The calendar says that Gaucho, the last album of original material by Steely Dan, came out just over twenty years ago, but Two Against Nature suggests that it’s really been about ten minutes. The same musical miscalculations that made the outfit’s 1979 faux swan song so sonically vapid are very…
Multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter Eric Gaffney is, with Lou Barlow, a founding member of the erratic, prolific and inexplicably popular Sebadoh. With that affiliation working overtime, indie-rock diehards will no doubt give Brilliant more attention than it would otherwise generate. Fortunately, this release demonstrates that a little Gaffney favoritism is actually…
Writer/producer/multi-personality rapper Deric Angelettie made an unforgettable impression as the hilarious Madd Rapper on the Notorious B.I.G.’s Life After Death. His talk-show-style grandstanding for a record deal spoke for every artist who’s found himself frustrated with the industry machine. Angelettie’s alter egos — D-Dot, an articulate player, and the Madd…
A pulsating platter of cock rock with a conscience, Little Steven’s latest is a sometimes glorious study in self-indulgence. From the left-wing political sentiments that the prodigal E Street Band member wears on his now-tie-dyed sleeve to the impassioned, if technically unimpressive, string-bending that stretches many of the tunes well…
The great Seattle explosion of the early ’90s did much to reinforce the belief that geography can be an important factor in furthering a music scene. In the Emerald City, it seemed that the concentrated mix of rainy days, heroin and disgruntled people (many of them on heroin) was conducive…
The Dismemberment Plan, with Planes Mistaken for Stars and Tanger, Thursday, March 2, at the Raven, hails from Washington, D.C. — land of a thousand emo-punks — and moves in circles with the likes of Burning Airlines and Juno. Since forming seven years ago, the band has proved to underground…
Michelle and the Book of Runes, with Deluge, Wednesday, March 8, at the Bluebird Theater, begins another chapter with the addition of four new bandmembers who, while new to the Runes, might be familiar to local audiences from their work with previous outfits. Bassist Mike Ballard, drummer Michael Czubik and…
New Orleans’s French Quarter may be a little too far away to make it a viable party option for Denverites celebrating Fat Tuesday, which falls on March 7 this year. But the Big Easy isn’t the only location in America where folks need a cathartic evening of bacchanalia. The unofficial…
They say girls mature faster than boys. Shannon Curfman, however, is maturing faster than everyone. At fourteen, she’s doing her schoolwork on the road while touring behind her major-label debut, Loud Guitars, Big Suspicions. Her turns in the spotlight haven’t come in the school auditorium but on Late Night With…
The complaint most frequently levied against Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum is a conceptual one. Putting up a tourist-friendly, mainstream memorial to what began as anti-establishment music, critics of the Hall say, is the best possible way to snuff out any sense of danger the form…
Steve Blakley has never attended a job interview. He’s never owned a power suit, never riffled through those How to Answer the Right Questions and Land the Right Job books so familiar to many twentysomethings attempting to enter the job market. It’s not that he relishes the trappings of slackerdom…
Oh, goody. We now have another teen “band” in our faces to scream “We’re cute, talented, pubescent and full of poppy energy!” This time it’s M2M, an ABBA/Britney Spears hybrid brought to us by some geniuses in Norway who think it’s all right to glut the teen scene with one…
In prime-time country these days, the once-revered tradition of duet singing has given way to what are called “vocal events” at awards shows. In alternative-country circles, though, the form seems to be making a bit of a comeback: John Prine traded lines with a host of female partners on his…
It’s been so long that most people no longer remember, but once upon a time, Dolly Parton was one of country music’s genuine treasures, a songwriter able to pour her personal experiences into tunes that more than earned their sentimentality. “Coat of Many Colors” and “Jolene” are two of the…
Almost six months after David Fox invited a couple dozen people — and seven local bands — into his Alley Studio space in Northwest Denver for an initial round of recordings, 2000: LiveDenverComp is ready to see the light of release. The compilation is the first offering from Fox’s new…
Gil Scott-Heron, Saturday, February 26, at the Lion’s Lair, is an acknowledged influence on many of hip-hop’s finest performers — and the genre would be better still if more rappers paid him obeisance. A Chicago native whose formative years were split between the American South and the mean streets of…
Jack Wright, Boulder’s outermost jazz saxophonist, welcomes itinerant reedman Bhob Rainey to St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, 1615 Ogden Street, on Thursday, February 24, for a duo performance of extreme-sport improvisation that might make bungee-jumping seem safe by comparison. A soprano specialist, Rainey has played with John Zorn, Joe McPhee,…
We don’t have Charlie Brown to cheer us up in the funny papers anymore, but luckily, there’s still Charlie Brown’s Bar & Grill for a little good grief after work. Located in the same building as the old Colburn Hotel on Grant Street, Charlie Brown’s happy hour offers great two-for-one…
In the annals of jazz lore, the story goes something like this: Dizzy Gillespie, perhaps tired from a long night of gigging, mistakenly sat on his trumpet, causing the horn’s normally straight bell to twist skyward at a perfectly right angle. Desperate to continue with the next set, Diz blew…
If Miles Davis were still alive and in need of a turntablist, it would make sense for him to hire New York native Jason Kibler, aka DJ Logic. Logic is a DJ who, like the legendary trumpeter, consistently stretches the boundaries of the musical landscape with his instrument of choice…
“The band, by all appearances, at least from what people tell me, is vastly influential, but I have no paycheck to show for it,” says former Camper Van Beethoven bassist Victor Krummenacher. “Not one.” Welcome to the world of cult rock. In the mid-1980s, Camper was perhaps the most “important”…
A sick-minded Westword salesperson (is there any other kind?) spun my copy of Still I Rise before I got my hands on it, and upon the CD’s return, I found tucked into its liner a lovely printout of Tupac Shakur as he looked mid-autopsy: flesh hanging out, split skull, and…
