In the widely anthologized short story “Good Country People,” Flannery O’Conner tells the tale of an overeducated spinster with an artificial leg who tries to seduce a traveling Bible salesman. A self-declared atheist, she coaxes the seemingly innocent faith peddler up into a hayloft — only to discover that his…
Living as a person of faith involves a constant process of balancing belief and doubt. Sometimes the kinds of doubts that eat away at faith find their way into song — such as U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” — and inspire listeners who are doing their…
The 1992 opera for which Alice was originally written has yet to reach our shores, but it’s hard to believe it could fulfill the promise of a playwright marrying a musician better than the album itself does. Kathleen Brennan has influenced Tom Waits’s music ever since they met in 1980,…
On a recent afternoon, I was plowing through a box of 45s at a used-record store when I stumbled upon “No Place to Fall,” a seven-inch by Townes Van Zandt. This discovery struck me as both exciting, because I didn’t know a Van Zandt single had ever been issued, and…
Trying to pin down Trans Am is as mercurial an endeavor as defining postmodern culture itself. Since postmodernism likes to subject itself to its own convoluted methods of critique, it’s easy for the whole thing to disappear down the drain and take the sink along with it. It might, therefore,…
From Kansas City, here they come: The state line isn’t the only thing cutting through the heart of Kansas City these days. In February, organizers behind the gigantic Kansas City Blues & Jazz Festival — one of the largest events of its kind in the nation — announced that this…
Somewhere between the endearingly naive music of ’70s cartoons like Josie and the Pussycats and early Velvet Underground recordings lies Elf Power, which appears Tuesday, May 28, at the 15th Street Tavern with Masters of the Hemisphere. The band, based in Athens, Georgia, is closely associated with the Elephant 6…
“The Maze,” an improvisational collaborative piece by the Magma Trio, erupts from the Bug Theatre on Saturday, May 25. Like the white-hot molten substance it’s named for, the Trio’s form is shaped by a number of organic variables, including the spontaneous reactions experienced by its three players: actor and spoken-word…
On the cover of his first solo record, Cee-Lo Green and His Perfect Imperfections, Thomas “Cee-Lo” Callaway — flanked by a church-style pipe organ and wearing a psychedelic top hat — looks a little like a diabolical Buddha, or maybe a shaman, putting on a funhouse magic show. Light refracts…
Rock-and-rollers once distressed Middle America with a few pelvic thrusts and a smattering of suggestive lyrics. This phenomenon evolved into a penchant to outdo the competition with the most outlandish psychosexual and/or Satanic imagery available. Then punk, metal, thrash, hardcore and countless other genres and subgenres took turns pushing the…
Seriously strung-out jazz fiends — you know who you are — will never confuse Denver with the Big Apple or the Big Easy. But America’s native art form purrs along quite nicely at 5,280 feet, thank you very much, and the jazz-and-cocktails faithful here needn’t endure New York’s break-the-bank cover…
Over the course of two self-released records, Minnesota songwriter Mason Jennings has become the critical darling of the Twin Cities, and it’s easy to see why. The soft-spoken balladeer possesses a unique drawl that’s world-weary beyond his 27 years. His vocals provide a fitting vehicle for his lyrics, which illuminate…
Randy Ship’s opponents have had enough. Ship, the Paramount Theatre’s leaseholder, launched a campaign earlier this year to torpedo CityLights Pavilion, the Kroenke Sports/Clear Channel Entertainment-operated venue that’s slated to open in the Pepsi Center parking lot in June. Along with signatures on petitions — which Ship hopes will land…
For many people, Sasha and John Digweed, who appear Friday, May 17, at the Fillmore Auditorium, define the clubbing experience. As evidenced by their live performances, both are masters of taking classic house records and weaving them into a nearly perfect web of more progressive grooves. Newly free from a…
Wendy Woo wants to connect with you. She’s also feeling a little bit saucy these days, judging by the title of her new CD, Gonna Wear Red. The bold, Boulder-based chanteuse and guitarist (who is nominated in this year’s Westword Music Showcase) unveils material from the release in a series…
If the radio charts were the only indication, black music would be all about the booty, not the brain. It’s about shakin’ it, not about delirium tremens; it’s about rollin’ in the Benz, not about rolling in the gutter. Contemporary black music, at least as the industry conceives it, traffics…
Making babies and playing rock-and-roll music don’t really seem like compatible endeavors, even though the process of making babies is one of the genre’s most well-celebrated themes. Raising a child requires a certain settling of one’s more raucous instincts: How can you party till dawn in a nihilistic, depraved fever…
Roz Brown is the ultimate oldies act. “Let’s go back to 1905 for this one,” says Brown, his blue eyes gleaming from beneath a dusky hat. Sitting on a bar stool in an assisted-living center in south Denver, he gently strums an autoharp, filling the room with the sonic sweetness…
The difficulty with keeping it real in punk lies in the danger of repetitiveness. That’s where bands like Sweden’s Hives come in. Singer Howlin’ Pelle Alqvist has got the squealing, hell-bound, late-adolescent shriek of Johnny Rotten before he went MTV, and the band grinds out a dozen or so songs…
During a recent segment on Today, host Matt Lauer asked Celine Dion about her claim in a previous interview that she enjoyed changing the diapers of her first child, René-Charles. Dion replied that this was definitely the case, in part because when she opened up the wrapper encasing her tot’s…
Before Sidetracks is half over, Steve Earle’s assertion that its thirteen tunes are not outtakes but underexposed gems is as credible as an Enron annual report. While there’s plenty of good stuff here, the hit-and-miss quality of the collection makes clear that it’s less a creative outpouring than a contractual…
We all know that wine can make even the best music sound that much better. But thanks to some party-pooping liquor-code policies, vino has been vetoed from the list of picnic items that concert fans can pack in for this summer’s outdoor performances at the Denver Botanic Gardens. Those who…
