Best Reason Not to Complain About the Moody Blues Coming Back to Town This Summer
Charitable Donations by Fey Concerts
The Summer of Stars concert lineup by Fey Concerts may not be chockablock with fresh new talent; many of the performers scheduled to visit Red Rocks and Fiddler's Green this year are literally old enough to be grandparents. What is new, however, is Barry Fey's vow to donate a portion of every ticket sold to keep recreation centers in Denver open longer each day. Fey estimates that he'll raise $300,000--and he deserves a standing ovation.
Best Summer Concert Series
Chautauqua Auditorium
900 Baseline Rd., Boulder
The Chautauqua series presents itself with little hoopla and a whole lot of good taste, and the combination makes for many transcendent moments per season. Held in a barnlike auditorium, the inspired series last year included sets by Los Lobos (whose final segue into "What's Going On" nearly tore the rustic roof off the already-exhausted house), a wry Richard Thompson and an utterly delightful Randy Newman. Los Lobos returns this year, as does Thompson, while the rest of the roster branches out from country crooner Roseanne Cash to the energetic Mahlathini and the Mahotella Queens and monologue master Spalding Gray.
Best Jazz Series
Creative Music Works
Promoter Alex Lemski has been bringing music to the Denver area for the past eight years, first as an individual, then through his nonprofit organization Creative Music Works. The Works is about the only group in town that will bring in adventurous players who put on a hell of a performance but tend to draw a small number of people--such avant-garde notables as Anthony Braxton, Rova Saxophone Quartet, L'Impossible Trio, Jeanne Lee and Paul Smoker.
Best Classical Music Festival
Colorado Music Festival
Chautauqua Auditorium
900 Baseline Rd., Boulder
The Colorado Music Festival exudes class, from the direction of conductor Giora Bernstein (who's appeared internationally but lives in Boulder) to the world-class musicians who congregate each summer just because they like to. Easier to reach than the Aspen, Vail or Breckenridge fests and willing to try anything (the CMF trots out everything from Mozart to Schoenberg in a single season), the summer series has won the ASCAP award for "Adventuresome Programming in Contemporary Music" for the last three years. And the festival goes out of its way to be accessible; this year, ticket prices were lowered, a child-care program ($2 an hour) and family package were begun, and a shuttle was made available to relieve parking miseries.
Best Music to Go
The Strolling Strings of Aurora high schools
Sometimes fingers aren't the only things that do the walking. The Strolling Strings, a group of incredibly enthusiastic--and talented--students from Aurora high schools, play a repertoire stretching from classical to Broadway show tunes. But it's how they play it that really matters: The dozens of musicians (the size of the group varies depending on the gig) actually stroll amidst the guests, bowing and plucking all the while. Until you've seen a cellist maneuver both a long gown and her instrument through a narrow aisle, you haven't appreciated true talent.
Best Dancing in the Street
LoDo Music Festival
The LoDo Music Festival took the concept popularized by Martha and the Vandellas and catapulted it to a whole new level. Last summer, blues, R&B and rock ruled the vicinity around Union Station--with major artists like Irma Thomas, Tower of Power, Leon Russell and Little Feat holding down the beat for two straight days. This year's roster should drive you dancin' fools way over the top--expect nonstop grooves from the likes of Booker T. and the MG's and Mr. James Brown.
Best Summer Family Musical Outing That Costs
Denver Botanic Gardens Concert Series
1005 York St.
The Botanic Gardens features two summer concert series: an adult version where children are welcome and one specifically designed for the kids. Beginning in June and running through August, the adult concerts generally feature world music and jazz, while the children's shows--from Peter and the Wolf to marching bands--give the kids instruments and ask them to join in. Come early with picnic supplies, let the kids run themselves ragged and enjoy the beautiful setting.
Best Summer Family Musical Outing That's Free
Museum of Outdoor Arts' Lunch Beats Concert Series
Samson Park
Fiddler's Green Circle at Greenwood Plaza
The Lunch Beats Concert Series returns this summer with free noon concerts every Wednesday through July 27. The shows feature an eclectic mix of music from country to jazz--and a nearby playground for the kids gives all the members of the family a break.
