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…
Garbage Version 2.0 (Almo Sounds) Given how many copies of Garbage’s first disc flew off the shelves, you know that critics are sharpening their skewers over this one. But Version 2.0 is so steely that such jabs will likely bounce right off it. Producer/drummer/mastermind Butch Vig may have worked his…
Sometimes hard rock is in vogue, sometimes it’s not–but thus far, neither the music industry nor the fickle public has been able to kill it entirely. Even during periods when it was deemed thoroughly uncool, the approach has survived and occasionally even flourished, especially in places somewhat removed from the…
Every minute of every day, an introspective bedroom strummer somewhere on earth takes a break from penning maudlin tunes about his ex-girlfriend long enough to fantasize about his own vindication writ large. But only a few of the crooners who envision major-label scouts discovering the Next Big Thing in the…
With his neatly trimmed beard and shoulder-length, semi-feathered hair, mandolinist Sam Bush looks more like a lost Doobie Brother than a musical anarchist. But after more than a quarter-century operating in and around the country and bluegrass scenes, he’s still looked at with suspicion by those listeners who prefer the…
“Maybe you’d better leave out the surfing stuff,” bluesman/harmonica expert Rod Piazza says about his love of riding the waves near his Southern California home. “Sometimes it’s a hindrance for people to know what you’re really all about off stage, because they have this perception of what you’re like on…
The Smashing Pumpkins Adore (Virgin) This is the best Pumpkins album to date by a very great distance, in large part because it hardly rocks at all. Few tunes on the disc get within thirty beats per minute of up-tempo, and those that do–such as “Ava Adore,” the platter’s first…
When the first shots in the Denver promoter wars were fired earlier this year, most observers figured that the primary combatants would be Universal Concerts, the company that took over what was left of the empire created by Barry Fey, and BGP/CMP, a firm that mates a powerhouse West Coast…
Many American DJs leave the sophistication that’s part of the European electronic mileu begging at the door of bland musical purism. But not Peter Gurule, aka DJ Aztec. Unlike plenty of his Denver peers, who favor the baggy-pants uniform that came into vogue during the early Nineties, Aztec prefers Armani…
Myshel Prasad wants to be understood, but not too easily. After a lengthy interview about The Vortex Flower, a new CD by her band, Space Team Electra, she writes a carefully composed five-page letter clarifying her remarks, then follows it up a few days later with a page-and-a-half-long sequel clarifying…
Hookers vocalist Adam Neal is a changed man. When he and his mates (guitarist Noel Reucroft, bassist Pat Smith and drummer Paul Bishop, recently replaced by Chris Hamilton) first picked up their instruments in 1995, he was a middling punk-rocker who washed regularly, did his homework and listened to the…
Musicians generally gravitate toward predictable day jobs to finance their passion: waiting tables, pumping gas, selling CDs and so on. But of the six members of Boa and the Constrictors, only harmonicat Jim Pansa, who is employed at a local violin-repair shop, fits the formula. As for the others, guitarist/vocalist…
Tricky Angels With Dirty Faces (Island) Here’s a lesson in artistic credibility. Ever since the release of 1995’s Maxinquaye, which is among the best and most influential albums to pop up this decade, Tricky has been on a creative roll, but the tenebrous nature of his work has prevented it…
In the December 11, 1997, edition of this column, those of you who’ve mastered the art of reading may have stumbled upon an item concerning Denver-based singer-songwriter Celeste Krenz and her imminent signing to Bohemia Beat, a nationally distributed indie run by local boy Mark Shumate. The piece found Shumate…
Propellerheads Desksanddrumsandrockandroll (DreamWorks/’Heads Spin) Alex Gifford and Will White, a once-underground U.K. pair known by pretty much everyone but their mothers as Propellerheads, are the latest artists to be hyped relentlessly by a major label–in this case, Dreamworks, the Spielberg/ Katzenberg/Geffen behemoth–in an effort to infect America with electronica fever…
When your job title is Professor of Trombone, you get used to the jokes. Bill Stanley, the University of Colorado at Boulder instructor who holds this obscure handle, has heard them all before, and he can prove it. “What’s the difference between a lawn mower and a trombone?” he asks…
Jeff Parker, guitarist for Tortoise and Isotope 217, has never much liked conforming to expectations. “I went to school in Boston, at the Berklee School of Music,” he says. “I was in the jazz scene there–and the thing for a young jazz musician from Berklee to do was to go…
Just in case you’re curious, the music press often strikes me as an elitist institution, too. Not that I think critics should use popularity to determine who is deserving of coverage; on page 73 of this week’s issue is a piece I wrote about a pair of cult acts, Tortoise…
