Hit Pick

How about a Halloween show featuring local black-metal bands, a homophobic priest and…penises? Thats the plan for Bite My Halloweenie 2000, Tuesday, October 31, at the Gothic Theatre, with Father Cire Bentley and Powder Munki, Burn Circuit, Serberus (pictured), Filth Industry, Throat Culture and Maris the Great and the Faggots…

Sounds Like Fun!

Sex or art, art or sex? Choose both at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Arts heavenly Exotica Erotica Ball. Earthly pleasures and erotic fantasies come together at the museums biggest and most Dionysian fundraiser, happening Friday, October 27. The historic, art-deco Boulder Theater sets the tone for the event, which…

Pickin’ Up the Pieces

An air of hushed tranquility cloaks the Boulder Junior Academy, an unpretentious cinder-block school in a residential section of the town whose name it sports, on this early October Sunday. A smattering of cars occupies spaces in its parking lot, and a handful of casually clad families — some carrying…

Join the Club

During a long-forgotten episode of American Bandstand in the late ’70s, Talking Heads bassist Tina Weymouth told Dick Clark, “We want to change the face of music” — something even Clark’s plastic surgeons might have considered a stretch. It was a bold declaration for anyone to make on national television,…

Radiohead

Consider, for a moment, the three long and distasteful years that have befallen the musical universe since the release of Radiohead’s succinct document of postmodern dystopia, the Grammy-winning OK Computer. Radio in 2000 is like Thom Yorke’s worst nightmare come true: A world up to its ankles in NutraSweet teen-pop…

Broun Fellinis

On the surface, these recordings share nothing beyond a common label (Weed, an indie out of Berkeley, California). But a closer listen reveals at least one other similarity, not counting their quality: The performers who made the discs understand that instrumental music offers them a vast canvas on which to…

Backwash

With all of the upheavals in the Denver radio market these days, the climate of competitiveness seems to have everyone ready to launch a defensive strike — even if it’s at the wrong target. On Thursday, October 5, in addition to representatives from the House of Blues and RCA Records,…

Critic’s Choice

Bob Tyler, Friday, October 20, at the Bug Theatre, is a hands-down winner for best supporting musician in a local music scene. Over the past few years, Tyler has served as songwriter, backup musician and/or producer for numerous area heavies, from John Magnie and 3Twins to Marie Beer and newcomers…

Hit Pick

It seems you cant be a member of Zeüt, Saturday, October 21, at Hermans Hideaway, with Mind Go Flip and the Choir Boys, if you dont play at least two instruments. This requirement might help explain the bands tendency toward busy, harmonic nature-core music. Its a sunny stew thats well…

Sounds Like Fun!

Pigs must be flying. For a decade, the Wynkoop Brewing Company celebrated its anniversary with an official Running of the Pigs, a Hemingway take-off that featured a plethora of pigs hauling their well-fleshed butts — and here were talking about the media types who handled them, too — around a…

For Love Or Monkey

You must pay tribute,” says Jason Russell, gently grasping the base of a coconut adorned with red hair and fake eyeballs, “to the monkey head.” The head in question hangs from the rafters of a northwest Denver garage, the practice space for the Orangu-Tones, a quintet bent on reliving the…

Say That You’ll Be True

Many an artist has enjoyed an entire career — and a lifelong income — from the lasting appeal of one smash, a single tune that somehow buried itself in the minds of listeners like a fiddler crab tunneling into sand. Unfortunately for Dale Hawkins, he’s not one of those artists…

Seller’s Market

Ask anyone involved in the underground rock scene what the future portends, and there’s a good chance they’ll sing the praises of emo, post-rock, post-hardcore, or whatever names happen to be in vogue at the moment. Call it what you will, indie rock — and all of its outgrowths –…

The Olivia Tremor Control

Most odds-and-ends collections aren’t nearly odd enough, and they generally don’t end well, either; remembering anything from the average leftovers compilation is about as easy as listing all the characters from War and Peace in alphabetical order. But there are exceptions, and this is one — a timely deck-clearing for…

Sonny Stitt

Producer Joel Dorn, who founded the superb revival label 32 Jazz, is giving jazz collectors two more shots of the real thing (and the rare thing) with his initial releases on Label M. From the dusty archives of Baltimore’s old Left Bank Jazz Society, he’s plucked a wealth of jazz…

Ryan Adams

Whiskeytown is known primarily for lead singer Ryan Adams’s raw, emotional songs and often cocky swagger. Yet the question of whether that will change after the release of the band’s new album will remain unanswered until at least next year: Tied up in the Interscope/Geffen merger, the completed album is…

Backwash

Two weeks ago, an item in this column mentioned that Mike “Big Mike” Colin plays bass with the excellent hip-hop and free-jazz collective, Ratiocination, a band with almost enough players to line a dugout at the World Series. Now, it appears, Colin can scratch Ratio duties off an already overfull…

Critic’s Choice

San Diegos Pinback, Friday, October 13, at the 15th Street Tavern with Acrobat Down and Oer the Ramparts, combines the considerable talents of Armistead Burwell Smith IV (aka Zach), who served as the heart of Three Mile Pilot, and Robert Rulon Crow Junior. Yet unlike the heavier sounds that emanated…

Hit Pick

Hugh Ragin is just one of the local jazz luminaries who will light up the stage at Vartans Jazz Club and Restaurant on Friday, October 13. The expressive trumpet player (and recent nominee for Best Jazz Artist in Westwords Music Awards Showcase) will be joined by excellent concert pianist Joe…

Sounds Like Fun!

A drum! A drum! Macbeth doth come. Well, sort of. His tragedy has become a comic farce in Kevin Harts McBeth, playing at the Bovine Metropolis Theatre through November 5. Dont look for Claire or Leonardo in this Shakespeare re-do — try line cooks, clowns and trailer trash. And what…

All The Kings Men

For many musicians, having fans hear their decades-old music is as scary as having a potential partner view long-out-of-fashion high school photos: There are some things that are best left buried in the past. But for Chris Daniels and the Kings, looking back on past endeavors has never been so…

Born to Die

Genuine musical objectivity is tough to come by, since most listeners, try as they might, can’t help but bring biases to what they hear. Sometimes these predispositions are personal; for instance, my beloved can no longer listen to the Beach Boys’ “Help Me, Rhonda” without displeasure, because it was playing…