Best Place to Play the Tuba
The Annual Christmas Tuba Concert
Consider the lowly tuba, an oft-maligned instrument that must constantly pay the price of being deep-voiced and elephantine. That is, until Metro State music professor Bill Clark got into the act. Bent on proving that tubas have soul, Clark organizes an annual, free-to-the-public Christmas Tuba Concert that after twenty years is still blowing strong. As many as 200 tuba players, ranging in age from nine to well into their seventies, congregate in the morning for a rehearsal and perform the same afternoon. The repertoire, which includes delicate Christmas carols and other melodic works, is delivered with nary an oom-pah-pah--instead, you get a slice of beauty, albeit in a lower register.
Best Place for a Tuba to Play
Denver Municipal Band Summer Concerts
Sometimes if it doesn't oom-pah-pah, it's not a tuba--and no concert band is worth its salt without a healthy helping of blaring sousaphones. You get it all at Denver Municipal Band Summer Concerts: Sousa marches, Strauss waltzes, Broadway show tunes, the 1812 Overture and everything between. These lazy summer concerts are held at various Denver parks at dusk, and they're free. All you need to bring is the mosquito spray and a basket of fried chicken. And don't forget the kids.
Best Local Rock Band
Spell
When drummer Garrett Shavlik left his longtime band the Fluid, you had to figure it was for a very good reason. And it was: Spell. This trio, also featuring guitarist Tim Beckman and bassist Chanin Floyd, makes music that manages to embrace pop and melodic verities without seeming any less passionate, emotional or exciting. The Denver area has a lot of good bands, but Spell is a great one--and thanks to its recent multi-album deal with Island Records, it's also the most likely to succeed beyond the borders of the Mile High City.
Readers' choice: Big Head Todd and the Monsters
Best Rock Recording
Mean Uncle Mike
A Mechanism for Crying
While better-known acts get the lion's share of attention from the local press, Mean Uncle Mike consistently continues to deliver smart, brawny music played with passion and energy. A Mechanism for Crying features the impressive songwriting of Mike Ward and Reed Weimer (who also created the disc's cover art) and the fine rhythm section of bassist Cherri Morris and drummer Garrett Smythe. Tracks such as "7-11" and "Knock on the Door" aren't flashy; they're good. And in this case, good is more than enough.
Best Local Band Video
"Joy," Tie Up Michelle
Tie Up Michelle has several cool videos to pick from, but "Joy" is its first and most impressive. Guitarist/videographer Todd Benson took generic footage of himself and bandmates Brad Greer and Micah Loring and then doctored it with a special-effects "video toaster," creating colorful swirls and trippy blotches. The effect is as mesmerizing as the guitars-and-synthesizers music it is intended to illustrate.
Best DJ From Hell
Boyd Rice
Boyd Rice, an avowed satanist, willing apologist for Charles Manson and one of Denver's most idiosyncratic performers, has earned an international reputation for making off-kilter music. He created the experimental act Non and collaborated with Rose McDowall on an album of cover versions of lachrymose songs from the Sixties. In the latter mode, Rice appears most Thursdays at the Lion's Lair, where he spins songs from the past that most people would rather forget. Rather than repulsing, though, the presentation often achieves a strange, unmistakable power. Hell hath no fury like a Bobby Sherman record.
Best Arresting Performances
The Boys in Blue
Denver concerts made more news than ever in national music magazines thanks to area police departments. Last year saw the ticketing of Mercury Rev for violating noise ordinances during the Lollapalooza Festival; the arrest of Depeche Mode's Martin Gore, for loud and drunken behavior at an area hotel; and the charging of Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder for allegedly interfering with security personnel at a Boulder concert. Whether the extensive coverage these events received will mean more or fewer shows in the future is unclear, but one thing is certain: Denver's getting one heck of a reputation.
