The definition of underground rap differs depending on whom you ask. To some, it’s a state of mind where one refuses to compromise for commercial dictates — to others, it’s just another clever marketing strategy peddled by industry playas and journalists. Though few words are contested more in hip-hop, the…
It’s a crisp Friday afternoon at the Circle-A Ranch, the working-class home and headquarters of local twanglers Mr. Tree and the Wingnuts. Soapy Argyle, singer/songwriter/ guitarist for the act, sits on his back porch and sips chilly cans of Milwaukee’s Best with drummer Shawn 4-On (“You know, like ‘four on…
Common, a rapper with a strong Colorado connection (his father and occasional co-star, Lonnie Lynn, is a former Denver Rocket who’s deeply involved in the local hip-hop scene), is one ambitious cat — and hip-hop sure as hell needs more of those. But on his previous album, 1997’s One Day…
It’s hard to know quite what to make of this attempt to fuse rap, grungy guitar and soft pop. If Green Gartside has a genius for anything, it’s integrating R&B forms into angsty pop/rock — yet in spite of his propensity for rhythm, it’s questionable whether this talent extends to…
Leave it to Pumpkinhead Billy Corgan to attempt in just over 73 minutes his own dark twist on what it took English poet John Milton several pounds of parchment to accomplish in Paradise Lost: explaining the ways of God to man. That the delightfully megalomaniacal Corgan doesn’t embarrass himself (at…
The recent explosion of Cuban music in the United States, provoked by Wim Wenders’s documentary film Buena Vista Social Club and a relaxation of the U.S. embargo on Cuban artists, has taken many joyful forms. For hardcore jazz fans, no one embodies that joy more than the extroverted pianist Jesús…
Ken Mueller was following doctor’s orders on October 11, 1999, when he transferred ownership of Durant Inc., the parent company of the Grizzly Rose country dance club, to Robert “Cowboy Bob” Berliner. A heart attack had forced Mueller to retire his decade-long title as the King of the Grizzly; rather…
Jacques Higelin, Thursday, April 27, at the Gothic Theatre, is not exactly a household name in this country, but in his native France, he’s among a handful of contemporary live performers who can both sell millions of records and entertain coliseum-sized crowds. A former stage and film actor and practitioner…
Fat Mama, Thursday, April 20, at the Gothic Theatre, with Ron Miles and Joe Lukasik Trio, and Friday, April 21, at the Fox Theatre, offers two live shows to fans who’ve missed the band since its East Coast relocation last fall. The collective’s ambitious experiments with jazz fusion have been…
An international man of mystery in his own right, Mike Meyers popularized a cartoonish bit of British culture as the velour- and medallion-wearing character Austin Powers. Thanks to his efforts, many Americans now associate the term “shag” with something much more titillating than a thick living-room carpet, and it may…
When most of us were ten years old, we were playing Space Invaders, watching out for cooties and splashing in the occasional puddle left by afternoon summer rain. When Conor Oberst was ten, he was composing songs about Space Invaders and the joys of stomping around on rainy days. Unlike…
Four years ago BR5-49 was being hailed as the new Nashville guard, proof that country music’s fat cats had finally come to their senses. After gaining a rabid following as the house band at an unlikely venue on the fringe of Nashville’s music scene — a combination boot store/ saloon…
It’s almost a given that if you put a tape recorder in front of a band and ask its members questions about their place in the music universe, sooner or later there’s bound to be excessive speculation on every aspect of the music industry, from analysis of the current rock…
Tara Jane O’Neil’s solo debut is many things at once, all of them unusual. It is the soundtrack to seasonal affective disorder, the clamor of a Midwestern smorgasbord of slow-cooked indie rock, the hum of cognitive dissonance coming from a wanderer with one foot in small-town soil and the other…
The brilliant hard-bop trumpeter Woody Shaw went largely unsung in the course of his short, troubled life, but his work is now enjoying a welcome revival — thanks in large part to the efforts of the uncompromising reissue label 32 Jazz. In the last three years, producer Joel Dorn has…
There’s always a slight arrogance dogging even the best singer/songwriters. After all, it takes at least a trifling of ego to think anthologizing your life holds enough intrinsic interest to garner audience approval. There’s an even greater air of arrogance attached to surname-dropping rock figures — often, those who ditch…
Since the death of Tupac, the incarceration of Suge Knight and all the bad blood associated with the alleged Mafioso-like business tactics of Death Row Records, the West Coast has gradually lost its reign over the rap world. Recent albums by Kurupt (despite its hateful diatribe against DMX, which he…
When it’s trying to appeal to businesses that are thinking about relocating to Colorado, the Denver Chamber of Commerce is quick to cite a surge in the city’s population. The numbers, however, don’t reflect the veritable exodus of local musicians — including Slim Cessna, Fat Mama and members of the…
John Scofield, with the Derek Trucks Band, Thursday, April 13, at the Gothic Theatre, has been loosening up a little bit more with each passing year — and that’s a good thing. The albums this undeniably gifted guitarist made following his ’80s residence with Miles Davis were always listenable and…
Guitarist Wendy Woo, Sunday, April 16, at the Fox Theatre, is among a handful of local musicians who regularly perform together in the “Women From Mars” series — where possessing the Y chromosome is a secondary requirement to being talented. The series, sponsored by KWAB radio and organized by Woo,…
Stanley Kubrick recognized that outer-space imagery and stirring music were a sensual match — he mated spacescapes and classical styles to hypnotizing effect in 2001: A Space Odyssey. DJ Skunk, Saturday, April 15, at the Gothic Theatre, is one of six DJs who will endeavor to do the same in…
Chicago is a city known for neighborhoods with unique little names that distinguish one from the next; among them can be found the artist/hipster/Hispanic mishmash of Wicker Park and the ethnic, working-class potpourri of Lincoln Square. There’s also Uptown, a cultural blend as overrun with students from nearby Loyola University…
