Long before he could play a lick, Robert Earl Keen was penning songs. He just didn’t know it at the time. “I’ve always written rhyming poetry well, from when I was five years old,” says Keen, who’s in his early forties. “I’d just grab words out of the air. I…
Kenny Wayne Shepherd, the opening act at the Van Halen show on July 16 at Fiddler’s Green, set the tenor for the evening early on. A student at the School of Hot Licks whose flowing blond hair gives him the look of a lost Hanson brother, Shepherd can play, and…
Beastie Boys Hello Nasty (Grand Royal/Capitol) The key development in the life of this great American band came in 1989, when Mike Diamond, Adam Horovitz and Adam Yauch followed up their crunchy goof of a breakthrough platter, 1986’s Licensed to Ill, with Paul’s Boutique, an infinitely more forward-looking melange of…
Listen carefully to Flu Shot, the latest offering by Tucson’s Weird Lovemakers, and you’ll discover that bandmembers Greg Petix, Hector Jaime, Jason Willis and Gerard Schumacher have included a “super secret” bonus track that in the liner notes is attributed to an obscure new-wave outfit known as the Clone Rays…
For the past decade or so, Steve Poltz has enjoyed indie-label-sized celebrity and a healthy level of musical notoriety as the leader of the Rugburns, a group of satirical semi-twangers from San Diego. But after years of whiskey-soaked tours to small clubs across America, he’s now marking time in the…
Alex Desert isn’t really a swinger; he just played one in the movies. Many fans know the 28-year-old singer less for fronting the first-rate Los Angeles ska band called Hepcat than for his role in Swingers, actor/director Jon Favreau’s 1996 cult hit about the L.A. swing scene. But Desert (pronounced…
Area musicians understand all too well that getting publicity in this burg ain’t easy. What with the daily newspapers and the majority of the city’s commercial radio stations apparently under the illusion that there are no bands based in Colorado, acts are left to find other ways to get their…
The next time you read an interview in which the mother, father, brother, sister or child of a star claims that reflected fame didn’t help him or her land a new record deal/publishing contract/etc., you have permission to burst out laughing. While the heightened expectations that the kin of luminaries…
“I just think we’re all pretty positive people,” says guitarist John Hill of Denver’s Dressy Bessy. “We’re upbeat, but we’re not trying to be sickeningly happy.” Like Hill, the other members of Dressy Bessy–singer/guitarist Tamee Ealom, bassist Rob Greene and drummer Darren Albert–argue that bubble gum and ice cream aren’t…
Anyone who’s ever appreciated the disturbances beneath the surface in the writings of Southern authors such as Peter Taylor and Flannery O’Connor will understand Freakwater. The band’s pretty country music harbors the same kind of compelling, complex imagery. Appropriately, principal songwriter and singer Catherine Ann Irwin–a Louisville, Kentucky, resident who…
“There’s no place to play” is among the most common laments offered by local musicians who specialize in originals, and while this is something of an exaggeration, it reflects a real problem on the Denver scene. What follows is a tale of three area clubs–one that’s stopped booking bands entirely,…
Rancid Life Won’t Wait (Epitaph) Back in 1978, when this band was called the Clash and this album was named Give ’em Enough Rope, reviewers noted that the musicians (Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon and Topper Headon, today known as Tim Armstrong, Lars Frederiksen, Matt Freeman and Brett Reed)…
The goth movement of the Eighties introduced or incorporated some now-familiar fashion touches: body piercing, tattoos, and the teased hair and black eyeliner favored by groups like the Sisters of Mercy. But 23-year-old Chad Boltz, half of the Denver industrial duo called Phenylketonurics (PKU for short), has taken things much…
The next time you find yourself complaining about the state of the local music scene, consider the plight of Axel Praefcke, guitarist for rockabilly practitioners Ike and the Capers. Praefcke and his bandmates (vocalist/rhythm guitarist Ike Stoye, stand-up bassist Maurice Hagler and drummer Tina Hohne) hail from East Berlin, a…
Since the release of 1996’s New Adventures in Hi-Fi, three-quarters of R.E.M., the band more responsible than any other for bringing the alternative-rock movement into the cultural mainstream, has been branching out in non-musical directions. Bassist Mike Mills is something of a regular on the celebrity golf circuit and has…
Local reviews only. When guitarist Neil Haverstick gets philosophical about alternative musical scales, as he did not too long ago in these pages (“Toning Up,” April 16), he sometimes gives the impression that his music can only be appreciated by people who know how to use a slide rule. But…
The sun is hanging low in the sky, softening the asphalt parking lot beyond the air-conditioned studio of KOSI-FM/101.1 as a phone line lights up. Mary Marlowe, host of Cozy After Dark, a weeknight call-in show, rolls her chair across the black lacquer tiles to the quivering button. Alone, surrounded…
Most musicians regard the view from the stage of the Paramount Theatre to be among the most spine-tingling in Colorado. But for Denver’s Bob Castle, the room’s sea of crimson seats, its starry sky of ornate architectural details and a jewel-like chandelier serve as mere backdrop for the Paramount’s biggest…
The history of jazz is the history of reputations. Musicians who impressed critics during their primes–like John Coltrane–tend to be held in ever higher esteem as the years go past, while artists tarred by negative notices throughout their careers are seldom granted access to the music’s pantheon no matter how…
Gang Starr Moment of Truth (Noo Trybe Records) For the past several years, a considerable number of citizens from the hip-hop nation have been waiting for the gangsta movement to jump into the grave. Well, they’re still waiting. Whereas the charts are no longer dominated by members of the Bitch-Slap-My-Ho…
“At some point, something awful happened to punk-rock music,” opines George Wilson, the bassist/vocalist for TARD. “It became either, like, cheeseball Southern California kiddie rock, or it became dipshit, cock-rock-oriented posturing–tattooed-from-head-to-toe fucking hardcore. But there’s a lot more to it than that.” That’s certainly true in TARD’s case. Wilson, guitarist/vocalist…
Ani DiFranco is a singer, a songwriter and a producer, but you’d hardly know it from most of the articles that get written about her. “Music?” she squeals in mock terror in response to a question about her primary vocation. “What’s that? Nobody ever asks me about music.” Part of…