Best Musical Reunion
Pete and Brian Nalty in the Jinns
Given the circumstances that led to Brian Nalty's departure from the Jinns, you had to figure that he and his brother, Jinns singer/songwriter/leader Pete Nalty, would never share the same stage again. Surprise, surprise: Brian has given up his prodigious drinking habit and, now clean, re-enlisted with the Jinns. The band remains a fiery combo and presently sounds better than ever, thanks to the unexpected flowering of brotherly love.
Best Musical Union
The Christina Hollar Benefits
Players working in virtually every genre of Denver music banded together to play a series of benefit concerts for Christina Hollar, who was brutally beaten last July by attackers who also shot to death her husband, Tom. It was a moving sign of community within the music community, many of whose members frequent IMI Jimi, which Christina still owns--and it did some good.
Best Rock-and-Roll Soap Opera
The Babihed Saga
Shortly after Bill Houston of the Denver punk band Babihed left the group, he was rumored to be dead--the victim of either suicide or an FBI gun battle. Just before a scheduled tribute show, Houston's former bandmates learned that Bill was alive and well and working for Lyndon LaRouche. Months later Babihed broke up after a fight between guitarist Michael Elkerton and singer Jimmy Lightning. The bandmembers were set to go their own ways when Houston arrived back in Denver after deciding the LaRouche campaign was akin to a religious cult--around the same time that another ex-Babihedder, Mark Dee, was released from a New Jersey jail for violating parole imposed because of a conviction for public urination. With Houston and Dee back in the fold, Elkerton and Lightning patched up their differences, and the members of Babihed lived happily ever after. Until next week's episode, that is.
Best Living Tribute to T.D. Lingo
Neil Slade & the Brain Revolutionaries
Neil Slade has been a musical character-about-town for as long as we can remember. In recent years his intellectual thrust has centered on the unleashed powers of the total brain--a science of a sort that he studied at the feet of the late brainologist T.D. Lingo. Slade now legally owns a brain once belonging to Lingo, which he keeps in a jar and is proud to show to anyone willing to look (interested parties have included Denver police officers and the county coroner). The brain--and Lingo's teachings--all play a part in Slade's band, the Brain Revolutionaries, and their new CD Amygdala Brainbites. It's thinking people's music.
Best Gig Flyers
Foreskin 500
Not only do Diggie Diamond and his playmates in Foreskin 500 know how to incite a chain reaction of fear and loathing among their fans with crass album titles (anyone here ready for a Moustache Ride?) and hilariously obscene live shows, they've found a way to horrify the rest of the God-fearin' population in Denver as well. Featuring less-than-tasteful depictions of Jesus doing bong hits with Satan and infants wielding handguns, the Foreskin flyers are enough to keep those without a highly forgiving sense of humor walking on the other side of the street for years to come.
Best Local Record Label
The Caustic Fish Company
The brainchild of Eric Thiel, the Caustic Fish Company is taking an aggressive approach to marketing Colorado bands. The label has signed three of the best groups in the area (Sympathy F, God Rifle and Cold Crank) and has backed tours in support of the bands' CDs with heavy advertising in publications throughout the country. Caustic Fish is proving that independent labels can take root at the base of the Rockies.
Best Commercial Breakthrough by a Local Band
Big Head Todd and the Monsters
Big Head Todd and the Monsters' Giant Records debut Sister Sweetly has gone gold, with more than 500,000 copies sold. And as the band's profile continues to rise, major labels seem more willing to consider the worth of other Colorado artists. That's good for everyone.
Best Local Rap Group/Artist
Cool eMCees
Sweet De, Skoolboy Fresh and Chilli E. don't do anything especially new, but the music they produce sounds particularly vital anyway. As performers they're engaging and charismatic, and as tunesmiths they turn old-school boasts and party-time exhortations into the ideal antidote to gangsta rap stereotypes. Cool eMCees won't change your life, but seeing them live will help make it more enjoyable.
Readers' choice: Lord of the Word and the Disciples of Bass
Best Rap Recording
Various Artists
An Inner Circle Soundtrack
Those who dismiss Denver's rap scene as either uninteresting or nonexistent need only check out this cassette to discover how wrong they are. An Inner Circle Soundtrack features compelling artists such as Cool eMCees, Rhythmik Insurrection, the late, lamented Phantasmorgasm and the SteakKnife Brothers, a trio whose song "Cop" is among the most challenging and intriguing rap numbers you're likely to hear anywhere.
