Ron Bucknam regularly plays his guitar for the benefit of pastry-noshing literati at the Tattered Cover Bookstore, and his country-swing band, the Barncats, puts a charge into folks at VFW halls. But behind this modest musician is another one–an introspective virtuoso who has bravely, maybe foolishly, dedicated himself to the…
Here’s a statement that demonstrates a keen grasp of the obvious: Most local record companies fail because of a lack of money. Realizing this, Le-Jon Vivens, LaQuin Starks and Steve Jackson, three of the men behind Under Pressure Records, went to the trouble of lining up backers before launching their…
Argan South Moroccan Motor Berber (Barbarity) I know that a lot of you have been burned by world music: You’ve picked up a supposedly catchy album after reading a rave review by a writer with a couple of tattered tour guides and a vocabulary with a glandular condition only to…
On wax, Bantam Rooster’s T. Jackson Potter comes across like a certifiable head case, whooping and hollering like a man on fire and twisting his vocal cords into all sorts of intriguingly weird positions. But away from the mike, the native Michigander is amiable, soft-spoken, even inhibited–the polar opposite of…
Seattle’s Hovercraft remains best known not for its fascinating instrumental music, but for the love life of bassist Sadie 7, aka Beth Liebling, who’s married to Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder. In fact, Vedder played drums with the instrumental trio during its 1995 tour with Mike Watt and the Foo Fighters…
From the outside, Bill Cook’s house, perched atop a heavily forested hill on the periphery of Woodland Park, near Colorado Springs, looks like a posh but typical mountain hideaway, and most of its interior follows suit. The basement, however, is a completely different story. Placed against its unfinished walls are…
Electric guitars fade up from a distance and start ringing like the chimes in rock-and-roll heaven. A moment later, a drumbeat kicks in with the force of an Oklahoma tornado while an organ blares its warning siren. Then a voice at once fragile and full of raw muscle, sweet like…
John Williams Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace–Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Sony Classical) The week before the film that birthed it arrived in theaters, the Episode I soundtrack entered the Billboard sales charts at number three, vaulting past Shania Twain and Britney Spears and lingering behind only Tim McGraw…
When Michael Chapman speaks, his words make him seem like the sagest of club veterans. “You want to get that positive response, watching people dance and go nuts to your music,” he says authoritatively. “If you’re not reading the crowd, they’re not going to respond to what you’re doing, and…
Humor is a fairly rare commodity in pop music, in part because artists who display even a modicum of it are often dismissed as wannabe comedians. Such is the lot of the Kiss Offs, a group that dares to spice its spritely sound with, of all things, entertainment value. “We…
During the early years of his career, Bob Dylan could do no wrong–but by the late Sixties, he’d figured out a way. Over the last thirty years, he’s interspersed good-to-great albums (Blood on the Tracks) with erratic but worthy curiosities (Empire Burlesque), predictable filler (Real Live) and downright stinkeroos (I’m…
“I didn’t set out to write kids’ music,” says Molly Bowers, “and I didn’t plan to do anything topical, either. I just wrote this song that was so cute and catchy that I decided to write more songs like it. And before I knew it, I had a whole album…
The Tom Guralnick Trio makes challenging music–but that doesn’t mean that Guralnick, an Albuquerque saxophonist, is insulted when people actually enjoy it. “Putting together the pieces and developing the pieces is a very collaborative, interactive process that’s really fun,” he notes. “And I think it’s okay to have fun. And…
Lots of bands tout the virtues of the MC5 and the Stooges these days, but few are as dedicated to these Detroit-reared punk godfathers as Los Angeles’s Streetwalkin’ Cheetahs. For proof, one need only cue up Live on KXLU, the group’s triumphant new offering on XXX Records. In addition to…
Since the April 20 shootings at Columbine High School, most of us have heard about the harassment of anyone whose clothes bear even the slightest resemblance to the ones favored by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. But Rachel Fulmer, manager of the dark-sounding act decanonizeD, has lived it. “A few…
“I like playing deeper records,” says Josh Wink. “But it’s just hard sometimes, because people expect me to play bangin’ music all the time.” Such expectations are natural: Among dance-clubbers from Rio to Helsinki, this dreadlocked white boy is as famous for his hard-techno sets as fellow Philadelphian Dick Clark…
Earlier this month, Bret Dowlen, the man who designed the sound system for the Fillmore Auditorium, formerly known as the Mammoth Events Center, warned me not to make any judgments about the acoustics of the building for several weeks. After all, he said, every room needs to be tweaked. But…
When Elvis Costello was approached by fans during the mid-Eighties, he would squelch their questions with a two-word conversation stopper: “I’m retired.” He used this reply, he says, “because it was just easier than trying to explain what I was actually doing.” Chuckling, he adds, “What a bastard I was.”…
Jeff Holland, Nathan Jantz and Dave Alexander are computer experts with enough collective know-how to bring the Pentagon’s systems administrator to his knees. But even though the three are more interested in making electronic music than in committing cyber-terrorism, there’s still a subversive element to their work. The pieces they…
Whoever said that the classics never go out of fashion probably wasn’t referring to popular music. In a field where styles date faster than President Clinton on a weekend fundraiser, it’s hardly startling that for most artists, fame is as fleeting as the glow of a nearly spent spliff. What…
“People are forgetting about the rock,” says Kenny Hellacopter, bassist for Stockholm’s self-proclaimed action rockers the Hellacopters. “Especially in the States, where it’s rooted and where it sprung from. Which is a shame, because it is such an important heritage. Americans should respect that and not mess around with it.”…
Local artists captured for posterity. Hot on the heels of Between the Lines: The Complete Studio Recordings, a gorgeous reissue of late-Eighties/early-Nineties sessions issued in 1998, Fred Hess and the Boulder Creative Music Ensemble are back with Ninth Street Park, a new collection that finds the act’s members with their…
