Every musician has a story about gigs from hell, but few of these tales can compare with the one told by Michael Rains, bassist and vocalist for Denver’s 1000 RPM. The band was booked to play a back-to-classes bash at the Colorado School of Mines, where 1000 RPM guitarist/ vocalist…
That Denver DJ Larry (L.L.) Bishop remains deeply involved in dance music is a tribute to his resilience. After all, his wife and constant companion, Wreath Rose Bishop, died in an automobile accident in Boulder a mere five months ago, and thoughts of her continue to fill his head; his…
Our hard-hitting media colleagues have spent the past several days eulogizing John Denver, who died in a plane crash last weekend at the age of 53, not as a drunk driver and a gasoline hoarder, but as an environmental activist and a boon to Colorado tourism, and that’s fine; I…
Steve Earle El Corazon (Warner Bros.) When the country-music establishment turned its back on Earle, a reformed junkie and unrehabilitated loudmouth, he turned his back on the country-music establishment. For that reason and many others, you’ll in all likelihood never hear selections from this recording on C&W radio–and that’s a…
According to Devon Rodgers, drummer for Register, “I think you’d become more famous starting your own sporting team than you would by becoming a musician in Denver.” Fortunately, fame isn’t the primary motivation for Rodgers and his married bandmates, guitarist/vocalist Dan Owens and Josie Fluri. Rather than mimic currently popular…
The musical explosion that took place in the Pacific Northwest during the late Eighties and early Nineties wasn’t exactly a secret; if memory serves, a few million gallons of ink were spilled in telling the tale of the so-called grunge movement. But whereas Nirvana, Soundgarden, Mudhoney and the rest received…
A lot of observers out there still don’t believe that the Denver-Boulder area has a dance scene, and Hardy Kalisher of Boulder’s Sol Productions knows why. “I see us as having three separate music communities,” he says. “One is the promoters, who spend most of their time thinking about how…
Journalists like yours truly are fond of claiming that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but that’s not always the case–and Prince Roger Nelson can prove it. He almost single-handedly made pop music in the Eighties tolerable, but as the decade wore on and his eccentricities mounted, critics and…
Many of the pop sounds that crowd the airwaves are not so much the spawn of earlier eras as they are slightly embellished clones of their forebears. Make no mistake–the many genres that are competing in this fin de siecle revue are valid, with rich histories. But all too often,…
Although numerous reggae lovers feel that 55-year-old Justin Hinds is one of the best vocalists in the music’s history, only a handful of Americans are familiar with him–and many of them know him better as a hotelier than as a singer. “I have a big house out in the country,…
Singer-songwriter Jeb Loy Nichols is flattered that many of those who’ve heard his new CD, Lover’s Knot, feel that his writing is poetic. But that doesn’t mean he does. “I don’t write poetry; I write lyrics,” he says. “And the lyrics that I write are very structurally concerned with being…
Tony Villanueva, singer and guitarist for the Texas-based Derailers, sports a hairdo like no other. Buzzed close on top, left long and slick on the sides, it’s the quintessential anti-pompadour, more Glenn Ford and Fuller Brush than Elvis Presley and pomade. “A ‘Hollywood flat top’ is what my barber Pete…
In 1977, when Gary Givant got his first job as a DJ, his mother wished he would get a real job instead. Two decades later, she’s still wishing. In a profession where career longevity is often measured in months rather than years, Givant remains a powerful force on the Denver…
Contests: We’re chock-full of them. When the members of the Reejers decided to enter the Jim Beam One Shot to Stardom contest earlier this year, none of them had the slightest expectation that doing so would lead to anything; as guitarist Nick Iurato notes, “We didn’t think we had much…
Bob Dylan Time Out of Mind (Columbia) There’s a federal statute prohibiting anyone who doesn’t admire Bob Dylan from becoming a rock critic, so it’s no surprise that I’m crazy about a great many of his recordings. Highway 61 Revisited and The Basement Tapes are my favorites, followed by Bringing…
Puff Daddy & the Family’s No Way Out is as stunningly slack a piece of work as has ever been issued by a major rap act. Puff Daddy, born Sean Combs, has one of the weakest verbal flows of all time: He mouths wan rhymes in a pinched, charisma-free monotone…
During the course of an average set, the Boulder-dwelling white boys in Wojo play more funky music than Wild Cherry did during its entire career. In this regard, they’re little different from peers in seemingly hundreds of lousy Front Range groups. So why do these other acts suck while Wojo…
The members of Denver’s thriving jazz scene are a varied lot. But musicians like Ginger Baker, Ron Miles, Hugh Ragin, Art Lande, Joe Bonner, Geoff Cleveland, Sam Coffman and University of Colorado jazz-studies head Greg Carroll have one thing in common: their fondness for bassist Artie Moore. A native Coloradan,…
There was agony and ecstasy at the third annual Westword Music Awards Showcase. And I should know: Of the 41 sets offered up by a like number of acts at various LoDo nightspots on Sunday, September 21, I caught 37 of them. Being a glass-is-half-empty kinda guy, I was distressed…
At this point, more people have heard of The Great Milenko, the fourth CD by the Insane Clown Posse, than have actually heard it. The disc gained notoriety earlier this year when powerful agents of Disney-owned Hollywood Records, the firm that originally agreed to issue it, balked at putting their…
Oasis Be Here Now (Epic) Many reviewers tackling this disc have complained that it’s too derivative. Well, duh. You’re likelier to get a lie-detector test from John Ramsey than originality from these blokes. But such sniping entirely misses the point of Oasis. The Gallagher brothers, Liam and Noel, aren’t trying…
At 22, Ryan Adams, frontman for the Raleigh, North Carolina-based band Whiskeytown, has already penned more songs than most tunesmiths do in a lifetime. And even he’s not sure how he’s done it. “Songs just come to me,” he insists. “I don’t really try to write them.” Maybe not, but…
