South by Southwest ’96–with bullets. *At a crowded seminar entitled “Why All the Clamor for Entertainment News?”, Village Voice senior editor Ann Powers claimed that Hootie & the Blowfish are “fascinating.” Because she’s a respected professional, no one laughed at her. Perhaps one-tenth as many conventioneers checked out primers on…
The pop-music aficionados in Aurora’s Simpeltones aren’t looking for corporate sponsorship. They’ve already been involved in one such deal, and the experience left a bad taste in their mouths. “We were actually sponsored by Budweiser for a year,” explains guitarist James Dalton. “Basically, what they did was help us with…
“Before I started the band, I’d been taking singing lessons to build my confidence–because I didn’t think I could sing in front of anybody,” explains Leslie Simon, the hyperkinetic, tambourine-shaking front thang for Denver’s Simon Sez. After studying techniques that strengthened both her pipes and her sense of self-assurance, she…
Strange Cargo Hinterland (Discovery) Torch Song Toward the Unknown Region (Discovery) Caroline Lavelle Spirit (Discovery) In the field of ambient music, where putting your face on the cover of an album is considered a faux pas of biblical proportions, Britisher William Orbit is extremely outgoing. Of course, he doesn’t put…
“It’s kinda hectic, man,” says Wyclef “Clef” Jean, rapper, songwriter and sonic engineer for the Fugees. “A lot of things are going on.” And, Jean should have added, those things are pretty damn nice–the kinds of things that happen only to a band experiencing its commercial breakthrough. The Fugees’ first…
Sonya Aurora Madan claims to have had “no experience before echobelly,” the budding band in which she serves as singer, songwriter and frontwoman. But on record, she certainly doesn’t sound like a shy novice. For example, during “Scream,” the final cut on Everyone’s Got One, the act’s 1994 full-length, this…
The centerpiece of the living room shared by the members of Five Iron Frenzy is a battered, garage-sale-reject of a coffee table that’s littered with precisely the kind of flotsam you’d expect to find in a punk-rock crash pad: gig fliers, dishes, dog-eared back issues of Maximum Rock ‘N’ Roll…
Rudy Ray Moore Greatest Hits (The Right Stuff) Most white folks haven’t heard of Moore and that’s a shame, because he’s inspired a lot of the best music and comedy to spring from the African-American culture over the past thirty years. It’s almost impossible to imagine either Ice Cube or…
As demonstrated by a glance at this week’s Feedback police blotter, the boys and girls in blue have been making their presence felt on the local music and nightlife scene. First up: an incident that took place Friday, March 1, at the Raven, 2217 Welton. The club’s owner, Albert Bryant,…
Denver-based singer-songwriter Rebecca Blasband shakes her head. “It’s a terrible thing to be famous and broke,” she says. She should know. As a cast member of the original, 1992 edition of The Real World, a fictional/nonfictional series that’s now a permanent segment on the MTV schedule, Blasband (who was called…
Itals singer Keith Porter has been around since reggae’s inception, producing a sound that helped form the music’s foundation. And he’s not about to change his style now. “Roots music means a lot to I,” Porter says through a thick Jamaican accent. “Because within roots music is the food of…
The Buckets The Buckets (Slow River) Charlie Chesterman Studebakersfield (Slow River) With the Nashville establishment in a creative funk of epic proportions (for proof, check out Shania Twain), independent labels are stepping into the void. Slow River, a tiny company out of Marblehead, Massachusetts, is among the cheekier players in…
“In the Boulder-Denver area, there are so many bands that play fifteen-minute jams,” says Paul Massey, vocalist and rhythm guitarist for Boulder’s Butlers & Thieves. “But we just want to play three-minute pop songs.” Indeed, those of you in search of a Deadhead vibe and tie-dyed clothing should check out…
The Denver radio market is like an especially perverse game of Monopoly. Earlier this month, Cincinnati-based Jacor Communications purchased four more stations, bringing its total number of signals in the area to eight (see Feedback, February 14). Now the formats of two other outlets, KYBG-AM/1090 and KNRX-FM/92.1 (recently acquired by…
During the late Eighties, people interested in working at the Kansas City branch of the Internal Revenue Service probably spoke with Kevin Mahogany. A onetime employee in the IRS’s mail room, Mahogany climbed up the government-employee ladder to a comfortable slot in the personnel department, where he interviewed people eager…
As Jim Thomas, string-shredder for the guitar-crazy California trio called the Mermen, is being fetched to the phone for an interview, Mermen bassist Allen Whitman grabs the receiver. “Jim has been very abusive to me lately,” he says in a deadpan voice. “Could you please call the police?” Upon being…
Sidney Louie Gunter settles into an overstuffed chair in the living room of his spectacular Golden home and stakes his claim to pop-cultural immortality. “On my new CD we’re saying that I’m the man who named the music rock and roll, and I really believe I am,” he purrs in…
Kurt Ohlen is a rockabilly connoisseur. He works at Wax Trax’s oldies branch, collects rockabilly recordings and fronts his own authentic rockabilly band, the Dalhart Imperials. But even so committed a bop cat as Ohlen is, he was in the dark until recently concerning the whereabouts of Hardrock Gunter (see…
Terry Allen Human Remains (Sugar Hill) Allen, a country songwriter and Lubbock native who’s earned critical acclaim and practically no real money, reassures fans that he won’t trade his credibility for commercial success with this album’s very first line: He barks, “Hey, I don’t need no chickenshit businessman tellin’ me…
In 1990, Sun Ra–the jazz innovator and native (he claimed) of Saturn–spoke of being “a pioneer going through the forest, not really knowing who is there or what’s in the forest. That’s all I know to be and I know what I’m supposed to be.” Three years later, Ra departed…
This spring, Los Angeles-based Cypress Hill will be honored with what’s become a symbol of pop-cultural hipness: an animated guest appearance on The Simpsons. The pot-loving crew–front man B-Real, rapper Sen Dog, DJ Muggs and new percussionist Eric Bobo–have been turned into cartoons for the show’s upcoming Lollapalooza episode, and…
“It’s the singer, not the song” is a phrase the average critic applies too narrowly. The expression is generally hauled out of mothballs to compliment vocalists whose technically impeccable voices and unique, intuitive phrasing can render questions about a ditty’s merit moot. But perhaps more intriguing are those entertainers who…
