It’s easy to see why autumn is a lot of people’s favorite season. For one thing, it isn’t so goddamn hot. Summer simmers down to a chilly lull, leaves put on a patina of rust, and the smarter mammals bury themselves in hibernation. At its heart, though, autumn is palpably…
Seated around a cluttered coffee table in a Congress Park home, the four members of Denver’s New Ancient Astronauts are engaged in a lively but tangent-prone bull session. Among the evening’s many unexpected digressions: Were rocks the planet’s first musical instruments? Was Journey the first emo band? Is Michael Jackson…
Gas, grass or ass — nobody rides for free. Ever wake up one morning to find your vehicle gone? Straight-up jacked while you weren’t looking? Last week, thousands upon thousands of struggling minstrels around the world did. On Tuesday, December 2, the hospitality shuttle they’d been cruising in — otherwise…
Every time some subterranean sound decides to paint itself up and whore itself out to the hoi polloi, there’s a legion of bands left behind to rock away in obscurity, more out of love for the music than the lure of record contracts and movie-star girlfriends. Take, for example, Radio…
Mary Flower wasn’t among the artists featured in Martin Scorsese’s recent cinematic homage to the blues, but several of her heroes were. Flower, a disciple of blues architects including Blind Lemon Jefferson and Robert Johnson, has honed her own Piedmont-style perfection over the past decade. A former folkie who took…
Sucking Satan’s dick can really change a person. Just ask Rodney Mitchell, a guy who’s been taking his lumps for years playing music in what he calls “nobody’s underground” — the limbo between obscurity and fame that most people know as the world of independent rock. Frustrated and finally fed…
Aesop Rock is the self-deprecating antihero of indie rap. Amazed that anyone has taken an interest in his music, Aesop, who was born Ian Bavitz on Long Island in 1976, isn’t out to save rap; he’s content just carving out a little niche for himself and his friends at his…
If you’ve ever poked your head in the IDM romper room, the first thing you probably noticed were the petulant children — Autechre, Squarepusher, Aphex Twin — demanding attention, throwing Ritalin-deprived tantrums with their fractured, glitchy logarithms. Meanwhile, over there in the corner, you might have seen those Plaid lads…
Sometimes I wish I were a twelve-year-old girl. I wish I wore flirty fashions my parents hated without realizing how stupid I looked in them. I wish the mere sight of Shia LeBeouf caused my heart to race. I wish Madison Avenue loved me the way it loves every other…
Some day, Van Morrison, Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits and Nick Cave may stroll into Sun Records and cut an intimate session to be dubbed The Next Million Dollar Quartet. While this dream is implausible, Rev. Neil Down’s incredible barroom testament gives hope to the possibility. When a Wrong Turns Right…
Nina Storey doesn’t give a rat’s ass what I think. If you’ve lived in Denver for any length of time and follow local music, you’ve heard of Nina Storey. How could you not? The hype machine went into overdrive minutes after she dropped her debut album, Guilt and Honey, in…
Over the better part of three decades, native Iowan Greg Brown, who headlines at the Boulder Theater on Friday, December 5, has built a body of work beloved by practically everyone who’s heard it. That number is relatively modest as a result of the singer-songwriter’s decision to stick with the…
When the Sad Star Cafe closed up shop late last year, Mark Sundermier and company thought the band would fade into oblivion, allowing its members to embark on the next phase of their lives. Longtime fans, however, wouldn’t let the act go quietly and have been clamoring ever since for…
On October 3, bassist-vocalist Nick Oliveri was slated to shake Denver’s posh Fillmore Auditorium along with his band, Queens of the Stone Age. Two days later, the same group had a headlining slot in Boise, Idaho. That left one day in the middle for the sort of responsibility-free downtime most…
It looks more like Eastern Europe than East 13th Avenue, more Carpathian Mountains than Capitol Hill. The building is straight out of Gothic novel, a Romanesque castle of brick and oak complete with a spire-topped tower straining toward heaven. The front entrance is framed in carved stone, its pointed arch…
I, uh, inadvertently blew up a gas station,” says Drums & Tuba drummer Tony Nozero. Come again? Blew up a gas station? “It was outside of touring,” he says, laughing sheepishly as he tells the story behind the band’s latest release, Gas Up, Blow Up. “I was in New York…
Note to all would-be entrepreneurs with more dollars than sense: Cowtown needs another nightclub like East Colfax needs another hooker. Since this past summer, a half-dozen dance clubs — Rise, Beyond, Garibaldi, Roxx, Avalon and Club Ra — have debuted in the metro area. Soon they’ll be joined by Serengeti…
When they’re not busy logging miles as Nomeansno, an exceptional Victoria, Canada-based prog-punk outfit, founding members Rob and John Wright pound out simple, Ramones-style hockey anthems as their dim-witted alter ego, the Hanson Brothers. Inspired by the knuckle-dragging trio from 1977’s Slap Shot (a classic sports satire in which a…
Despite what VH1 would have you believe, there’s not much to love about the ’80s. Take the clothes, for example: leg warmers, parachute pants, Members Only jackets, bolo ties, jazz boots and stretch pants — talk about a fashion disaster. And the music, well, it was just as ill-conceived. The…
Epiphanies are like assholes: Everyone has one, most stink and not even surgery can purge them. Consider as a case in point the 33-year-old, New Jersey-bred punk songwriter Ted Leo. The first record he ever owned was “It Never Rains in Southern California,” by Albert Hammond. His first concert, at…
It’s not easy getting into Jay-Z’s recording home at Bassline Studios, tucked away on West 26th Street in Manhattan. I have to sneak in behind a woman walking into the building, take an elevator to the eighth floor, then knock on a pair of glass doors before a security guard…
“I can body-slam a 250-pound person.” Amber Valentine is not making a threat; she’s just stating the facts. After years of hauling gear in and out of clubs, the woman is just plain strong. And the diminutive yet domineering guitarist/vocalist for space-sludge-noise rockers Jucifer is rightfully proud of the physical…
