teaches special education to middle-schoolers in Los Angeles. But by night, he offers a different brand of instruction to swing dancers across Southern California. In a musical environment in which most combos make hep-cat Forties jazz and frenetic Western swing for the growing legion of loose-jointed…
Various Artists Lounge-A-Palooza (Hollywood) Various Artists Paint It Blue: Songs of the Rolling Stones (House of Blues) London Philharmonic Kashmir: Symphonic Led Zeppelin (Point) A hundred years ago, the creative landscape fostered outrageous acts of art by Cezanne, Toulouse-Lautrec and Munch. Approaching 2000, our own fin de siecle is marked…
“I would’ve loved to be a pitcher in baseball,” says Robert Bradley. “When I was younger, I was a big Cincinnati Reds and St. Louis Cardinals fan. And I liked the Yankees, too, because being from Alabama, those were the teams you could get on the radio. Basically, it was…
Virtuosic guitarist/singer-songwriter Adrian Romero grew up as a classical-music prodigy. So why has he placed this style on the back burner in order to roam the pastures of pop music alongside his band, Love Supreme? He shrugs off the question with a caustic comment: “Denver isn’t really concerned with that…
When I learned that Kool Keith was coming to town, I reacted with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. As a founding member of Ultramagnetic MC’s, a mysterious but influential Eighties/Nineties rap act, and the voice behind Dr. Octagon’s Dr. Octagonecologyst, a terrifically twisted opus issued in 1997, Keith had…
Nature abhors a vacuum, and so do concert promoters–which is why the Denver live-music market has been weaving like Charles Bukowski on a bender ever since Barry Fey announced that he had sold the remaining shares of his Fey Concerts firm to Los Angeles-based Universal Concerts last August. Just two…
To most stateside music lovers, the idea of a road show starring three accordion players conjures up images of Geritol-chugging seniors playing polkas to nodding retirement-home residents. Even here in Denver, where the instrument stars in the rousing local acts 16 Horsepower and Slim Cessna’s Auto Club, such a bill…
