The all-powerful selection committee of the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference has spoken. Last week, the mighty panel announced its picks for the annual event and the results, ladies and gentlemen, are surprising. Of the more than sixty Colorado bands that gathered up photos, random press and bio…
Fu Manchu, Monday, January 31, at the Fox Theatre, with Anthrax and the Unband, is the kind of group that Jeff Spicoli, the wave-riding babe-and-bud connoisseur played to perfection by Sean Penn in the classic film Fast Times at Ridgemont High, would have truly appreciated. Somewhere between thoughts of surfing,…
Farrell Lowe joins the Four Corners Quartet, Friday, January 28, at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, as the newest member of this chamber jazz ensemble. Lowe’s guitar and electronics add a new dimension to the group, which began as a saxophone quartet that included local heroes Fred Hess and Mark…
Goth Night, Sunday nights at the Church, solves a common problem among many lovely creatures of the night who find themselves all dressed up (in realistic fangs, wonderfully creepy colored contact lenses and thigh-high black vinyl boots) with nowhere to go. The dark and dangerous need look no further, as…
The Jungle Brothers. 9 p.m. Wednesday, January 26, Fox Theatre, 1135 13th Street, Boulder, $23, 303-443-3399.
Mark Spiewak is hard of hearing. You might say he’s half deaf, though no doctor has ever diagnosed him as such. He doesn’t like doctors, he won’t investigate the fancy new hearing aids on the market, and he’s sure as hell not going to learn sign language. He just prefers…
About a year ago, an editorial about a group of musicians appeared in the Tucson Weekly, a newspaper much like this one, in which it was suggested that prior to being allowed to form yet another local band, the players in question should be forced to take a written test…
As much as any band, The Wailers, Thursday, January 20, at the Fox Theatre, must truly be enjoying Y2K and the renewed prominence it’s brought them. The BBC chose Bob Marley and the Wailers’ “One Love” as the theme song for its millennium broadcast; Time declared Exodus the best album…
Wojo, Friday, January 21, at Nick’s, plays rock-fortified funk that could get even the geriatric booty of Barney Miller stalwart Abe Vigoda shaking like a Turkish fault line. Formed in 1993 by guitarist/vocalist Jake Cameron, bassist Paul Kirby and brothers Randy and Greg Morgan, who handle guitars and drums, respectively,…
Dancing, drinking and mugging for a camera — no, it’s not a taping for MTV, it’s a model scout at Sevilla at the Icehouse, the LoDo club with a strong Latin flavor. Working with a national online casting company, the club will offer visitors a chance to be discovered while…
The first time Paige O’Meara met film director James Merendino in a Salt Lake City dive bar, he was convinced that the square-looking guy swilling beers behind Buddy Holly specs was, to put it delicately, full of shit. “I’ve met a lot of delusional people,” O’Meara says. “I met this…
Very rarely does a musician, in his or her experiments with new sounds, come along and flip the script in a way that helps create a whole new genre of music. QBert, the Bay Area-based super DJ, is an artist who has done just that. Drawing from the rudimentary scratch…
At times this column seems like an obituary page for local bands. And so it goes as another area outfit calls it quits, at least temporarily: Chief Broom, at the approximate age of 3.5 years, suffered from self-inflicted disbandment after a final show at Quixote’s True Blue on Sunday, January…
The members of Blackfire, Friday, January 14, at the Bluebird Theater, are among a new breed of young Native American artists breaking from the more traditional musical styles associated with tribal culture to speak the universal language of visceral rock and roll. But that doesn’t mean that these siblings from…
All, with Wretch Like Me, Tanger, Someday I… and Bill the Welder, Saturday, January 15, at the Bluebird Theater, headlines this showcase for the Fort Collins-based Owned & Operated record label. All has transcended its heritage as a Descendants spinoff (most of its members are former members of that seminal…
A Night in Velvet, Thursday, January 20, at the Boulder Theater, promises an evening of glamour that should obliterate the notion that Boulder is the sole domain of earth muffins and hippie harmonists. A fabulous fashion show offered by House of Frog Presents, Velvet is shaping up to be as…
Ten years ago, most Denverites wouldn’t have known a rave from a Broncos tailgate party. Yet over the course of the past decade, the city’s rave scene has slowly morphed into one of the more vibrant — and respected — in the country. The average citizen might not realize this…
Cindy Bullens has earned a reputation as an artist whose concerts are a one-of-a-kind experience, but the rock-and-roller’s upcoming performance as part of an E-Town taping will have its own unique significance. The Denver area has played an important role in the development of her vision over the past year…
With A Tribe Called Quest on the shelf, Q-Tip is on his own, more or less, yet he brings with him some important equipment: a readily identifiable musical style (jazzy, keyboard-heavy rhythms, beats that are more about precision than posturing), a unique voice (a rather light, nasal tenor) and a…
Brooklyn-bred John Linnell is one half of perennial chess club/nosebleed favorites They Might Be Giants — the nasal-sounding, accordion-and-sax-playing half, that is. And with his ongoing “Fifty State Songs” project (which began with 1994’s State Songs EP, available through Giants partner in crime John Flansburgh’s subscription-only Hello CD club), Linnell’s…
For my money, the sounds of the 21st century were best created about twenty years ago — from the blips and bleeps of video games and the cold, sterile emanations of analog synthesizers. Unapologetically artificial, they connoted a promising future filled with jet packs, moon vacations and dinner in tablet…
Mike Jerk, of Denver’s Soda Jerk Records, and Jason Cotter, singer for local punk outfit the Family Men (who perform this Friday night at the 15th Street Tavern), are the two-man force behind the fantastically understated punk-rock mecca that is The Raven (2217 Welton). Unapologetically ramshackle, the ornithologically monikered club…
