Kokane Funk Upon a Rhyme (Ruthless/Relativity) I admit it: When I saw the cover of this album, I figured that the disc would bite. The reason was simple–there’s too much lame, redundant, boneheaded gangsta rap out there right now, and a recording by someone named Kokane (real name: Jerry Long)…
Primal Scream, Thursday, May 26, at Fiddler’s Green, with Depeche Mode and Stabbing Westward, has little in common with either of the bands on its current tour. In contrast to the keyboard-tapping Modes or Westward’s junior Trent Reznors, the Screamers combine Scottish roots, British dance rhythms and American gospel into…
If Oklahoma City doesn’t go down in pop-rock history as the next (yawn) Seattle, Flaming Lips guitarist/vocalist Wayne Coyne won’t mind. He likes his hometown the way it is–boring. “We’ve sort of gone out of our way to say, `Look, there’s nothing going on here. Just do what you want…
Peter Himmelman is definitely not a material guy. The 34-year-old singer-songwriter from Minnesota (best known to the tabloid-reading public as Bob Dylan’s son-in-law) says, “I try to view the world as being constantly made manifest by the will of God, in every single blade of grass that moves in the…
Sweet De, the lead voice for Denver’s Cool eMCees, is at the microphone at Aurora’s Platinum Studio, freestyling a new set of rhymes meant to conclude “The Funky Joint,” a tune set for inclusion on the group’s upcoming album. De’s partner, Skoolboy Fresh, and semi-official DJ Chilli E. sit in…
Maggie Estep No More Mister Nice Girl (NuYo/Imago) Calling Ms. Estep a spoken-word artist is tantamount to describing Richard Nixon as a former congressman from California: It doesn’t exactly tell the whole story. Sure, Estep speaks a lot of words–as a former student at Naropa’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied…
Perhaps it’s testimony to America’s essential greatness that a culture seemingly dominated by news of Roseanne and Tom’s marital problems still manages to produce artists as inspired as Georgia’s Vic Chesnutt. Chestnutt isn’t a ringer for Eddie Vedder, his voice isn’t as cherubic as Steve Winwood’s and he can’t step…
After asking guitarist Dick Dale a question, hold on. This rock-instrumental innovator, this creator of surf rock, this influential wild man beloved by players as disparate as the Beach Boys’ Carl Wilson and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore has a lot to say, and he says it fast and furiously. The…
Barkmarket, with Spongehead, Tuesday, May 24, at Seven South, is a band that inspires strong opinions. Relatively meek listeners likely will hate this trio–hate it with a passion not unlike that exhibited by the mob that recently celebrated the execution of John Wayne Gacy. But the more adventurous among you…
Jeb Bows, the seventeen-year-old guitarist in the Longmont-based band called Linus, doesn’t care for the term “Generation X”–and with good reason. Bows and his bandmates–vocalist Dan Parris, guitarist Andy Rothbard, bassist Jason Barlowe and drummer Mike M.–hardly fit the blank-eyed, TV-worshiping profile some observers use to describe the under-25 crowd…
John Trudell Johnny Damas and Me (Rykodisc) No getting around it: Trudell is dogmatic, didactic and driven to say more about most topics than many listeners are eager to hear. But he’s also utterly genuine, aggressively intelligent and as fierce as a radical vegetarian in a butcher shop when it…
“In Spanish our name means `the specter, the ghost,'” drummer Steve Shiramizu says of El Espectro, a local alternative-rock group in which he’s teamed with vocalist John Meggitt, guitarist Fletcher Necley and bassist Chris Kennedy. That’s appropriate, since Shiramizu and Meggitt have haunted the Denver music scene since 1986, playing…
Greg Brown has a strange effect on people. At first hearing, Brown seems to be a typical folksinger, albeit one with a fine eye for detail. Listen a little closer, however, and you’ll likely discover that his modest, laconic approach cloaks a lyrical and musical style that’s as distinctive as…
“We would like to be the world’s oldest punk-rock band,” declares Michie Nakatani, bassist, keyboardist, vocalist, songwriter and co-founder of Shonen Knife, Osaka, Japan’s latest contribution to the global music scene. “If we can, we would like to play into our eighties.” If the idea of Japanese octogenarians achieving legendary…
In the early Seventies, singer-songwriter Jonathan Richman penned “Roadrunner,” one of the great pop songs of all time. Entranced by the tune’s indelible riff and celebratory lyrics, Warner Bros. executives ponied up big bucks to make Richman a star, but Jonathan, who grew up in the Boston area, would have…
Rickie Lee Jones, Tuesday, May 17, at the Paramount Theatre, is a singer-songwriter whose soulful beauty and jazzy articulation has not been dimmed by the years: This Beat angel continues to tantalize her audience by uncovering new, deviant elements of her musical persona. She’s still willing to take listeners back…
Garrett Shavlik can’t help himself. Drummer Shavlik is talking about Spell, a trio believed by practically everyone who’s heard them to be the latest, greatest hope to come out of the Denver music scene. But instead of promoting his group, which just signed a multi-album deal with Island Records following…
Rock historian Lester Bangs once observed that “rock and roll is the most democratic and all-American of art forms.” What the late, great critic forgot to mention, however, is that it’s also the most fun a young punk-rock insurgent can have without a book of matches. For proof, look no…
Gil Scott-Heron got it wrong when he told us that the revolution would not be televised. It’s been televised repeatedly, and can be witnessed in all its glory in films and videotapes featuring the choreography of Alvin Ailey and performances by artists such as John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis,…
Gil Scott-Heron Spirits (TVT) Gang Starr Hard to Earn (Chrysalis/ERG) You can bet that the members of Gang Starr have worn out a few Gil Scott-Heron albums in their day. Scott-Heron was rapping before hip hop became either fashionable or marketable, and the music that he put to his words…
Old Bull’s Needle vocalist Tim Franklin is a man with a mission: “If there’s one goal in my life as a musician,” he explains, “it’s to get halfway famous enough to meet from Counting Crows–and wring his fucking neck.” Given sentiments like these, it’s doubtful that Franklin and his bandmates…
John Quill sits in his smallish apartment-cum-recording studio in southeast Denver and tries to explain why he’s been producing the weekly radio show Radio Free Colorado for more than four years when the financial rewards have been, to say the least, tiny. He soon discovers that he can’t. “I probably…
