Independent labels aren’t the cozy, accessible harbors of artistic freedom they used to be. Call most of these onetime upstarts and you’ll find yourself playing tag with a chain of receptionists, press agents and tour managers every bit as convoluted as those found at Atlantic or Columbia. But Simple Machines,…
Approaching a certain nondescript building in the warehouse district north of downtown Denver can be an unnerving experience–especially if you’re visiting at night. The street is poorly lit, the people meandering nearby have the look of the criminally insane, and the rabid, wildly yapping dogs prowling the adjacent properties seem…
William Clarke, Thursday, January 19, at Herman’s Hideaway, is a California native and harmonicat who caught the blues bug at sixteen. While his peers were listening to Beach Boys tunes, Clarke was sneaking into Watts dives in order to learn at the feet of Lowell Fulsom and Big Mama Thornton…
Ice Cube Bootlegs & B-Sides (Priority) I’ve gone back and forth on this character so many times that the only thing I’m sure of in 1995 is that he’s still got the potential for greatness. Hard to describe why–there’s plenty of idiocy sprinkled throughout these thirteen intermittently engaging tracks, which…
Todd Snider, Friday, January 13, at the Bluebird Theater, Saturday, January 14, at the Fox Theatre, and Sunday, January 15, at the Boulder Theater for a taping of E-Town, stands out from the vast majority of young singer-songwriters for an exceedingly uncomplicated reason–he’s funny. Not that he’s a slacker version…
In a world seemingly ruled by ego, Boulder-based singer-songwriter John Vecchiarelli is a definite exception. “I don’t know the name of one chord I play,” he confesses. A largely self-taught strummer who picked up the guitar less than two years ago, Vecchiarelli adds that he’s a big jazz fan, but…
Puppies eventually become dogs. Teenagers bloom into young adults. And jazz guitarist Howard Alden wants people to know that neo-swing players–those young guys who perform with and like the old guys from the original swing era–can grow up, too. “I should hope so,” says Alden, who at 36 is among…
The recent reunion of the Eagles thrilled a disturbingly large number of the nation’s music lovers, who gladly handed over wads of bills for the privilege of seeing the outfit play note-for-note renditions of its Seventies staples. Not everyone jumped on the band’s wagon: Glenn Frey’s suggestion (in Rolling Stone)…
Todd Snider Songs for the Daily Planet (MCA) Country A&R guys are certainly feeling their oats these days. How else to explain the signing of Snider, an often jubilant busker who sounds no more country than, say, Loudon Wainwright III? “My Generation (Part 2),” Planet’s opening track, is indicative of…
As a new year dawns, let us take a minute to thank the members of Green Day and Offspring for all they’ve accomplished in recent months. No, we’re not talking about how they managed to break a genre of music (punk) that PR folks have been struggling to keep under…
When journalist Albert Goldman issued the book Elvis in 1981, the rock-and-roll community was stunned and appalled. Fans who still got misty at the thought of Elvis Aron Presley’s 1977 demise weren’t ready for a tome that painted their hero as a moronic hillbilly and a sexual deviant who would…
For guitarist Mike Serviolo–the creator of the wonderfully twisted Denver-based group Iz–making music is an arduous and painstaking process. And keeping a band together isn’t that easy, either. Iz, you see, has existed for only about a year, but during that time it’s already undergone the kind of personnel shifts…
This was the year that was. And what was the year 1994? From a musical standpoint, it was a transitional period. Some trends arose and some trends died during the past twelve months, but no movements were so overpowering that they brushed aside everything else in their paths. As a…
Every year sees the release of new Christmas albums, but 1994 has witnessed an avalanche of them. And they’re flying out of the stores–really flying. At this writing, Miracles: The Holiday Album, by that epitome of evil in the late twentieth century, Kenny G, is the biggest-selling CD in the…
Eric Richter, guitarist and lead vocalist for Denver-based Christie Front Drive, boasts an extensive–not to mention goofy–range of influences. “One of the albums I’m listening to a lot these days is the Xanadu soundtrack,” he reveals. “It brings back a lot of memories of when I was a kid. And…
Nirvana MTV Unplugged in New York (DGC) Too much is being made of this, and for reasons that are rather hard to fathom: I mean, I can’t be the only person in America to have caught this performance during one of the 10,000 or so times it’s been aired since…
Sub Pop, the ultrasuccessful indie label from Seattle, took a radical risk by signing Velocity Girl to a five-album contract–the longest ever offered by the company. Unlike most of the thick-and-droney-sounding bands the label has promoted in the past, Velocity Girl (the moniker was copped from a Primal Scream song)…
You might not expect the author of such sunny-sounding pop near-classics as “Someday, Someway” to have a testy bone in his body. But there’s more angst in Marshall Crenshaw than initially meets the ear. Nursing a heavy head cold in a Dallas hotel room, the singer-songwriter chooses to open this…
Denver singer-songwriter Michael Engberg makes a decent living as a solo musician. But if he ever comes up short, he can always earn some extra money the way he once did–by delivering singing telegrams. “I’d say there are three main requirements for doing them,” he theorizes. “You have to have…
The campaign to sell Tony Bennett to a new generation of listeners has focused on hipness. Here, according to Madison Avenue, is a crooner beloved by the most popular alternative rockers of the Nineties–a veteran vocalist game enough to appear onstage at a 1993 MTV awards program dressed like a…
Pearl Jam Vitalogy (Epic) This isn’t all that hot, but at least these guys are trying. The problem, as usual, are the songs, which are not exactly dripping with originality. “Spin the Black Circle,” for instance, could pass for an early X track if only Exene Cervenka had added a…
Decked out in his weathered cowboy hat, Wrangler jeans and cherry-red shit-kickers, guitarist Gary England doesn’t look like your archetypical surfer, and for good reason. Despite his role as the fair-skinned frontman for Denver’s premier instrumental surf trio, the Moon Doggies, England has yet to catch his first wave–although it…
