Sub Pop, the ultrasuccessful indie label from Seattle, took a radical risk by signing Velocity Girl to a five-album contract–the longest ever offered by the company. Unlike most of the thick-and-droney-sounding bands the label has promoted in the past, Velocity Girl (the moniker was copped from a Primal Scream song)…
You might not expect the author of such sunny-sounding pop near-classics as “Someday, Someway” to have a testy bone in his body. But there’s more angst in Marshall Crenshaw than initially meets the ear. Nursing a heavy head cold in a Dallas hotel room, the singer-songwriter chooses to open this…
Denver singer-songwriter Michael Engberg makes a decent living as a solo musician. But if he ever comes up short, he can always earn some extra money the way he once did–by delivering singing telegrams. “I’d say there are three main requirements for doing them,” he theorizes. “You have to have…
The campaign to sell Tony Bennett to a new generation of listeners has focused on hipness. Here, according to Madison Avenue, is a crooner beloved by the most popular alternative rockers of the Nineties–a veteran vocalist game enough to appear onstage at a 1993 MTV awards program dressed like a…
Pearl Jam Vitalogy (Epic) This isn’t all that hot, but at least these guys are trying. The problem, as usual, are the songs, which are not exactly dripping with originality. “Spin the Black Circle,” for instance, could pass for an early X track if only Exene Cervenka had added a…
Decked out in his weathered cowboy hat, Wrangler jeans and cherry-red shit-kickers, guitarist Gary England doesn’t look like your archetypical surfer, and for good reason. Despite his role as the fair-skinned frontman for Denver’s premier instrumental surf trio, the Moon Doggies, England has yet to catch his first wave–although it…
What’s important to Austin-based guitarist Chris Duarte is written all over his body. A case in point is the strange tattoo on Duarte’s chest–a reference to a treasured 1963 Stratocaster. Duarte played the instrument for more than a decade, in large part because it came into being the same year…
Woodstock isn’t the only musical entity celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. It’s also been a quarter of a century since FM-rock radio came of age as a major commercial force–and broadcasters playing variations on this programming style continue to draw big ratings in virtually every city in the country…
Various Artists Woodstock ’94 (A&M) Didn’t I read about this on a Pepsi twelve-pack?–Michael Roberts Sade The Best of Sade (Epic) The lukewarm smooch tracks from this babe probably couldn’t even get a rise from the inmates at Denver County Jail.–John Jesitus Collective Soul Hints, Allegations and Things Left Unsaid…
In the Seventies, English blues rocker Robin Trower gained fame in large part for his skill at aping Jimi Hendrix. But Trower feels that he has more going for him than his aptitude at mimicry. “I think my greatest asset is the sheer amount of emotion that I’m able to…
Thus far, Magnapop has gotten by with a little help from its friends. The power-pop band’s first album, a self-titled release available in the States on the Caroline label, included three songs co-produced by Athens, Georgia’s most famous export, Michael Stipe of R.E.M. And this year, for its debut on…
Judging by what he’s seen and heard from his local and national contemporaries, Tony Achilles, a 25-year-old singer/guitarist with the Denver folk-rock quartet Sweetwater Well, says, “Everybody’s into being depressed.” But while other Generation Xers appear convinced that pain sells, Achilles and his bandmates–guitarist/vocalist David Jackson, drummer Chris Helvey and…
The new Steel Pulse song “Back to My Roots” contains an admission most musicians would never make. “We took that commercial road/Searching for some fame and gold,” sings lead vocalist David Hinds. “And gained the whole wide world/And almost lost our souls.” This verse is no fantasy scenario; it’s the…
Tenderloin, with Reverend Horton Heat and Useless Playboys, Friday, December 2, at the Boulder Theater, and Saturday, December 3, at the Ogden Theatre, is well named, for this group from Lawrence, Kansas, is meaty and quite possibly bad for you. Still, that’s no reason to stay away. The foursome, together…
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion Orange (Matador) Those of you who pick this up expecting an actual blues album likely will have a heart attack and die before the end of the first song. The blues idiom does make appearances here–almost every song uses the genre’s standard progressions–but Spencer, drummer…
“I think there’s an art involved in bringing all of these people together under the Pigface umbrella,” says Martin Atkins, drummer and founder of the industrial supergroup called, yes, Pigface. Fighting to be heard over the buzz of a bad connection (he’s calling from a pay phone on a pedestrian…
We all know how swiftly and confidently time flies. Yet within the big picture, there are an infinite number of slower scenes capable of yielding riches if given the wise, insightful, detailed treatment they deserve. Such is the hunting ground of singer-songwriter-guitarist Mark Eitzel and his band, American Music Club…
In response to the assurance that his impending fortieth birthday doesn’t mean he’s at death’s door, pedal-steel guitarist and African music enthusiast Glenn Taylor laughs: “But it is. I think turning forty is a milestone–like this stone around your neck.” He’s more serious when he adds, “Of course, it’s an…
Like Hank Williams, the acknowledged king of country, George Jones tried to drink, carouse and good-time his way into an early grave. Unlike Williams, he didn’t succeed. And now, with a still-vital Jones on the north side of sixty, the country-music establishment is trying to figure out how best to…
Paula Cole is standing on stage at Fez, a cramped, rectangular bar inside a Moroccan restaurant in New York City’s Greenwich Village. When addressing the audience on this cold November evening, she apologizes for the somber nature of much of her material. “I go to a really dark place when…
Barbra Streisand The Concert (Columbia) Streisand has dedicated at least the most recent ten years of her career to trumpeting her own greatness, and The Concert–exceedingly portentous title–is no exception. The CD’s jacket is dominated by rave reviews of her recent tour (“The Way Streisand Is–Sensational!” gushed USA Today) and…
Pianist/vocalist Kelley Hunt speaks in an unhurried, no-pretenses manner, as if she’s chatting with the girls down at the beauty shop. The personality of this native of Lawrence, Kansas, shines through tasty and sweet–and so does her music, which constitutes the freshest slant on classic R&B and boogie that you’re…
