Most of the improvisational performers who’ve risen to icon status during the jazz century have done so in part because their brilliant music was paired with a melodramatic personal life. Early death is a big plus in this regard: Such tragedies allow observers and critics to speculate about the great…
The following music-news items are guaranteed fresh. Just like me. Mike Jourgensen is probably best known in these parts for his role as singer, songwriter and guitarist for Abdomen, which joins the Apples at Seven South on Saturday, January 23. But he’s also the impresario behind D.U. Records, an indie…
Number One Cup’s Seth Cohen has plenty to be grateful for this new year. Last September, the singer/guitarist/keyboardist was splayed out in the middle of an ice rink in Danbury, Connecticut, wondering if he would ever perform–or, for that matter, walk–again. “Frankly, I’m lucky to be alive,” he says. “I…
Let’s go clubbing. Soma, a venue at 1915 Broadway in Boulder that debuted late last year, is a bold experiment. Hardy Kalisher, working with a group of investors (including his brother Lucas) who are all under the age of thirty, sees the project as an opportunity to bring to Colorado…
No answering-machine messages are included on Anthology, a four-CD grab bag of recordings made by John Lennon between the demise of the Beatles, in 1970, and his own murder ten years later, but they would have fit right in. The collection boasts over ninety previously unreleased offerings but precious few…
It’s the night before New Year’s Eve in lower downtown Denver, and the city’s party district couldn’t be more dead. The streets are eerily free of thrillseekers and stumbling suburbanites, creating a ghost-town atmosphere that’s heightened by acres of empty parking spaces and the locked doors of LoDo bars that…
How did the members of Wretch Like Me become such rude, obnoxious punks? They had a great teacher: Bill Stevenson, drummer for All and the Descendents and former timekeeper for Black Flag. Stevenson has been friends with the Fort Collins-based bandmembers for ages, and he’s still providing them with valuable…
The local recording blitzkrieg continues. Maceo Parker, whose saxophone put a lot of the juice into James Brown’s cold-sweat workouts, is now on Boulder’s W.A.R.? imprint, and Funk Overload, his debut recording for the company, gets off on a good foot. While some of Parker’s previous albums have attempted to…
Teletubbies Teletubbies: The Album (Kid Rhino) Although I’d heard that Teletubbies, a British children’s series that’s been exported to the colonies, was the closest thing to an acid trip currently available on the tube, I disregarded such talk as postmodern exaggeration. But one day while I was home sick, I…
“For the most part, the music that dominates the public commercial airwaves seems to be more narrow in its musical content than anything that I’ve heard in forty years,” says Mike Johnson, the multi-instrumentalist and composer who leads Thinking Plague. “But human beings with creativity and a rising level of…
Fat Boy Slim You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby (Astralwerks) Fat Boy Slim On the Floor of the Boutique (Skint) Norman Cook, aka Fat Boy Slim, certainly has come a long way. After trading in his bass guitar (remember the Housemartins?) for a pair of turntables, he quickly rose through…
The songs played by most Colorado punk bands are apolitical; they’re about everyday life, not the great issues of the day. But although the Messy Hairs (guitarist/vocalist Dave Paco, bassist Josh Posh and drummer Haroldo) have their share of such tunes, they’re not afraid to take a stand when one…
Last week Westword published a mammoth roster of 1998’s top national CDs–but locals have put out some impressive recordings during that same period as well. Below you’ll find an alphabetical list of my twenty favorite discs and cassettes issued by Colorado-based acts and recent graduates of the scene over the…
Scott Strong, interim program director for KXPK-FM/96.5 (the Peak), says he had been planning to issue a press release announcing his decision to begin broadcasting Howard Stern’s radio program on Monday, November 23. However, word of the Stern deal began to leak out the previous Friday, November 20. So why…
The following list of favorite albums from 1998 is, to use a technical term, pretty damn big. Here’s how it came to be. Each year, I receive an average of between 2,000 and 3,000 CDs or cassettes, and I listen to each of them–for a while, anyway. (I use what…
Local recordings of note–or at least ones that feature notes. Nowhere in the biography of Shankis, whose disc is called Tales From Lonvernia, is there a mention of the Grateful Dead or any of its offspring; King Crimson, Frank Zappa and Rush are the inspirations cited. But in the interest…
Today, Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee owns the most famous penis on the Internet–but his generously proportioned man part wasn’t the source of his initial burst of fame. Lee’s been a popular personality since the early Eighties, when he and bandmates Vince Neil, Nikki Sixx and Mick Mars burst onto…
Jewel Spirit (Atlantic) In the current edition of Rolling Stone, journalist Neil Strauss tries to portray Jewel Kilcher, who appears on the issue’s cover, as a far more complex personality than the one who seems to be behind her music–not a thimble-deep hippie chick who’s peddling the hoariest of cliches,…
While collaborating with Lois LaFond and the Rockadiles, Denver blues matriarch Hazel Miller asked, “How come I have so much fun with your band?” In attempting to answer this question, LaFond, a Boulder resident who’s celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of her group with the release of its sixth album, Lois…
‘It’s a late August night at the Bluebird Theater, and El Vez, the self-proclaimed “Mexican Elvis,” is commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of Elvis Presley’s 1968 comeback TV special as part of his “gospel show.” After escorting from the stage his four lovely Elvettes (Priscellita, Gladysita, Lisa Maria and Que Linda…
Find herein a six-pack of information nuggets. They’re bite-sized–and the NBA owners haven’t locked them out. Nugget 1: Denver’s Soak is playing the name game. According to longtime Soak drummer Donnie Maul, the group was formed in 1994 and subsequently went to the trouble of trademarking its appellation in Colorado…
Most boomers grew up in households that were Christmas-album deprived. Their parents had only a couple of seasonal platters (something by the Boston Pops or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, perhaps, or maybe a promotional sampler or two they’d picked up at the neighborhood B.F. Goodrich tire store), and they played…
