For the last couple of years, the Gin Blossoms have seen more of the road than Bob Hope in his prime. Since the 1992 release of the album New Miserable Experience, the Tempe, Arizona-based quintet–vocalist Robin Wilson, guitarist/vocalist Jesse Valenzuela, lead guitarist Scott Johnson, drummer Phillip Rhodes and bassist Bill…
Manu DiBango, Friday, August 19, at the Ogden Theatre, has a lot of famous friends, many of whom appear on his latest Giant Records release, Wakafrika. But in spite of the presence of Peter Gabriel, Sinead O’Connor, King Sunny Ade, Youssou N’ Dour and Ladysmith Black Mambazo, DiBango holds the…
Things are not always what they seem–especially when it comes to Smackjacket’s John Bogovich. On the surface, this 26-year-old vocalist/ guitarist seems the epitome of Nineties hard-rock nihilism: His scalp is shaved, his ears sport large, primitive earrings that look as if they were ordered from the back pages of…
Various Artists The Lion King: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Walt Disney) On the heels of the relatively strong material from Beauty and the Beast and the okay tunes from Aladdin come the generally treacly songs from the faux-Bambi currently monopolizing the screens at your neighborhood multiplex. Elton John wrote…
“Most rockabilly bands don’t really like us,” says Rex Moser, guitarist and lead warbler for the Denver-based punkabilly trio known as the Throttlemen. Given the threesome’s irreverent passion for grafting traditional rockabilly riffs onto accelerated punk-rock tempos, it’s not surprising that many local rockabilly disciples have a problem with them…
Singer-songwriter Freedy Johnston owes much of his newfound prominence to the fledgling Adult Album Alternative (or Triple A) radio format birthed by Boulder’s KBCO-FM–and he knows it. But that doesn’t mean he spends a lot of time absorbing music made by the other artists whose careers have been boosted by…
In the world of hip hop, too many performers think that playing sampled funk grooves behind their own bad raps magically transforms them into composers. Mel Simpson, the producer and conceptualist behind the jazzy hip-hop project called Us3, disagrees. He feels that brand of rap is a rip. “So many…
Marilyn Manson Portrait of an American Family (Interscope/nothing) If this is a legitimate effort to piss people off, it’s a failure: Although borrowing pseudonyms from serial killers (bandmembers here include Daisy Berkowitz, Madonna Wayne Gacy and Twiggy Ramirez) may upset a certain percentage of elderly schoolteachers, the rest of us…
To Rivers Cuomo, singer and guitarist for the L.A.-based guitar pop band called Weezer, the glass is half empty. “I’m a real pessimist,” Cuomo says in a dour monotone. “When we put out this record, I thought everyone would completely ignore it.” The four Weezers (Cuomo, bassist Matt Sharp, drummer…
As members of the Lost Angel Stone Ensemble, Boulderites Tom Wasinger and Jesse Manno play with rocks–literally. With the exception of melodic fragments produced on a small jade ocarina, their music is performed entirely on resonating stones. “There’s not anybody who makes instruments out of rocks anywhere in the world–at…
Just like the lunchroom staple for which he’s named, Meat Loaf is a mixture of many elements. The one he seems to prefer is rebellion: By way of explaining the course of his career to date, the once-rotund retro rocker says, “I’ve always swum upstream.” Born in Texas, the former…
There was a time when the idea of the Who’s vocalist, Roger Daltrey, teaming in concert with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra to perform “the songs of Pete Townshend” would have sounded like a comic’s satirical prediction. During their heyday, Sixties rockers struck most of us as the last performers who…
“We’re the most insecure band in Denver,” says Heather Dalton, vocalist for the Shrinking Violets. Adds Alex Slagg, the group’s guitarist: “I think one of our strengths is that we’re our own worst critics as far as stage performance, writing and practicing.” That’s saying something in light of the reviews…
James Brown knows what he wants to say and he’s going to say it whether you like it or not. Ask him virtually any question and he’s apt to answer with something like this: “I’m a man from the other side of the tracks who’s come back and changed the…
“In Ted’s world, we want the death penalty to be imposed at the scene of the crime,” says veteran guitar-slinger Ted Nugent in a voice somewhere between a bark and a howl. “The only good bad guy is a dead bad guy. You want to rape my daughter, you’re a…
Vince Bell Phoenix (Watermelon) Bell’s singing is quite ordinary: He delivers most of these eleven fascinating songs in a voice he seemingly forgot to clear several years ago. And that, believe it or don’t, is one of the primary reasons Phoenix is so effective. The musicians who accompany this obscure…
Keb’ Mo’, Monday, July 25, at the Fox Theatre, with Koko Taylor, got his start as a multitalented L.A. session player and sideman to Papa John Creach and Monk Higgins. His first album, Rainmaker, appeared in 1980 on Chocolate City, a defunct division of Casablanca Records, under his given name,…
Speaking about the work of the San Francisco-based band known as Swell, bassist Monte Vallier says, “I think it’s really colorful music, and I hope listeners would just let it take them away on a journey. Or else put it in the car stereo, open all the windows and drive…
Brian Setzer, former leader of the Stray Cats, admits that he’s no jazz-and-blues expert. “I don’t know a lot of those songs, to be honest with you,” he says. “But I think all that stuff is great, and it is there as a foundation. You take from it and learn…
“I’ve been playing golf for a little over a year,” says Vinnie Paul, drummer and producer for the Texas thrash-metal band called Pantera, “and if I hit the first ball of the day good, I can hit them all good all day long. The key is that I generally don’t…
“It’s strange to think that a year from now I might be doing what the people that I think of as rock stars are doing.” So says Rob Schneider, the unassuming frontman for the Denver-based pop quartet called the Apples. But while it’s presently difficult to imagine Schneider and his…
Rolling Stones Voodoo Lounge (Virgin) Of course, no one expected that this band would sound all that different without Bill Wyman–except maybe Bill Wyman, that is. And it doesn’t: Clearly, the Stones that remain have decided that they’re better off doing what they’ve done since time immemorial. Hence, Mick Jagger…
