Spell, with Fox Force 5, Friday, December 22, at the Bluebird Theater, hasn’t achieved the national breakthrough for which many locals were hoping: The band’s 1994 bow for Island Records, Mississippi, was first-rate, but it got lost in the avalanche of generic alt-rock released by the music industry over the…
part 2 of 2 Emmylou Harris Wrecking Ball (Elektra) Harris has an exquisite voice that’s especially moving when contrasted with the right male’s: Witness the poignant majesty of her duets with the late Gram Parsons and the coloratura that she contributed to Bob Dylan’s 1975 LP Desire. But solo records…
part 1 of 2 The Beatles Anthology, Volume 1 (Capitol/Apple) Anyone who expects this to be filled with fresh revelations is hereby advised to travel to India, track down the nearest maharishi and meditate until the delusion passes. To put it another way, the Beatles are arguably the most heavily…
Ken Nordine Colors (Asphodel) Of all the discs released during the high-water-mark year of 1967, this is among the most obscure–and the most wonderful. Nordine, a longtime favorite of performers such as Tom Waits, is now in his mid-seventies, but during his prime he was probably America’s most in-demand voiceover…
The Throttlemen, with the Hillbilly Hellcats, Thursday, December 14, at the Bluebird Theater, is the latest vehicle whose pedal Denver rock veteran Rex Moser is mashing into the floorboards. His past efforts, in acts such as the Pi nk and the Flatlanders, have established him as a man who’s plenty…
Sublime, with Guttermouth and Skankin’ Pickle, Friday, December 15, at the Ogden Theatre, created a small cult masterpiece in 1992–the album 40 Oz. to Freedom. Since then, these Southern Californians have continued to produce an u nusual blend of lo-fi, thrash-infused ska and dub tunes. As the recent Robbin’ the…
It’s not easy to make creative holiday music. Writing a seasonal classic is all but impossible; besides, it takes years to know if you’ve succeeded. And while it’s a snap to cover old favorites, the extraordinary familiarity of the material prevents all but the most innovative performers from doing anything…
That Son Volt’s first album, Trace, makes excellent driving music has everything to do with the habits of the act’s lead singer and guitarist, onetime Uncle Tupelo member Jay Farrar. “I did spend a lot of time driving from my home in New Orleans to Minneapolis,” says Farrar, who made…
“We’re kind of like a comic book come to life,” says Mark D., drummer for Denver’s Fox Force 5. “Seriously, our persona is a cross between a comic book and, like, a bad, circa 1973, One Day at a Time sitcom joined together as one.” The stage names favored by…
Acting like you’re famous while you’re still a relative unknown often can lead to actual fame. That’s a lesson many performers never learn, but Courtney Taylor already knows it by heart. The trippy, self-titled CD by his Portland-based band, the Dandy Warhols, has been heard by only a handful of…
Meat Puppets No Joke! (London) For the Meat Puppets, the key has always been striking the right balance. When the Kirkwood brothers, Curt and Cris, and drummer Derrick Bostrom allow their music and words to drift on a patient narcotic breeze, their tunes are positively addictive–but when they rev up…
Trends always have risen and/or vanished quickly in the pop-music universe, but seldom as viciously as right now. Metal is a case in point. Since exploding in the late Sixties and early Seventies, the style has been as impossible to destroy as cockroaches. Disco, new wave, punk and countless other…
Baldo Rex, with Boss 302, Friday, December 8, at the Lion’s Lair, hasn’t yet taken the nation by storm because of a single, fatal flaw: originality. Sure, the band (featuring Phil Wronski, Tom Sprenkle, John Call and Ted Thacker) makes music that might be described as modern rock, but it…
George Clinton, Thursday and Friday, December 7 and 8, at the Fox Theatre, and Friday, December 9, at the Ogden, may not create at the furious pace he managed during the Seventies, but he continues to give good show. In combination with the P-Funk All-Stars (essentially, those members of the…
“We do a different kind of blues,” says Ben Stevens, guitarist and vocalist for Boulder’s Bleecker St. “We want to keep the Delta-blues tradition alive but mix a new, original sound with the old. We like to call it the new Delta house-rockin’ blues.” That’s as good a definition as…
Kat Bjelland, the leader of the post-punk threesome Babes in Toyland, is paying for her good times. The previous weekend, at the end of a two-week tour of Australia, Bjelland, Babes bassist Maureen Herman and the Toyland crew had thrown a surprise birthday party in honor of drummer Lori Barbero…
Henry Rollins, Saturday, December 2, at the Ogden Theatre, takes pride in selling out, so long as he does it his way. Whereas most old-school punks eschew any public activity that might cast aspersions on their credibility, Rollins endorses computers, poses for fashion layouts and acts in films (he’s just…
Ellyn Rucker, with Laura Newman, Thursday, November 30, at the Mall Exchange, deserves her reputation as the area’s premier female jazz pianist. She’s at ease and in superb form in virtually any musical setting, as the Colorado International Women’s Forum just acknowledged by accepting Rucker into its organization. Rucker is…
Boss Hog leader Cristina Martinez has no intention of exploiting her sexuality to make a living. After all, she’s already done enough of that. “I used to do phone sex back in the Eighties,” she volunteers. “I didn’t start out doing it–I was the receptionist taking credit-card numbers at this…
Drummer Colby Mancasola and his mates in the band Knapsack discovered a surefire way to pick a record company. “Basically,” he says, “we just looked at our record collections and said, `Okay, we own these four or five albums on Alias.’ And then we looked at label B and went,…
There’s no shortage of sweet-voiced, guitar-wielding women in Boulder these days. Toss a quarter on Pearl Street and it’ll more than likely land in a female singer-songwriter’s guitar case. Audiences, however, are harder to come by, and renown more difficult to achieve than that. So it’s fortunate that Wendy Woo…
Windowpane, with Benjamina Ficus Exotica, Saturday, November 25, at the Lion’s Lair, has a new drummer: Kenny Ortiz, the man with the sticks in both D-Town Brown and Tribhanga. This addition is certain to enhance what is already one of the more innovative bands in town–a collection of awesome instrumentalists…
