Music

Reggae fans probably know the Jamaican-born, London-based Linton Kwesi Johnson best for his protest albums, classics such as Dread Beat An’ Blood (1978), Making History (1984) and the more recent More Time (1998). But Johnson is as well-known for his poetry as he is for his contributions to reggae music…

Jason Ringenberg has lived in or near Nashville since 1981, but he’s hardly a member of the city’s country-music establishment. “I feel like an outsider in that circle,” he says from his farm west of town. “But I feel like the consummate insider in the left-of-center crowd.” Now in his…

It’s always good to put yourself in new situations,” says Scott McCloud, singer, guitarist and svelte frontman of New York City’s Girls Against Boys. He speaks from experience. Since the band’s previous incarnation, Soulside, formed in 1986, McCloud and his bandmates have perpetually reconfigured, revamped and recast themselves — first…

Just outside Denver’s city limits, before the parched, sparsely populated plains swallow the last of the suburbs, there is a basement that regularly reverberates with a certain primeval intensity. Remarkably, the water heater still functions, even after its cumulative absorption of innumerable decibels. This small, underground room — nicknamed Helm’s…

I sometimes wonder why so many hardworking bands, in Denver and everywhere else in the world, continue to regard the acquisition of a major-label contract as the singular goal of their musical careers. Especially after all we’ve heard: the consequences of a once-sprawling universe of imprints consolidated into only five;…

To fully prepare for a performance from the Brothers of the Baladi, who appear Friday, September 13, at Swallow Hill, you’d need to study a daunting number of phrase books: The Portland-based quintet performs in Turkish, Persian, Arabic, English and whatever other languages best serve the festive, eclectic feel of…

Leave it to Pete Wernick, aka “Dr. Banjo,” to come up with a musical hybrid that combines bluegrass with early jazz. After all, as a member of Hot Rize, he was fond of running his banjo through an electronic device called a “phase shifter.” “That got a surprisingly favorable reaction,”…

It’s like a wacked-out comedy sketch from an All That episode. The four hot young hunks of the R&B boy-band sensation B2K are hanging out backstage after their set, clowning around, exchanging high fives, playfully dousing each other’s rock-hard abs with a shaken celebratory bottle of orange soda (but being…

Amid all the weird and predictable frivolity of Elvis Week 2002, a curious seminar was held at the Fogelman Executive Center at the University of Memphis on August 15. The panelists of “Is Elvis History? 2002 and Beyond” included famed music critic and keynote speaker Greil Marcus; Presley’s most celebrated…

For the youth of America, rebellion becomes trickier every year. The radical is the norm, tattoos and piercings are more mainstream than not, and the parents of today’s kids might well be rebel kids themselves. “My mom’s favorite band is U2,” says Eddie Clendening, the barely 21 frontman for the…

Reggae is a musical approach with a captivating history — one whose less-publicized precursors and tangents are often as interesting as its more widely known achievements. But in this country, most folks know little about reggae’s rich past other than that Bob Marley put out some good records. This narrow…

Otep raised a prosthetic pig’s head high in the air and commanded the crowd to worship her. “Soldiers, you have entered the church of Otep,” she said, flipping her multi-hued hair around and grunting not so girlishly. The solitary female performer on the Ozzfest tour, Otep had exactly twenty minutes…

It’s not easy being a Morrissey fan. He’s been without a label since shortly after his last proper album, 1997’s Maladjusted, failed to impress record buyers, and a shakeup at Mercury records left him without a contract. So when he takes the stage at the Colorado Springs Music Hall on…

Having weathered a number of lineup changes, hiatuses and a name change, esovae is standing — and sounding — stronger than ever: Years of musical tribulations and triumphs have served to refine the quartet’s songwriting. Led by the vocally striking and visually stunning Marilyn Taylor, the band presents an esoteric…

When Morphine frontman Mark Sandman died of a heart attack on stage in 1999, he left behind friends, loved ones and an exceptional body of musical work. He also left behind a curious batch of crudely rendered cartoons drawn on everything from cocktail napkins and bowling score sheets to fancy…

Grand Junction, on Colorado’s Western Slope, has numerous claims to fame. It’s the largest community between Denver and Salt Lake City and, thanks to uranium tailings that once were sprinkled across the area, the most radioactive, too. Additionally, the city boasts the state’s only surviving Wienerschnitzel drive-through — a point…

If El Tri’s Alex Lora gets his way, after the nuclear holocaust, his band will be kicking out the jams for the cockroaches and Keith Richards and continuing to be a voice for the Mexican people. It’s hardly an inconceivable proposition, given Lora’s unnatural career longevity, which can be attributed…

Anyone who pays the slightest attention to popular music knows that punk rock hasn’t been the typical nihilist’s soundtrack of choice for many years, so don’t bother stopping the presses. But there remains plenty of irony in the degree to which the genre has been mainstreamed. Whereas punk acts were…

When listening to current R&B, one might marvel at its distinct lack of anything resembling either rhythm or blues. Modern-day studio auteurs like D’Angelo, Raphael Saadiq and even the abstract Madlib have certainly helped reanimate the tradition of classic Stevie Wonder-esque production, though their antiseptic arrangements usually end up pumping…

Hot Club of Cowtown’s latest release is a jaw-dropping, head-shaking collection of stripped-down Western swing, cowboy jazz and saloon send-ups. Ghost Train expertly mines the two extremes of American folk music — joy and despair — while significantly improving upon the group’s three prior recordings. What lifts Ghost Train above…