Best Local Heavy-Metal Band
Wretched Refuse
Given the rise of punk and alternative sounds, metal bands seem all but extinct--and most of the hard rockers who continue to scratch out an existence in a changing marketplace don't even like wearing the metal moniker. So suffice it to say that Wretched Refuse is a damn fine band, no matter what kind of music this quartet of ruffians actually plays. The group's latest CD, Cherry Bomb, is hard and fast and loud and passionate--four good things--and it features lyrics that are, by metal standards, surprisingly undumb. These guys may not be metal, but they are heavy, and that's enough for us.
Readers' choice: Chatterbox
Best Local Instrumental Rock Band
Fourth Estate
Guitarist Dave Beegle doesn't like the term progressive rock, but the music Beegle makes with drummer Jim Iltis and bassist Fred Babich can recall the neoclassical rock of Yes and Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Fourth Estate is made up of excellent players, but more important, Beegle and the boys bring genuine feeling to a genre much given to pomp and soulless technique.
Best Local Dance Band
Lord of Word and the Disciples of Bass
Lord of Word does much more than entice your feet to beat the street; these musicians have successfully stitched together a personal style woven of rap, house, funk, rock and soul that's never less than danceable. Smart, sexy and undeniably groovy, these Disciples are worth following.
Readers' choice: Monkey Siren
Best Local C&W Band/Artist
Celeste Krenz
A native of North Dakota, Celeste Krenz came to Denver with an eye to polishing her singing and songwriting skills. Her new CD, Edge of the Storm, shows she's succeeded. Rather than embracing the usual country cliches, Krenz pens impressive narratives about everyday life, sets them to sturdy (not twangy) melodies played by her own Goodbye Band (anchored by album producer Bob Tyler), and delivers them in a voice that's pure and clean. Yee-haw.
Readers' choice: Timothy P. & Rural Route 3
Best Bluegrass Recording
Pete Wernick
On a Roll
Pete Wernick, who has made the Left Hand Grange in Niwot his stage home, is a banjoist who gets the most from his instrument--his picking style is technically outstanding yet varied enough to appeal to people other than bluegrass fanatics. On On a Roll, he's supplemented by his regular bandmates, dubbed the Live Five, as well as guests including Alan O'Bryant, Tim O'Brien and Jerry Douglas, who also produced the disc. Wernick's a-pickin' and we're a-grinnin'.
Best Local Folkie
Willie Jaeger
To really appreciate Willie Jaeger and his homespun instruments, you have to see him play, which he does occasionally with his wife, Carol Van Alstine, who plays guitar and sings. The two often work with guitarist Scott Bennett in an unusual trio that highlights Jaeger's versatility in country, Irish, baroque, folk, stringband and rock. Meanwhile, Jaeger spreads his gift around; he's one of the best hammered- and mountain-dulcimer teachers around these parts, known for helping anybody, even "hopeless cases," learn to play these instruments. That may be his finest musical attribute.
Readers' choice: (tie) The Mother Folkers and Mary Flower
Best Folkloric Series
The Canciones del Pasado Project
The Latino community of Denver and environs can thank Frank White at KUVO-FM for this fascinating, scholarly and poignant slice of Hispanic heritage. Throughout the year, White and friends organize concerts, lectures, tours and events, all aimed at preserving the folk music indigenous to the San Luis Valley and northern New Mexico. The programs include the re-enactment of Los Dias, a New Year's tradition in which musicians go from house to house singing holiday songs and personalized tributes to each family visited. There's also a weekly dance at the Bullring Lounge. Viva Frank!
Best Band Name
Dictator Tot
We kid you not.
Best Irish Band
Colcannon
Finding a Celtic band in Boulder is surprising enough; finding one this endearing is an added bonus. The membership of Colcannon (named after a cabbage-and-potato dish) has shifted over its decade or so of life, but the quality of the music made by vocalist Mick Bolger and company has remained constant. The group has made several wonderful recordings and puts on a warm and provocative live act that will have even honorary Irishmen pining for a trip to the Emerald Isle before the night is through.
