Four months after Ken Burns’s massive ten-part documentary Jazz first aired on public television, the air still hasn’t cleared. Jazz fans and jazz factions thrive on argument — always have — and Burns has provoked a real cutting session. Admirers say the nineteen-hour film is the most exciting, exacting and…
A very small child might well have been swept away by the wind that blew through downtown Denver around 4 p.m. Sunday. About an hour before the Westword Music Showcase was scheduled to begin (with an outdoor performance, no less), the city experienced a meteorological shift that bordered on biblical…
To listen to each successive David Byrne (Thursday, May 24, at the Fillmore Auditorium) release is to witness the continuing evolution of an odd, skinny butterfly. It’s as if the Scotsman-turned-Manhattanite hatched from a cocoon that was built in a forgotten jar of habanero peppers, his sleeping, developing mind informed…
The members of The Emmas (pictured), Orbit Service, Double-Barrelled Slingshots and The Barrys must have heard the new-age theory that when you die, your time on earth is judged by how well you treated the furry creatures you shared it with. On Saturday, May 26, at 7 p.m., they’ll all…
Pimping, shooting and looting are not basic elements of hip-hop. What are? The answer lies on The Sneak Attack, the ninth and latest release from Blastmaster KRS-One (Kris Parker, aka The Teacher). The Sneak Attack has all the political activism, spirituality and blistering social commentary you’ve come to expect from…
” Ambient rock” sounds oxymoronic, like “hot-water heater,” “military intelligence” and “Rush Limbaugh.” But in the collective hands of Couch, a Munich-based band that records for the German label Kitty-Yo, the term actually makes sense. The instrumental music that’s heard on Profane is evocative and atmospheric — but it also…
After boring us with last year’s djmixed.com, a largely uninspired remix trance-a-thon calculated to capitalize on the electronica subgenre of the moment, consummate club DJ turned producer Keoki delivers the more digestible Jealousy. The first clue to its quality comes from the album’s cover art: While he appeared in a…
George Jones knows a few things about country music. In a six-decade career that’s been astoundingly productive — especially considering Jones’s staggering bouts with alcohol and drug addictions — he’s placed more songs on the charts (158) than any performer in any genre. He’s been called “the greatest country singer…
There are some days you remember for the rest of your life. For Weakerthans singer/guitarist John K. Samson, a 1996 visit to Denver was one of those days. He can still remember the smell of Mace and tear gas in the air on that seasonably warm night, the howl of…
For Michael Trenhaile, the lead guitarist, co-vocalist and co-songwriter for Denver’s Worm Trouble, a musical mishap is creative gasoline. When he sits down to pen a tune, he favors chaos over control. It’s an artistic strategy that’s more Jackson Pollock than Michelangelo, one that prizes abstract originality over rigidly defined…
Courtney Love spent the better part of last week testifying on behalf of her band, Hole, arguing that bands that sign with major labels are often held captive by creatively stifling contracts. Love’s own deal with Warner Bros., the one she’s currently angling to exit, requires Hole to produce five…
Jay Vance — once a ska bassist for Skankin’ Pickle and the Blue Meanies — had such bad luck with bands that he finally decided to build his own. But infinitely worse than any ego-addled, carbon-based life form, his new musical associates (a Rasta-locked timekeeper called DRMBOT0110 and the menacing…
Back in 1992, when Denver’s Nebula 9 made its live debut at A Nightmare on Blake Street, an after-hours event housed in the old 23rd Parish Space, the whole audiovisual package was so fabulous that party patrons assumed the unit was from out of state. Nine years later, LoDo’s Bash…
Madonna opens up her latest full-length CD — the ten-million-plus-selling Music — with a small request: “Hey, Mr. DJ,” she says, “put a record on. I wanna dance with my baby.” While the Material Girl’s intentions are never easily deciphered, she seems to be addressing one Victor Calderone, the current…
Andy Falconetti’s 6-5 frame challenges the ceiling in a tiny northwest Denver basement. As rehearsal space for pop confectioners the Breezy Porticos, the cement-walled bunker serves multiple purposes: It’s a sound lab, clubhouse and, above all, a storage room. With his head grazing overarching cobwebs and support beams, the singer/guitarist…
Spring is upon us, as we can tell from the allergy-induced sneezes of our friends and loved ones. But no matter what the time of year, local artists never stop cranking out recordings. A recent round of releases brings a bouquet of sounds and styles; some will delight the senses,…
Japanese performers frequently bring a wonderfully fresh perspective to American pop. The bouncy sounds that too many musicians on this side of the pond sneer at or reject as embarrassing anachronisms fill the likes of Cornelius and Pizzicato Five with undiluted glee. Moreover, these artists’ cheery dispositions and fondness for…
What becomes an aging pretty boy most? Judging from these releases, a dogged determination to live in the past trumps aging gracefully any day. First, the bad news: Though Osmond may have found new life as a Broadway balladeer, whoever thought this baker’s mostly down-tempo dozen was a good idea…
One of the enduring agonies of parenthood is having to listen, again and again, to terrible children’s music. I don’t have kids, but I know this is true because my own childhood was irreparably damaged by prolonged exposure to Alvin and the Chipmunks. The two decades since haven’t exactly redeemed…
Jay Bianchi sits on a thrift-store couch inside Sancho’s Broken Arrow, the Colfax bar he built from the rubble of the Golden Nugget Country Disco in February 2000. The place is bedecked with tie-dyes, a huge mosaic of the Grateful Dead’s Steal Your Face logo, and a wall of signed…
Kevin Barnes, the primary instigator behind Of Montreal, Saturday, May 12, at the 15th Street Tavern, says that the act’s latest disc, the succinctly titled Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies: A Variety of Whimsical Verse, is a concept recording, and there’s no reason to doubt him. After all, the CD’s…
The members of Phantom Trigger, Thursday, May 10, at the 15th Street Tavern, with Regular and Mercy Ride, don’t mince words: The majority of the tunes on the band’s self-titled CD are instrumentals; when words do percolate to the top of the dense sound mix, they are usually little more…
