Imagine the most frustrating of all possible lives in the music business. Imagine making one, two, three brilliant albums that are all but ignored by the general public. Imagine being signed and then forgotten by record company after record company. Imagine casting about for new methods, new ideas, only to…
In the number “Smoke Rings,” conceptualist Laurie Anderson intones, “Well, I had a dream, and in it I went to a little town/And all the girls in town were named Betty.” By contrast, none of the members of the oddball trio BETTY sport this moniker. The New York-based act consists…
Liz Phair, who married film editor Jim Staskauskas on March 11, has just returned from an extended honeymoon in the Bahamas–and she’s not happy about it. “It’s so depressing to come back here at this time of the year,” the 27-year-old says from her comfortable Chicago home. “It’s so gray,…
“When most people come to see us play live for the first time, they expect us to be some strange, experimental band,” explains Robert Pollard, frontman for America’s latest garage-rock saviors, Guided by Voices. “But we’re a fucking power-pop band. When we play live, we really kick it out and…
“Thank God that metal is going back underground,” says Daniel Conca, vocalist for Colorado Springs’ Jag Panzer. “Back in the days of Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, it was always underground, and it was great. And then MTV came along and destroyed it. But now that Headbanger’s Ball has been…
There are plenty of ways to kill a good group, and the members of Denver’s Freddi-Henchi Band have tried most of them. Drug abuse, alcohol abuse, death–the act’s history reads like a rhythm-and-blues version of Valley of the Dolls. So it’s something just short of a miracle that a viable…
Kevin Salem, with Carolyn’s Mother, Tuesday, April 4, at Herman’s Hideaway, is the sort of performer who gets overlooked by everyone other than reviewers–and they overlook him most of the time, too. That’s a pity, because Salem (onetime member of Boston’s late, occasionally lamented Dumptruck and sideman for, among others,…
Two hours before the first of three punk bands is scheduled to hit the stage for a mid-February concert at Denver’s Mammoth Events Center, the only people inside are musicians, crew members, promoter Doug Kauffman and a teenager named John Ferrucci whom Kaufmann has grown accustomed to seeing. “That little…
“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…
