Here’s a little-known fact about Ethel Merman, not that you asked: The Broadway belter with the enlarged nasal cavity extended her skills into a new arena by cutting a disco record, There’s No Business Like Show Business, in 1979 — something Backwash discovered while thumbing the bins at a particularly…
Somewhere up around 40,000 feet, while Neil McIntyre was flying over the desolate, expansive state of New Mexico on his way to Phoenix, the woman in the next row let him know that she had seen his band, Yo, Flaco!, play months before at the Cherry Creek Arts Festival in…
The bling-bling of shiny platinum jewels adorning commercial rap and R&B might blind some people to the fact that there is a creative resurgence going on in hip-hop right now. Yeah, that’s right — it’s rising up from the underground at this very minute. The strength and success of recent…
When you hail from Oxford, Mississippi, and your band’s handle is “Kudzu Kings,” you’d better be damn good. The title is a volatile moniker given that kudzu — an invasive vine that covers millions of acres of Southern land — replaced cotton as the King of the South years ago…
As a rule, defunct cult acts should leave well enough alone. Take Tin Huey, which rose from the same late ’70s Akron, Ohio, scene that spawned Devo, made one well-reviewed major-label album (1979’s Contents Dislodged During Shipment), launched a couple of its members on relatively productive careers (guitarist Chris Butler…
The reggae harmony outfit Israel Vibration has seen few member departures in its 23 years, save that of founder Albert “Apple” Craig, who left the group following 1996’s Free to Move. Even that significant loss had little effect on Israel Vibration’s musical approach: When the trio became a duo, it…
As concepts go, revolution — the rejection of preset ideas in favor of something new — and resuscitation — consciously reusing old ideas — are about as opposite as ideas can be. It’s somewhat shocking, then, that the (International) Noise Conspiracy has never recognized the rather obvious distinction between the…
The demise of the Stone Roses was a slow, painful and public dissolution, with plenty of bad luck, bad timing and bad judgment along the way. From a very publicized legal battle with a record label that prevented the band from releasing new material at the height of its popularity…
You might not know it from a quick survey of the dance floors at several LoDo nightclubs, but, as many people who first began going to disco-theme parties in the late ’80s can tell you, ’70s nostalgia ceased to be interesting around the same time Shelley Long stuck a Mrs…
Forget the supposed rock-and-roll revival of the Limp Bizkit and Slipknot posses. L.A.s Bellrays, Saturday, June 24, at the 15th Street Tavern, are all about the rock-and-soul revisitation. Sounding not unlike the Stooges fronted by Tina Turner, the Bellrays just may be one of the best live bands in the…
Sherri Jackson, Thursday, June 22, at the Boulder Theater, with Michael Smith and Matt Need, and Saturday, June 24, at the Soiled Dove, is in the midst of what some might describe as a good ol-fashioned success story. After toiling in local music circles, Jackson has received some well-deserved national…
The tiresome world of films that revolve around mindless action or pubescent spew can bring movie buffs down. But dont give up hope: The Boulder Outdoor Cinema is an inviting alternative to the status quo. Every Saturday around 8:30 p.m., viewers gather behind the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art to…
You can almost picture Bob Costas, Bill Walton and even the late Harry Caray crammed into a wide-angle camera frame, microphones in hand, attempting to provide the commentary for a Technics World DJ Championship competition. “DJ Sadboy cuts to the left by using his thumb on table one, adjusting his…
For Mickey Melchiondo and Aaron Freeman — known to their fans as Dean and Gene Ween, respectively — Ween’s new album, White Pepper, was a long time coming. The duo released a double live album, Paintin’ the Town Brown: Ween Live ’90-’98, last year, but it was a quickly assembled…
For many people, just getting out of bed on a Sunday morning — never mind all of the people dragging their weary souls to church — is enough of an uplifting achievement. But for Madame Andrews, simply getting to church is a sinfully easy task compared to her weekly ritual…
Screenplay writers and film directors have long recognized the appeal — both aesthetic and cultural — of the mom-and-pop record shop. Most recently, the movie High Fidelity devoted a sizable amount of screen time to a record store where concert fliers competed for wall space with vintage Beatles and punk-rock…
Bloomington, Indianas Johnny Socko, with Bad Rufus and Lesser Profits, Wednesday, June 21, at the Bluebird Theater, is proof that college basketball coach Bobby Knight isnt the only explosive entity to emerge from the Hoosier state. Now based in Indianapolis, Socko is currently on its own self-described rock-and-roll rampage (hopefully,…
Sarah McLachlan and her floral-skirted sisters would be wise to skirt around the Boulder Theater on Saturday, June 17, when the Lilith Scare slips on its stilettos, rolls up its shirtsleeves and goes to work on the crowd — and perceptions of women in music. A tall, blond vixen-in-the-making whos…
Fathers Day is a time to show some appreciation for your old man — and a chance to make up for all the money youve borrowed, ulcers youve caused and hairs youve turned gray. Of course, it can be difficult to find new ways to express your feelings from year…
James “T-Model” Ford is the baddest blues-playing murderer in the world, and he’ll tell you so. “I’m the best there is,” says Ford, who spent two of his younger years in prison for a murder he committed, in self-defense, as a young man. Today he’s killing time in his Greenville,…
Legendary music writer Lester Bangs (1948-1982) was the hilariously loudmouthed James Joyce of Western civilization’s most dubious “literary” achievement — rock-and-roll journalism — who injected himself into every music review like a self-absorbed maniac, both delighting and enraging readers of Rolling Stone, Creem and the Village Voice (among other publications…
In the book Those Magnificent Mountain Women, author Janet Robinson recalls the ways in which, in the mid- and late-1800s, brave ladies would snowshoe or ride horseback across the formidable Colorado terrain, walking or riding for hundreds of miles before settling among the pines to “fetch a bite of cheese…
