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…
Rock historian Lester Bangs once observed that “rock and roll is the most democratic and all-American of art forms.” What the late, great critic forgot to mention, however, is that it’s also the most fun a young punk-rock insurgent can have without a book of matches. For proof, look no…
Gil Scott-Heron got it wrong when he told us that the revolution would not be televised. It’s been televised repeatedly, and can be witnessed in all its glory in films and videotapes featuring the choreography of Alvin Ailey and performances by artists such as John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis,…
Gil Scott-Heron Spirits (TVT) Gang Starr Hard to Earn (Chrysalis/ERG) You can bet that the members of Gang Starr have worn out a few Gil Scott-Heron albums in their day. Scott-Heron was rapping before hip hop became either fashionable or marketable, and the music that he put to his words…
Old Bull’s Needle vocalist Tim Franklin is a man with a mission: “If there’s one goal in my life as a musician,” he explains, “it’s to get halfway famous enough to meet from Counting Crows–and wring his fucking neck.” Given sentiments like these, it’s doubtful that Franklin and his bandmates…
John Quill sits in his smallish apartment-cum-recording studio in southeast Denver and tries to explain why he’s been producing the weekly radio show Radio Free Colorado for more than four years when the financial rewards have been, to say the least, tiny. He soon discovers that he can’t. “I probably…
In early 1993, when the editors of Musician magazine published their list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time, they praised Stanley Jordan as a one-of-a-kind talent whose recent albums “point to a leaner, more spacious style, which only means he’s getting wiser.” But when that article was written,…
L’Impossible Trio, Friday, April 29, at Ricketson Auditorium, is an unlikely Paris-based threesome most stateside listeners have never gotten an opportunity to hear. Guitarist Phillipe Deschepper, tuba player Michael Godard and percussionist Youval Micenmacher began working together in 1988; since then they have conceived original compositions that often combine Middle…
Hole Live Through This (DGC) After weighing what we’ve learned from the celebrity press (now there’s a reliable source), it seems clear that Courtney Love is an erratic wreck of a human being–and since having your husband blow his brains out isn’t exactly a recipe for renewed mental health, she’s…
In February NBC aired a show dubbed The Jackson Family Honors, whose real purpose was to demonstrate that the Jackson family–parents Joseph and Katherine and kids Janet, Michael, Rebbie, Tito, Randy, Jackie, Marlon and Jermaine–weren’t really as dysfunctional as they seemed. Instead, this excruciating program proved that the Jacksons themselves…
Country blues singer-songwriter Rory Block knows how to play with pain. A solo artist who prefers to pick the steel strings of her guitar bare-fingered, she’s been known to perform entire shows at the starts of tours with blood dripping from her hands. Her calluses solidify as her time on…
Jonas Tauber, the 26-year-old principal cellist for the Boulder Philharmonic, has some complaints about the marketing of the classics. “I don’t think classical music is heard enough in an informal setting,” he says. “And usually, it’s extremely expensive. I hate that, too.” For these reasons, Tauber doesn’t limit his playing…
Otis Rush Ain’t Enough Comin’ In (This Way Up/Mercury) If you’re curious as to what blues aficionados mean when they describe guitar solos as “stinging,” pick this up. Rush, who’s worked in something akin to obscurity since the mid-Fifties, is a lethal force, and when he straps on his weapon…
John Porcellino is the Denver music scene’s latest renaissance man. He’s best known as the lead singer, songwriter and guitarist for the Felt Pilotes, a jangly local pop band whose other members, like Porcellino, hail from DeKalb, Illinois. But he also runs his own independent record company (Spit and a…
Beck, Friday, April 15, at Ground Zero, has presented a quandary to music-scene observers. They wonder: Is he the new Bob Dylan or the Vanilla Ice of slack? The verdict’s not in yet, but it seems clear from the early reactions to Mellow Gold, the anti-album just released on the…
Fans are comparing him to dead rock stars of the past. Commentators are claiming that his demise stands as the perfect symbol for a generation marked by lowered expectations and a nihilistic world view. Pundits are picking apart his lyrics in search of clues to his desperate final solution. And…
