King Sunny Ade was worldbeat before worldbeat was cool. A legend in his native Nigeria, where he began working as a professional musician more than a quarter century ago, Ade made his American debut in 1983 and quickly became a cause celebre among aficionados of African styles. His first tour…
Slim Cessna, leader and namesake of the Denver-based combo Slim Cessna’s Auto Club, is sitting in the cozy living room of his Englewood home, listening to a Lefty Frizzell record with a beatific smile on his face. His wife, Victoria, isn’t nearly so happy. She loves Frizzell, too, but she…
Michael Hill’s Blues Mob Bloodlines (Alligator) In blues circles, Michael Hill is being lauded as a musical revolutionary, and given how resistant to change most of the genre’s practitioners are, maybe he is. This young guitarist is no James “Blood” Ulmer (he’s clearly interested in selling a few records), but…
Call the Denver rock scene incestuous and you’ll likely get no argument from the members of Somebody’s Sister. In retelling the group’s history, founders/ spouses Doug and Annette Conlon drop more band names than the autobiography of professional groupie Pamela Des Barres. Doug, in particular, has plenty of experience on…
Right now, jazz pianist Cecil Taylor doesn’t feel much like talking. I know–because I found out the hard way. It’s easy to understand why I thought chatting with Taylor would be divine. Throughout his forty-year career in jazz, he’s remained among the most challenging practitioners of avant-garde sounds, redefining song…
“We fit in everywhere but nowhere,” says Eye Yamatsuka, the mad scientist behind the avant-garde pop vivisectionists known as the Boredoms. What the wiry young vocalist is trying to convey by this statement is anyone’s guess, but one thing is certain: Early arrivers at this year’s Lollapalooza festival are in…
The songs recorded by the talented quartet called Luscious Jackson feature some of the freshest, least categorizable music heard during the past several years. But because the four bandmembers are all women, they’re finding that getting respect from the male-dominated rock press isn’t easy. They’ve gotten great reviews for their…
Various Artists What Is Bhangra? (I.R.S.) Bhangra, according to this disc’s liner, is traditional music from the Punjab region of northern India that immigrants to England subsequently tricked up with pop, hip-hop and house touches. Sounds crummy, I know, but as judged by this compilation, the style is compelling in…
Vassar Clements looks sturdy and functional, like a small-town mechanic who’s never too busy to stop and chat while pumping your gas. A man with a strong Southern accent and the manner of a kindly grandpa, he uses expletives such as “dad gum it” and generally addresses women–even strangers–as “hon.”…
Gil Scott-Heron, Friday, June 24, at the Ogden Theatre, may not be the father of rap music, but he’s certainly been a major influence on those current hip-hoppers who are trying to push the genre forward. Scott-Heron was combining jazzy music and spoken/sung poetics a generation ago, and his current…
If the members of the Denver-based party band called Lovebuzz seem a little too close-knit, blame it on childhood development. “I’ve been friends with Jason since the fourth grade,” explains guitarist/vocalist Brian Hendrick. “And then we met Shane after Jason and I got in a fight with him. Shane was…
For anyone who thought that punk rock would destroy the popular music of the Seventies, last week was an enormous repudiation. The Eagles, who appeared June 14 through June 16 at Fiddler’s Green, and Pink Floyd, who headlined at Mile High Stadium June 18, played before a cumulative total of…
Cynic, Monday, June 20, at the Gothic Theatre, with Cannibal Corpse and Sinister, looks like your standard-issue death-rock act, from the players’ long hair to their sullen expressions. Fortunately, the bandmembers offer more than Lurch-like vocals, amelodic guitar barrages, lyrics about bowel obstructions and other stereotypes of the genre. On…
The rock press can be both a boon and a bane for emerging rock bands that fall into the all-encompassing phylum now known as alternative music. No one knows this better than the foursome in San Diego’s Drive Like Jehu. Although this cataclysmic act has garnered more than its fair…
For Beck, the backlash is in full swing. There’s no telling when–or whom–this kind of adverse reaction will strike, but the last two months of singer-songwriter Beck Hansen’s career provide a textbook example of the phenomenon. The man who a reporter writing for Billboard magazine last November claimed was “at…
In promotional materials intended to hype its latest album, Mustang Lightning is called “unmistakably the most energetic and hard-driving band to emerge from the Denver music scene.” And guitarist/vocalist/phrasemaker Phil DeVille doesn’t back down from this claim. “The music that we play is the kind I like,” DeVille says from…
In Europe, New York and Los Angeles, rhythm and blues guitarist/vocalist Sammy Mayfield has made a name for himself as the musical director for legendary soul and gospel shouter Solomon Burke. But in Denver, where Mayfield was raised, he’s just another musician about town. He’s respected in musicians’ circles, but…
David Byrne David Byrne (Luaka Bop/Warner Bros.) Apparently this is the season for faded new-wave stars to search for their roots. Like Elvis Costello, whose recent Brutal Youth was a blatant attempt to return to the days when he got good reviews simply for existing, Byrne has temporarily abandoned his…
Although rap music became commercially viable only a few short years ago, the style itself has been around in one form or another since at least the late Sixties, when the Last Poets’ brand of incendiary verbal politics first scorched the intelligentsia. A quarter of a century later, many members…
John Carter has his work cut out for him. In a city where there’s a Sound Warehouse in nearly every strip mall, Carter is trying to carve a niche for himself with Locals’ Music, a store that sells only locally made recordings. And he hasn’t exactly made the job any…
Mike Love: The name conjures up a particularly Californian image of sun, fun, peace and happiness. If Love, the longtime vocal anchor of the American institution known as the Beach Boys, hadn’t been born with this name, he would have been well advised to adopt it. But Love is a…
Many of you men and women out there probably think “bitch” is a bad word. According to the members of the punk quartet 7 Year Bitch, you’re wrong. “It’s a compliment, really,” says Valerie Agnew, the drummer who powers Viva Zapata!, the group’s propulsive new disc on C/Z Records. “That’s…
