The process of setting up interviews with nationally known musicians generally includes two predictable steps–gaining permission from a record company and an agent. But in the case of blues-harmonica legend Junior Wells, there’s a third hurdle that must be cleared, and it’s the most formidable obstacle of all: Wells’s sister…
Most musicians aren’t known for having impressive vocabularies. Then again, most musicians aren’t members of volplane, a Colorado combo whose unexpectedly arduous search for a name amounted to a crash course in lexicography. “I guess we’re just too damn picky,” says volplane guitarist/vocalist Jeff Suthers–and he’s not exaggerating. The group,…
The folks behind the Grammy Awards, which are scheduled to take place February 26 in New York City, like to think that their statuettes go to the best and brightest talents in the musical firmament. But a look back at past presentations suggests that quality only rarely has anything to…
What’s funny to one person may be offensive to someone else. That’s a truism that’s reiterated to me with every issue of Westword–and one with which Dave Haupt, publisher of the Boulder edition of a journal called the Onion, is also familiar. But just in case he ever forgets it,…
While reggae historically has been political music, few specialists in the style have been as actively or as visibly involved in debating the issues of the day in song as Jamaica’s Third World. “The music is borne from the message,” explains keyboardist Michael “Ibo” Cooper. “It comes from poor people…
During “On Fire,” the opening cut of Sebadoh’s latest CD, Harmacy, Lou Barlow sings a couplet that typifies both his dilemma and his gift: “My opinion could change today/But I’m responsible anyway.” Confessions of emotional turmoil have defined Barlow’s music and persona ever since J Mascis booted him from Dinosaur…
Ronnie DeVoe, one-sixth of the reunited New Edition, is all business–more or less. He’s over two hours late for a scheduled telephone interview (“I had a rough one last night,” he explains, laughing), but when he finally calls, he’s as bottom-line-oriented as any corporate CEO. Ask him about the group’s…
“I think there’s a certain amount of the Southern myth that’s true,” says Tom Maxwell, vocalist, guitarist and sax man for the hippest “hot jazz” revivalists going, North Carolina’s Squirrel Nut Zippers. “And I think we’re a Southern band in many ways.” How so? According to Maxwell, “We talk different,…
Any resemblance between truck driver/country-and-Western vocalist Bub Taylor and Denver singer-songwriter Bob Tyler is purely logical–on the surface, at least. Dig a little deeper, though, and you’re apt to become more than a little confused. See, Bub is “channeled through” Bob, who describes the result as “a possession of the…
A typical gig by Denver’s Whores, Pigs and Ponies is apt to feature fire spitting, cross-dressing, codpieces and simulated sex acts: For example, bassist/vocalist Rel has been known to mime fellatio on a latex penis worn by guitarist/vocalist Jud Van Vliet, then use a cigarette to light the tip of…
The financially disastrous concert season that was 1996 precipitated a rash of think pieces in which pundits attempted to explain why music fans stayed away in droves from all but a handful of last year’s major concerts. Many factors were cited in these articles, but the one mentioned most frequently…
Anyone who doubts that our society is too obsessed with celebrities would have had his mind changed by the January 22 press conference at the Temple Buell in support of VH1. One attendee who shall remain nameless for his own protection called it “bloated” and “overblown,” but I disagree. In…
Anti-Flag Die for the Government (New Red Archives) Punk nostalgia right down to the fake Limey accents. I take it about as seriously as I take Sha Na Na. Musicianship: D-minus. Originality: F. Listening pleasure: F. –Dana Collins Plexi Cheer Up (Sub Pop) This is one of those rare CDs…
Most times when Les Cooper is on stage, he’s singing with the band he fronts, Denver’s Dalhart Imperials. But on this evening, he and his wife, Joan, are teaching dance steps to an attentive crowd whose members seem to have stepped straight from The Wild One. Men with greased hair…
New York-based pianist Fred Hersch is a superior soloist as well as an excellent producer, composer, arranger, group leader and sideman. But in most of the articles about him, these attributes are given short shrift in favor of chatter about his personal life: In 1982 he announced that he was…
The main floor of Mountain Coin, located in an industrial cube of a building on a lonely stretch of 62nd Avenue just west of Interstate 25, is packed with the latest in electronic games and diversions. There’s “Wrestlemania,” in which a beefy champion under your control tries to smear the…
Because of various negative comments I made in print about the state of Denver radio late last year, I spent the month of December being excoriated by jocks at four radio stations–a personal record for me. These enjoyably vituperative attacks were offset somewhat by a couple of nods I received…
If you talk to Wally Collins about Boulder’s New Wizard Oil Combination, the musical aggregation he formed more than a quarter-century ago, make sure you get your lingo straight. “It’s not a band,” he says a bit testily. “We’re a group or a choir, but we’re not a band. ‘Band’…
One of the reasons bass legend Paul Warburton knows so much about the fabric of his music is that he’s actually made music with it. Fabric, that is. “Before I started playing bass, when I was fourteen, I’d lay on my bed, which was covered with one of those old…
If you’ve been to an avant-garde jazz show in Denver during the past decade, you’ve probably seen Alex Lemski, the president and driving force behind Denver’s Creative Music Works, which celebrates its tenth anniversary this year. Tall, gangly and intense, with a scraggly beard and a pate partially covered by…
Ivo Perelman + “Cama de Terra” (Homestead) Oranj Symphonette Plays Mancini (Gramavision) The phrase “forward into the past” is such an obvious (and amusing) contradiction that the comedy troupe Firesign Theatre used it as the title of a Seventies-era compilation album. Yet the notion, jokey though it may seem, is…
Most Nineties celebrities understand that baring their souls comes with the territory. Your average personality mag is brimming with profiles of famous people who disclose their deepest, darkest secrets as casually as they cash their royalty checks–and the few who don’t are viewed with suspicion. For example, Eddie Vedder’s reticence…
