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…
Colleen Fitzpatrick, lead singer of the New York City-based power-pop quartet Eve’s Plum, may not be a star yet, but she’s already getting the star treatment. “Last night we did this big show in L.A., and we shot a video,” she says, “And it was a circus and a zoo,…
Blues harmonicat Charlie Musselwhite looks a lot older than his fifty-something years, but in his case, that’s okay: He’s earned every line on his face. After four decades of playing and living the blues, Musselwhite is indisputably among the top harmonica players alive, as well as one of the funniest…
“I am the undisputed world champion of this band,” says Mike Kirschmann about his group, the Christines. “And I play guitar and sing.” As any good bandleader should, Kirschmann has surrounded himself with talented musicians who are so happy to play together that the warm fuzzies could fly all afternoon…
Kokane Funk Upon a Rhyme (Ruthless/Relativity) I admit it: When I saw the cover of this album, I figured that the disc would bite. The reason was simple–there’s too much lame, redundant, boneheaded gangsta rap out there right now, and a recording by someone named Kokane (real name: Jerry Long)…
Primal Scream, Thursday, May 26, at Fiddler’s Green, with Depeche Mode and Stabbing Westward, has little in common with either of the bands on its current tour. In contrast to the keyboard-tapping Modes or Westward’s junior Trent Reznors, the Screamers combine Scottish roots, British dance rhythms and American gospel into…
If Oklahoma City doesn’t go down in pop-rock history as the next (yawn) Seattle, Flaming Lips guitarist/vocalist Wayne Coyne won’t mind. He likes his hometown the way it is–boring. “We’ve sort of gone out of our way to say, `Look, there’s nothing going on here. Just do what you want…
Peter Himmelman is definitely not a material guy. The 34-year-old singer-songwriter from Minnesota (best known to the tabloid-reading public as Bob Dylan’s son-in-law) says, “I try to view the world as being constantly made manifest by the will of God, in every single blade of grass that moves in the…
Sweet De, the lead voice for Denver’s Cool eMCees, is at the microphone at Aurora’s Platinum Studio, freestyling a new set of rhymes meant to conclude “The Funky Joint,” a tune set for inclusion on the group’s upcoming album. De’s partner, Skoolboy Fresh, and semi-official DJ Chilli E. sit in…
Maggie Estep No More Mister Nice Girl (NuYo/Imago) Calling Ms. Estep a spoken-word artist is tantamount to describing Richard Nixon as a former congressman from California: It doesn’t exactly tell the whole story. Sure, Estep speaks a lot of words–as a former student at Naropa’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied…
Perhaps it’s testimony to America’s essential greatness that a culture seemingly dominated by news of Roseanne and Tom’s marital problems still manages to produce artists as inspired as Georgia’s Vic Chesnutt. Chestnutt isn’t a ringer for Eddie Vedder, his voice isn’t as cherubic as Steve Winwood’s and he can’t step…
After asking guitarist Dick Dale a question, hold on. This rock-instrumental innovator, this creator of surf rock, this influential wild man beloved by players as disparate as the Beach Boys’ Carl Wilson and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore has a lot to say, and he says it fast and furiously. The…
Barkmarket, with Spongehead, Tuesday, May 24, at Seven South, is a band that inspires strong opinions. Relatively meek listeners likely will hate this trio–hate it with a passion not unlike that exhibited by the mob that recently celebrated the execution of John Wayne Gacy. But the more adventurous among you…
Jeb Bows, the seventeen-year-old guitarist in the Longmont-based band called Linus, doesn’t care for the term “Generation X”–and with good reason. Bows and his bandmates–vocalist Dan Parris, guitarist Andy Rothbard, bassist Jason Barlowe and drummer Mike M.–hardly fit the blank-eyed, TV-worshiping profile some observers use to describe the under-25 crowd…
John Trudell Johnny Damas and Me (Rykodisc) No getting around it: Trudell is dogmatic, didactic and driven to say more about most topics than many listeners are eager to hear. But he’s also utterly genuine, aggressively intelligent and as fierce as a radical vegetarian in a butcher shop when it…
“In Spanish our name means `the specter, the ghost,'” drummer Steve Shiramizu says of El Espectro, a local alternative-rock group in which he’s teamed with vocalist John Meggitt, guitarist Fletcher Necley and bassist Chris Kennedy. That’s appropriate, since Shiramizu and Meggitt have haunted the Denver music scene since 1986, playing…
Greg Brown has a strange effect on people. At first hearing, Brown seems to be a typical folksinger, albeit one with a fine eye for detail. Listen a little closer, however, and you’ll likely discover that his modest, laconic approach cloaks a lyrical and musical style that’s as distinctive as…
“We would like to be the world’s oldest punk-rock band,” declares Michie Nakatani, bassist, keyboardist, vocalist, songwriter and co-founder of Shonen Knife, Osaka, Japan’s latest contribution to the global music scene. “If we can, we would like to play into our eighties.” If the idea of Japanese octogenarians achieving legendary…
In the early Seventies, singer-songwriter Jonathan Richman penned “Roadrunner,” one of the great pop songs of all time. Entranced by the tune’s indelible riff and celebratory lyrics, Warner Bros. executives ponied up big bucks to make Richman a star, but Jonathan, who grew up in the Boston area, would have…
Rickie Lee Jones, Tuesday, May 17, at the Paramount Theatre, is a singer-songwriter whose soulful beauty and jazzy articulation has not been dimmed by the years: This Beat angel continues to tantalize her audience by uncovering new, deviant elements of her musical persona. She’s still willing to take listeners back…
Garrett Shavlik can’t help himself. Drummer Shavlik is talking about Spell, a trio believed by practically everyone who’s heard them to be the latest, greatest hope to come out of the Denver music scene. But instead of promoting his group, which just signed a multi-album deal with Island Records following…
