Dateline, 1982: At the annual talent show at an elementary school, the majority of performers enjoy spinning on their heads atop pieces of cardboard. The breakdancing craze has stretched from coast to coast like one gigantic cultural rubber band, even encompassing the streets of cities like Denver. Kids are spinning…
Trumpeter Hugh Ragin could tell stories for days — if he didn’t have so many people to see and places to be. But press him a little, lend him an ear and Ragin — both an educator and accomplished performer — just might make some time to relay a tale…
In hip-hop, producers rule, but that doesn’t mean they generally receive top billing: Studio chefs such as Timbaland and Dallas Austin tend to use acts like TLC as fronts to deliver their sonic souffles while they hide in the kitchen. But Handsome Boy Modeling School, the creation of rap brainiac…
For the last decade, Kathleen Hanna has been determined to change her world by using her fists. Her latest effort, Le Tigre, indicates that she’s found feathers. The former Bikini Kill lead singer/lyricist who was charged — rightly or wrongly — with instigating much of the Riot Grrrl movement has…
On “Fear Not of Man,” the intro cut to his first solo full-length, rapper Mos Def reflects on the state of hip-hop as we enter the 21st century: “People be asking me all the time, ‘Yo, Mos, what’s getting ready to happen with hip-hop?’ Whatever’s happening with us, if we…
If evidence of eighteenth-century jazz is unearthed in, say, the 21st century, Wynton Marsalis is likely the man who will play it and talk it up. The 38-year-old New Orleanian has heaped his credentials as an archivist and popular lecturer so high upon his status as a historian and neo-classical…
A perhaps little-known fact about Slim Cessna: Despite the aeronautical implications of his surname, the Auto Club leader is, in his words, “horrified of flying.” He’s gonna have to get over that right quick. Cessna has announced that, come January, he’s moving to the East Coast — specifically, to Rhode…
Gregory Isaacs, Sunday, December 12, at the Fox Theatre, has two traits that are common to many exceptional musicians, one of them unfortunate: He’s got a voice of pure-spun gold and a substance-abuse problem to match. Call it Murphy’s Law of Great Musicians. Isaacs is perhaps the best-known practitioner of…
Chupacabra, Sunday, December 12, at the Foundry, is a ten-person band that shares little with the mythical goat-blood-sucking beast of Mexican folklore. Instead, the band aims to represent as many countries as it has members, if not more, with its danceable blend of jazz, Afro-Cuban, Brazilian and other world and…
When you consider his career and accomplishments, it makes no sense that Sleepy LaBeef is tilling the back forty of America’s musical consciousness. After all, his resumé includes prolific stints on labels that virtually birthed rock and roll, such as Starday and Sun. His Fifties peers and labelmates include George…
Half of my enjoyment of music stems from listening without knowing whether or not I’m going to hate something, while many people are like radio programmers who just want the hits and rarely stray from a chosen format. And unlike most folks, I still own records. Lots of stupid ones…
So this is how the pop music of the Nineties ends — not with the angst and intellect of the grunge sound that most reviewers say defined the decade, but with a gloriously vapid hunkaroo who’s a lock for the gold medal if ass-waving is ever made an Olympic sport…
“I have a sense for Japanese filmmaking,” divulges Chris Taylor, organist/multi-instrumentalist for Denver innovators of cinematic rock the Hellmen. “Old karate films, even Godzilla. We have a Godzilla war occasionally. I could do it, but you couldn’t print it.” Taylor’s mention of Godzilla, the giant green reptilian menace of B-film…
The latest from Stereolab, a band scheduled to appear December 2 at the Bluebird Theater, is garnering reviews that vary from average to mediocre for a very simple reason: Critics grow tired of raving about cult acts that resolutely refuse to enter the mainstream and eventually turn on previous objects…
Presidential candidate Steve Forbes claims to be “an outsider who’s not a part of the political process.” Jerry Lawler, professional wrestler and Memphis mayoral candidate, boasts that he has “no political past.” In America, even our politics are apolitical. Socio-economic commentary seldom tracks across our pop-culture radar. And it’s rarer…
Relying on wealthy patrons to support your artistic vision is hardly original: Shakespeare had Queen Elizabeth; David Bowie had Prudential Insurance Company of America (which snapped up every back-catalogue bond he issued last year). So when a libel suit over a song on Little Red Songbook landed British techno-perv Momus…
Singer/guitarist/songwriter Peggy Mann has been playing around these parts for nearly twenty years, which makes the release of her debut CD Tenderness seem slightly overdue. The eleven-song effort touches on all of Mann’s well-worn influences: The folksy, melodic lilt of “Undercover” features a chorus reminiscent of Meredith Brooks’s annoying “Bitch”…
This isn’t the first time the Austin-based foursome And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, which appears December 4 at the15th Street Tavern, has attempted to play Denver. But the tour that had the band swinging through town last year was ill-fated, to put it mildly: Days…
The Janet Feder Trio, Tuesday, December 7, at the Bug Performance and Media Art Center, inaugurates a regular series, “The Bug Unplugged,” with an evening of original acoustic music. The occasion also marks the trio’s first concert, but the players are well-known in these parts for their highly listenable experimentation…
When the Sugar Hill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” first joined the words “hip” and “hop” for a nationwide radio audience in 1979, Mike Merriman was little more than a bundle of gelatinous, fetal goo. And in 1983, when Run DMC’s “Sucker MCs” led even those who didn’t reside in the South…
There’s a reason the black leather jacket and the pompadour continue to stand as calling cards among lovers of Fifties rock and roll. After all, they were two of the more disturbing fashion statements to parents whose kids were forsaking Pat Boone for Elvis Presley, Little Richard and Chuck Berry…
Just for a moment, you’re gonna wish you still had your periodic table from chemistry class, because when someone asks what Isotope 217 is, there are two correct answers. The chemistry-correct answer is that if there were an isotope 217, it would be an extremely unstable element; the other response…