Best Blues Band/Musician
Stanley Milton's Mean Streak
Stanley Milton's Mean Streak continues to throw the meanest blues punch in town. Milton himself looks like a baby-faced, blue-eyed lumberjack, but when he steps out to play hot blues guitar in the best Buddy Guy-Stevie Ray Vaughan tradition, he shows off some big-time chops. Then, when it doesn't look like it could get any sweeter, Milton opens his mouth and out comes his growling, big-burly-blues-guy vocal work. Milton's originals sound as fine as the well-known tunes he also plays; his new CD, A Shot in the Dark, features twelve originals that prove he's not a one-trick guy.
Readers' choice: Underground Railroad
Best Local Blues Recording
Mary Flower
Blues Jubilee
One of the area's best-known folk musicians turned in one of the year's best blues performances. While Mary Flower has long maintained a reputation for fine acoustic and country blues work, with the release of Blues Jubilee she's finally gaining attention outside the local neighborhood. For this collection Flower chose a handful of original material alongside tunes by Jelly Roll Morton, Robert Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson, as well as seldom-heard delights from Memphis Minnie and Scrapper Blackwell. Flower's vocal work continues to have that steady, slow-moving, urban sound, and she pulls no punches with her guitar.
Best Local Jazz Up-and-Comer
Rudy Royston
Rudy Royston got his start as a drummer and composer playing with Ron Miles while still in high school. Now 21 and an English major at DU, Royston continues to work with Miles but also appears wherever a drummer with a genius quality about him is needed. He's been a part of the Creative Music Works Ensemble, Roots Redemption and the Petersen/Barela Quintet, and he can play anything from Twenties grooves to present-day funk.
Best Local Jazz Band/Musician
Fred Hess Ensemble
Composer Fred Hess finally has assembled a group well suited to his musical vision: acoustic bassist Dwight Killian and three saxophones. Hess himself plays tenor, Glenn Nitta plays soprano, and Mark Harris plays alto. Now Hess says he can do nearly anything--and he does, tossing out post-modern classical works and jazz pieces from Roscoe Mitchell, Benny Goodman and Tim Berne. The band really shines when it mixes Gabriel Faure's "Sicilenne" with Jimmy Smith's cooler-than-cool arrangement of "Greensleeves."
Readers' choice: Dotsero
Best Local Jazz Recording
Fred Hess
Sweet Thunder
After years of playing extremely creative music to mostly empty rooms, Hess's musical ship may finally be on the horizon; these days the word on the street is that Fred Hess is one very hip guy. The thing is, he doing the same thing he's always done. With Sweet Thunder, Hess chose only one original composition, then opted to present his interpretations of tunes by Anthony Braxton, Ornette Coleman, Thelonius Monk, Roland Kirk, Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. It works fine, creatively and commercially--but remember, we liked Hess before he was cool.
Best Orchestral Maneuvering
Perpetual Motion
The trio Perpetual Motion--violinist Josie Quick, guitarist Tom Carleno and percussionist Chad Johnson--calls its work "acoustic jazz with a classical flair." That's wonderful, but it's not all this energetic crew does. Whether performing Carleno's original compositions or covering jazz, pop, Celtic, classic and folk styles, Perpetual Motion conveys a sense of melodic freshness. The group's debut album Ready, Willing and Able shows what can be accomplished when players pursue styles outside their instruments' "best-suited" field.
Best Rehearsal Hall
McFarlane Foundry
Central City
Like much of Central City, the old McFarlane Foundry was little more than a wrecked shell when Colorado voters approved limited-stakes gambling for the old mining town. Developers flooded in, but the structures they renovated had no more noble purpose than to house thousands of slot machines. But then the Central City Opera Association decided to put some of the take it's realized from assorted Central City properties--particularly the old Teller House hotel, now a giant casino--back into the community. It devoted $2 million to rebuilding the 1861 foundry into a state-of-the-art rehearsal center. If you can hear over the clink of the slots, the hills are still alive with the sound of music.
end of part 2
