“I don’t really feel like ,” observes Chuck Cleaver, singer, guitarist and chief songwriter for Cincinnati, Ohio’s Ass Ponys. “With my physique, rock stardom doesn’t really come into the picture–unless maybe the Atlanta Rhythm Section look is getting big again.” Indeed, Cleaver hardly possesses the alterna-hunk good looks of, say,…
P.J. Harvey To Bring You My Love (Island) Polly Jean is an uncompromising cuss for the most part, but she’s not obstinate enough to commit career suicide just yet. So when 1993’s Rid of Me, produced for maximum skronk value by Steve Albini, turned off everyone within earshot other than…
At the beginning of his performances, John Cale says, “I think a lot of people are kind of mystified by what I’m doing. But on a good night, they’re intrigued by the end.” Those two sentences neatly encapsulate the dilemma that is Cale. Although he’s most widely recognized as a…
To understand why the music made by Boulder’s is so eclectic, it’s best to go back to 1987–when, according to bassist Trevor Dutton, “We decided to start a band before we had the instruments.” Or at least they didn’t have any conventional rock-and-roll instruments. Guitarist/ vocalist/philosophy student Bret Ellerton reveals,…
“The Academy Awards are not only a part of history,” writes film critic Leonard Maltin in the introduction to The Envelope Please… Academy Award Winning Songs (1934-1993), an engaging five-CD boxed set. “They’re also a mirror of their times.” If this statement is true, then Envelope–recently released by Rhino Records…
Throwing Muses University (Sire/Warner Bros.) Kristin Hersh is the type of influential artist who’s never made a dime. To wit: Throwing Muses laid the groundwork for virtually every female-led alternative combo that emerged during the past decade or so, including the Breeders and Belly (the act that made Hersh’s stepsister–and…
Over the past thirty years, plenty of journalists have called drummer Ginger Baker rude and blunt simply because he offers cocky, profanity-laden answers to questions he’s been asked literally hundreds of times before. In responding to these charges, Baker–who’s 55 and lives on a ranch in Elbert County, near Parker–gives…
Of all the major figures in the history of rock and roll, Jonathan Richman may be the one who’s been heard by the fewest people. Fans of the Velvet Underground, the New York Dolls and other precursors to punk, new-wave and alternative music certainly know his name, and perhaps they…
Pond, Friday, March 10, at CU-Boulder’s Club 156, never did quite get the hang of the whole grunge thing. While other acts in and around the band’s Portland home were peddling their acerbic walls of noise to the hungry MTV masses, these quirky Alaskan transplants spent their free hours tossing…
The seven members of the Scotland-based Wolfstone should be accustomed to the quirks of the U.S. citizenry by now, since they’re currently in the midst of their sixth tour of the country. But vocalist/guitarist Stuart Eaglesham still doesn’t understand the meaning behind a comment Americans have been making to him…
Although a lot of his music can be categorized as country, singer-songwriter Michael Fracasso isn’t expecting Nashville heavyweights to be courting him anytime soon. “I was telling an audience just the other night that I wanted my first record to be a country record,” he says between chuckles. “But with…
Tuesday, February 28, 12:01 a.m.: Can’t sleep. What’s the point? After all, I’m supposed to be at Denver International Airport by 5:30 a.m. to catch its first charter flight–and since I live west of Littleton and it’s been snowing for hours, I probably should have started for DIA around noon…
According to Kit Peltzel, drummer for Denver’s Dive, the friendships he shares with his bandmates are integral to the group’s existence. “It’s amazing, the power that exists within this band among all of us,” he explains. Vocalist/guitarist Myshel Prasad promptly adds: “It’s a love affair,” her tongue not nearly as…
Laurie Anderson, Thursday, March 2, at the Paramount Theatre, has been busy lately: She recently issued Bright Red, her first new recording in five years (another disc, The Ugly One With the Jewels, is due in mid-March); Stories From the Nerve Bible, a book-length retrospective of her career over the…
“I think that in jazz as a whole, the musicians have a problem with reaching out to the audiences,” says percussionist Bobby DeLuna of the Bobby DeLuna and Richard Kermode Band. “Audiences just watch a jazz band. They don’t listen.” By contrast, he claims, “We play off the audience. If…
Michael Franti, former leader of the brilliant hip-hop duo Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, still isn’t thrilled with all the ways of the world. But in his latest group, Spearhead, he’s found new ways to express his displeasure. “One of the things that I’ve always wanted to do with the political…
You’d anticipate that a guy born with a handle like Garrett Dutton III would wind up with a few affectations. What comes as a surprise, then, is not Dutton’s theatricality but his pose of choice. You see, young, white Garrett–aka G. Love, leader of the eccentric, entertaining three-piece G. Love…
“I don’t know what our sound is,” says Sebadoh singer/guitarist Lou Barlow. “We’ve always kind of consciously avoided having a sound.” And they’ve done a damned good job of it, too. Since Barlow and his fellow Sebs (bassist Jason Loewenstein and drummer Eric Gaffney, recently replaced by Bob Fay) started…
Little Axe The Wolf That House Built (OKeh/Epic) If you’re a purist, give this sucker wide berth, because it’s sure to piss you off. Yep, Little Axe uses the blues the way Enigma used Gregorian chants–as raw material for atmospheric samples. Which means, friends, that those raspy voices you hear…
Ruth McCardle, aka Lady Galore, considers herself to be healthy, not perverted. The lead singer of Belgium’s Lords of Acid writes off folks to the west of the Atlantic as being “too hung up about sex. Americans don’t teach children about sex. They forbid teenagers to have sex. It’s bollocks,…
As a devotee of from-the-gut tunesmiths, 25-year-old Pete Droge isn’t afraid to write songs in which he wears his heart on his flannel sleeve. But performing them before his musical idols is another story. For example, Droge found it “overwhelming” to appear at last year’s benefit for California’s Bridge School,…
Denver’s Lonnie Lynn hadn’t been planning to make his debut as a rapper. After all, Lynn’s game was basketball, not hip hop–and it had been nearly two decades since he’d shot hoops for a living. His son, Rashid, was the Lynn who specialized in rhyming: Operating under the name Common…
