Music

Talk about being snakebit. Since 1993, when Jurassic 5 first began making noise on the fringes of the Los Angeles hip-hop scene, deck men Cut Chemist and DJ Nu-Mark, abetted by emcees Akil, Marc 7, Zaakir and Charli 2na, have put on consistently great live shows — a rap rarity…

Named by an Indian mystic whom his parents followed in Texas, folk troubadour Devendra Banhart sings quirky, skeletal vignettes with a voice that can change from brittle tenor to quivering falsetto in the blink of an eye. Accompanying himself on a battered acoustic guitar, the 23-year-old lo-fi eccentric was a…

With his occasional faux-Anglo accent, declarations regarding proper courtship and a love affair with all things retro, Jack White of the White Stripes looks at times to be patterning his image after an old romantic British dandy. Little did we know, he has a wicked left hook. This undercover Detroit…

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, a longtime Colorado favorite, has returned to solid ground. When the act started in the late ’60s, it first tried the jug-band circuit but didn’t gain a real audience until it added drums and occasional electric guitars, creating the country-meets-folk-rock sound that’s still popular today…

Whether being banned for life from playing at the Cricket on the Hill is a blessing or a curse, the Otter Pops still found a way to make ends meet on Denver’s punk-rock circuit after being 86’d from the hallowed watering hole. But if they actually did drive a car…

Tuesday night at the Lion’s Lair might as well be a night in Antarctica. The place is desolate. A couple dozen patrons loll across the bar, which is already a half-inch deep with spilled Pabst. Even with the sparse attendance, it takes ten minutes to get a beer. You’d do…

Roll call at a Hackensaw Boys family reunion sounds like Cletus on The Simpsons gathering his kinfolk from yonder hollow: Pee Paw! Shiner! Mahlon! Skeeter! Jigsaw! Salvage! Dante J! C.B.! Uncle Blind Bobby! Kooky-Eyed Fox! Add a grizzled hound named Lulu and a few jugs of ‘shine, and the gathering…

Have you seen that new commercial on TV, the one where shit like stray basketballs and clumsy bicyclists and spurts of water from hoses start hitting the sides of a car? All those random thumps start speeding up and blurring together until they coalesce into a funky, polyrhythmic symphony of…

When Eminem emerged on the national scene, he seemed like such a market-driven creation — a pasty MC working overtime to shock clueless middlebrows — that I couldn’t believe his shtick would have much staying power. In April 1999, I committed this theory to print, predicting that he would “be…

The HorrorPops may look like the Cramps, but they’re more razor-edged pop than horror. The outfit’s parts fit together like Roger Corman’s Frankenstein — not quite as scary as hoped. The Concrete Blonde head of Souxsie Sioux is stitched onto the torso of Gwen Stefani. Dick Dale’s arms are added,…

Listening to Cassidy’s first two singles, “Hotel” and “Get No Better,” you might think Split Personality is full of club tracks. Thankfully, it’s not. But while Cassidy’s debut is imaginative at times — Personality is split into three sections with five songs each: Cassidy (the party club joints), Tha Problem…

Tom Burns is a music lover, not an attention seeker. For years, he’s quietly been issuing jazz discs from his Bailey headquarters on a pair of imprints, Capri and Tapestry. The recordings vary in quality and adventurousness from release to release, but as In the Pocket and Dreams Untold demonstrate,…

Listen up, all you would-be rap moguls: College is for suckers. Want to be a baller like Roc-A-Fella’s Damon Dash? Want to build an entertainment empire bigger than that of Russell Simmons? Then take heed: For a hip-hop education, the only relevant institution is the school of hard knocks. And…

It takes more than big beats to make a crowd shake it. Sure, kicking beefy 4/4 beats onto the floor is essential — but too many DJs, hip-hop producers, techno auteurs and dance-punk wannabes forget to sweeten the pot with anything resembling melody or feeling. It’s like the old carrot-and-stick…

As Plastikman’s protegé, Magda’s duties include warming up the planet’s Plastikheads by crafting wicked tracks for the reigning king of techno’s vanity label, m-nus. Making her name in Motor City, America’s techno capital, and hooking up with the all-goddess disc-jockey collective Women on Wax brought Magda to Richie Hawtin’s attention…

If you’re like me, the words “Christian metal” bring to mind visions of Stryper’s Michael Sweet strutting around the stage in leopard-print spandex, belting out hair-metal hymns. ZAO, however, ain’t your father’s Christian metal. Since its debut album in 1996, the group has created hard-hitting, truly heavy music with often…

John Roderick, the focal point of the Long Winters, gets by with a little help from some noteworthy friends on the band’s latest album, When I Pretend to Fall, released last year on the Barsuk imprint. The Posies’ Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow (who co-produced Fall), plus the Young Fresh…

Back in the Reagan years, pop acts with serious messages were more subtle — which meant you could still have fun and enjoy the music. The Fixx, a British band that hit these shores in 1982, won fans with a smart New Wave sound in hits you could either dance…

Ask Alice Gilbert what gets his rocks off, and he’ll tell you: pop music. More specifically, underground, independent pop music, the stuff that makes Modest Mouse look as pretentious and impenetrable as Proust. One such unassuming outfit is Bad Weather California, which just put out a self-titled, split EP with…