April 7, 1999: Prologue to the experiment: ABBA, a Swedish quartet starring Agnetha “Anna” Fältskog, Benny Andersson, Bjsrn Ulvaeus and Anni-Frid “Frida” Synni-Lyungstad-Fredriksson-Andersson, was immensely successful during the 1970s and early 1980s, when it churned out one massive smash after another. Nevertheless, the group was widely despised by critics, who…
Virginia Rodrigues Sol Negro (Hannibal) As the global village shrinks, strife seems to grow, and terrorism, trade tiffs and border skirmishes tempt us to forget about the accompanying merits of intellectual and artistic continental drift. Sure, airport lines are longer, and the economics of NAFTA are debatable. But at least…
Medeski, Martin and Wood may record for Blue Note, the most venerable of jazz labels, but the trio’s music is practically impossible to describe without using a hyphen: Sometimes it’s jazz-soul, sometimes it’s jazz-funk, sometimes it’s jazz-hip-hop, and sometimes it’s an ultra-cool orgy of all this and more, more, more…
“You know what it is about our band?” asks Marq Lyn, vocalist for the Slackers, a New York City-based ska act. “We have the be-humble-and-shut-the-fuck-up policy. If anything slightly good happens to us, that makes our day. If someone gives us half a peanut butter sandwich, that makes our day.”…
Late last November, the 15th Street Tavern, Denver’s favorite venue for ear-splitting punk, was filling up with the usual suspects: Most of the audience members sported either ripped T-shirts or chains. But did they protest when the Cherry Bomb Club, an electro-dance band, took the stage and unleashed a torrent…
Trends come and trends go–which means, no doubt, that the current swing revival is likely to become the dead-and-forgotten swing revival before too many more flicks attempting to exploit it can stiff. (Did you see Blast From the Past? Me neither.) Still, James Glader, 24, is confident that this craze…
Guitarist/vocalist Blake Schwarzenbach isn’t quite sure what to make of the “emo-core supergroup” tag journalists have bestowed upon his new project, Jets to Brazil, but it’s safe to say he doesn’t much care for it. “I think it’s a little ridiculous,” he says. “When you had a supergroup in the…
Paul Shellooe, the hard-rocking frontman and guitarist for Dirty Pool, is a software designer by day, so it’s no surprise that he’s eager to discuss his outfit’s plans for using the latest whiz-bang gadgetry to achieve success in Colorado and beyond. But that’s not to say he’s averse to more…
Some critics feel that open-mindedness is a waste of time. For instance, an ex-colleague at a Westword sister paper once pitched music editors like myself on a review of a Rolling Stones kickoff tour date by guaranteeing to rip the band a new one, despite the fact that the gig…
Back when Mark Linkous, the man behind Sparklehorse, was dirt poor, he would venture into the woods near his Virginia farmhouse and root around for pieces of old rusty tin. “I’d make whirligigs out of them or shoot them up with a shotgun and write ‘This was shot with a…
TLC FanMail (La Face) Production is often used as a coat of paint that’s slapped on to disguise the inferiority of the song beneath it; scrape it off, and what’s left can be mighty frightening. But on other occasions (like this one), unfathomably expensive studio techniques can have a fascination…
Although Sandi Denton, known to members of the hip-hop nation as Pepa, sees no reason why she shouldn’t continue to prosper in the rap game for many years to come, she realizes that her thirteen-year-old group, Salt-N-Pepa, is a bit long in the tooth by the genre’s standards. Which explains,…
Over the past ten years or so, Los Lobos has probably been referred to in print as the best band in America more frequently than any other, but its level of popularity has seldom been commensurate with its formidable reputation. While groups capable of far less pack arenas, the pride…
Ginger Baker is wrapped mighty tight. He’s in the midst of a conversation from his sprawling property near Parker, where he’s lived for just over five years, when the pack of dogs he keeps erupts at the sight of an unexpected visitor. Baker listens to their feverish yapping for a…
For the past year, Susan Tedeschi has been the hottest woman in the blues. Following the release last spring of her debut disc, Just Won’t Burn, she’s earned pages of great press, hosted countless sold-out shows and upheld a touring itinerary that makes her feel practically homeless. Along the way…
Man…or Astroman?, the last attraction I saw at the 1999 edition of Austin’s South by Southwest, the country’s largest music conference, seemed to epitomize its current state. The band, which appeared early March 21 at a venue called La Zona Rosa, cheekily pretends to be futuristic, but almost everything about…
It’s a scenario perfectly suited to Celebrity Deathmatch, MTV’s blood-and-clay tribute to the war between the stars. In one corner would stand the men of REO Speedwagon, an arena-rock act that made the Eighties sound even worse than they would have otherwise with gruesome hits like “Keep on Loving You.”…
MTV Celebrity Deathmatch: Round 1 MTV Celebrity Deathmatch: Round 2 (Sony Music Entertainment) Anyone who believes that MTV’s programming is currently in the crapper will get no argument from me. The network still shows music videos, but generally not at hours when anyone’s conscious–and folks interested in seeing clips starring…
The preface to this week’s column was necessitated by a recent letter e-mailed to me not once, but several times by pissed-off reader John La Briola. In it, he asked, “Just how far do the Apples in Stereo have their fist up your butt? It’s not enough to force-feed us…
Rusted Root’s music may conjure images of twirling, patchouli-packing hippie folk enjoying an eclectic global-village vibe, but the outfit’s origins are pure “Summer of ’69” Americana. Band co-founder Patrick Norman says that he’s no longer motivated by the prospect of jumping groupies–in his words, “That was a product of my…
“I think one of the scariest audiences is four-year-old kids,” says Chuck Cuthill, jug player for the 32-20 Jug Band. He should know. Last fall, Cuthill, guitarist/ kazoo player Dan Kase, washtub bassist Aaron Thomas and multi-instrumentalist John Hickham appeared at the Montessori Institute Children’s House in Denver before a…
According to most music historians, saxophonist Sonny Rollins made his first trip to a studio on January 20, 1949, in support of vocalist Babs Gonzales. He was only eighteen years old at the time, but by all accounts, the talent that made him one of the top instrumentalists in jazz’s…
