“I just think we’re all pretty positive people,” says guitarist John Hill of Denver’s Dressy Bessy. “We’re upbeat, but we’re not trying to be sickeningly happy.” Like Hill, the other members of Dressy Bessy–singer/guitarist Tamee Ealom, bassist Rob Greene and drummer Darren Albert–argue that bubble gum and ice cream aren’t…
Anyone who’s ever appreciated the disturbances beneath the surface in the writings of Southern authors such as Peter Taylor and Flannery O’Connor will understand Freakwater. The band’s pretty country music harbors the same kind of compelling, complex imagery. Appropriately, principal songwriter and singer Catherine Ann Irwin–a Louisville, Kentucky, resident who…
“There’s no place to play” is among the most common laments offered by local musicians who specialize in originals, and while this is something of an exaggeration, it reflects a real problem on the Denver scene. What follows is a tale of three area clubs–one that’s stopped booking bands entirely,…
Rancid Life Won’t Wait (Epitaph) Back in 1978, when this band was called the Clash and this album was named Give ’em Enough Rope, reviewers noted that the musicians (Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon and Topper Headon, today known as Tim Armstrong, Lars Frederiksen, Matt Freeman and Brett Reed)…
The goth movement of the Eighties introduced or incorporated some now-familiar fashion touches: body piercing, tattoos, and the teased hair and black eyeliner favored by groups like the Sisters of Mercy. But 23-year-old Chad Boltz, half of the Denver industrial duo called Phenylketonurics (PKU for short), has taken things much…
The next time you find yourself complaining about the state of the local music scene, consider the plight of Axel Praefcke, guitarist for rockabilly practitioners Ike and the Capers. Praefcke and his bandmates (vocalist/rhythm guitarist Ike Stoye, stand-up bassist Maurice Hagler and drummer Tina Hohne) hail from East Berlin, a…
Since the release of 1996’s New Adventures in Hi-Fi, three-quarters of R.E.M., the band more responsible than any other for bringing the alternative-rock movement into the cultural mainstream, has been branching out in non-musical directions. Bassist Mike Mills is something of a regular on the celebrity golf circuit and has…
Local reviews only. When guitarist Neil Haverstick gets philosophical about alternative musical scales, as he did not too long ago in these pages (“Toning Up,” April 16), he sometimes gives the impression that his music can only be appreciated by people who know how to use a slide rule. But…
The sun is hanging low in the sky, softening the asphalt parking lot beyond the air-conditioned studio of KOSI-FM/101.1 as a phone line lights up. Mary Marlowe, host of Cozy After Dark, a weeknight call-in show, rolls her chair across the black lacquer tiles to the quivering button. Alone, surrounded…
Most musicians regard the view from the stage of the Paramount Theatre to be among the most spine-tingling in Colorado. But for Denver’s Bob Castle, the room’s sea of crimson seats, its starry sky of ornate architectural details and a jewel-like chandelier serve as mere backdrop for the Paramount’s biggest…
The history of jazz is the history of reputations. Musicians who impressed critics during their primes–like John Coltrane–tend to be held in ever higher esteem as the years go past, while artists tarred by negative notices throughout their careers are seldom granted access to the music’s pantheon no matter how…
Gang Starr Moment of Truth (Noo Trybe Records) For the past several years, a considerable number of citizens from the hip-hop nation have been waiting for the gangsta movement to jump into the grave. Well, they’re still waiting. Whereas the charts are no longer dominated by members of the Bitch-Slap-My-Ho…
“At some point, something awful happened to punk-rock music,” opines George Wilson, the bassist/vocalist for TARD. “It became either, like, cheeseball Southern California kiddie rock, or it became dipshit, cock-rock-oriented posturing–tattooed-from-head-to-toe fucking hardcore. But there’s a lot more to it than that.” That’s certainly true in TARD’s case. Wilson, guitarist/vocalist…
Ani DiFranco is a singer, a songwriter and a producer, but you’d hardly know it from most of the articles that get written about her. “Music?” she squeals in mock terror in response to a question about her primary vocation. “What’s that? Nobody ever asks me about music.” Part of…
Garbage Version 2.0 (Almo Sounds) Given how many copies of Garbage’s first disc flew off the shelves, you know that critics are sharpening their skewers over this one. But Version 2.0 is so steely that such jabs will likely bounce right off it. Producer/drummer/mastermind Butch Vig may have worked his…
Sometimes hard rock is in vogue, sometimes it’s not–but thus far, neither the music industry nor the fickle public has been able to kill it entirely. Even during periods when it was deemed thoroughly uncool, the approach has survived and occasionally even flourished, especially in places somewhat removed from the…
Every minute of every day, an introspective bedroom strummer somewhere on earth takes a break from penning maudlin tunes about his ex-girlfriend long enough to fantasize about his own vindication writ large. But only a few of the crooners who envision major-label scouts discovering the Next Big Thing in the…
With his neatly trimmed beard and shoulder-length, semi-feathered hair, mandolinist Sam Bush looks more like a lost Doobie Brother than a musical anarchist. But after more than a quarter-century operating in and around the country and bluegrass scenes, he’s still looked at with suspicion by those listeners who prefer the…
“Maybe you’d better leave out the surfing stuff,” bluesman/harmonica expert Rod Piazza says about his love of riding the waves near his Southern California home. “Sometimes it’s a hindrance for people to know what you’re really all about off stage, because they have this perception of what you’re like on…
The Smashing Pumpkins Adore (Virgin) This is the best Pumpkins album to date by a very great distance, in large part because it hardly rocks at all. Few tunes on the disc get within thirty beats per minute of up-tempo, and those that do–such as “Ava Adore,” the platter’s first…
When the first shots in the Denver promoter wars were fired earlier this year, most observers figured that the primary combatants would be Universal Concerts, the company that took over what was left of the empire created by Barry Fey, and BGP/CMP, a firm that mates a powerhouse West Coast…
Many American DJs leave the sophistication that’s part of the European electronic mileu begging at the door of bland musical purism. But not Peter Gurule, aka DJ Aztec. Unlike plenty of his Denver peers, who favor the baggy-pants uniform that came into vogue during the early Nineties, Aztec prefers Armani…
