Coolio It Takes a Thief (Tommy Boy) The old school strikes back. Coolio’s bio sounds plenty contemporary–he’s reportedly a former SoCal crack addict–but the occasional hardcore trappings heard on his debut disc are concessions to the marketplace, not its raison d’etre. “Fantastic Voyage,” the single you’ve heard booming from every…
When asked to characterize his work, alto saxophonist/flutist Carlos Ward laughs. It’s a broad laugh, but also a mysterious one: There’s no way of knowing if he’s being congenial or expressing wordlessly the impossibility of defining his work and motivations. “Well, I hope people can understand it and accept it,”…
According to drummer Mark White, Denver’s Gladhand is giving locals a reason to smile. “People have come up to me and said, `I’ve had a shitty three weeks, and after you guys played I became really happy,'” he says. “I mean, these people leave grinning ear to ear.” That analysis…
Singer/guitarist Junior Brown doesn’t like to be pigeonholed, musically or otherwise. “Whenever think they’ve got me pegged, I pull something out that’s a little different,” explains Austin’s latest musical discovery. “I like to keep it interesting.” “Interesting” hardly begins to describe Brown’s spicy, Texas-tinged country masterpieces. On a good night,…
Greg Ginn–the founder and creative force behind the pioneering Los Angeles punk band Black Flag and now an accomplished solo artist–has never backed away from a good fight. And he’s not about to start now. “If somebody takes money from me in an agreement, I’m not supposed to do anything…
Neil Young and Crazy Horse Sleeps With Angels (Reprise) Why Young remains a vibrant, intriguing, forward-looking artist at a time when most of his contemporaries have long since ceased to matter to anyone beyond their immediate families is a matter of some mystery. After all, he’s not doing anything that…
For over two decades critics have been calling Danny Gatton “The World’s Greatest Unknown Guitar Player”–and the way things are going, they may be calling him the same thing twenty years hence. Fortunately, Gatton stopped waiting for large-scale success a long time ago. “I just flat-out don’t give a damn…
Steely Dan, Tuesday, September 6, at Fiddler’s Green, is a legendary act, and the chance to see the band live is a rare treat indeed. Walter Becker and Donald Fagen achieved breakthrough success in 1973 with the album Can’t Buy a Thrill, but quit playing concerts the next year. Fortunately,…
There’s nothing ladylike about Veronica. The Boulder-based trio–guitarist/vocalist Ted Thacker, drummer John Call and bassist Vernon “Tom” Sprenkle–delivers punchy, two-minute pop songs with a careening energy fueled by testosterone and/or alcohol. In its brief four-gig history, the tight-knit threesome already has earned positive reactions from clubgoers. This response is understandable,…
“The Mavericks are pretty much anything but safe in this business,” says Robert Reynolds, bassist for the hottest country band ever to come out of Miami, Florida. “I believe that if we brought in the music and did our best in the studio, we still couldn’t make a straight-ahead contemporary…
Julian Cope Autogeddon (American) Anyone who wants to know a little bit more about the fine line between insanity and genius would do well to give this a listen. The esteemed Mr. Cope is certainly capable of making accessible pop: He manned the defunct British act Teardrop Explodes during an…
Author Gertrude Stein wrote that all vigorous art is irritating–and once it ceases to be irritating and becomes pleasant, it is no longer of any use. The members of Instrument Panel, an aleatory Boulder-based quartet committed to turning any sound into music, couldn’t agree more. “We are dealing with pure…
Joe Escalante, bassist and founder of the Vandals, knows something about real punk rockers, in part because he and his bandmates (guitarist Warren Fitzgerald, vocalist Dave Quackenbush and drummer Josh Freese) have seen their share of poseurs. ” used to go to high school with Warren,” he says by way…
So you’re an affluent young professional. You’re smart, attractive–a doer, not a couch potato. You never forget to separate your recyclables, and you make sure that your Lexus is in perfect tune to keep air pollution to a minimum. You may be in your late thirties now, but you’re still…
The news media seemingly has given as much coverage to last weekend’s Woodstock II as was paid to the Normandy Invasion. Countless articles and radio and TV broadcasts have inundated us with everything we could ever want to know about the performers and participants at the original 1969 Woodstock, as…
The pop landscape isn’t exactly crowded with divas. While the Sixties produced Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross and other flamboyant goddesses on earth, the current decade seems destined to be remembered as a time when many female performers preferred toughness and outrageous behavior to ease and grace. For example, it’s hard…
For the last couple of years, the Gin Blossoms have seen more of the road than Bob Hope in his prime. Since the 1992 release of the album New Miserable Experience, the Tempe, Arizona-based quintet–vocalist Robin Wilson, guitarist/vocalist Jesse Valenzuela, lead guitarist Scott Johnson, drummer Phillip Rhodes and bassist Bill…
Manu DiBango, Friday, August 19, at the Ogden Theatre, has a lot of famous friends, many of whom appear on his latest Giant Records release, Wakafrika. But in spite of the presence of Peter Gabriel, Sinead O’Connor, King Sunny Ade, Youssou N’ Dour and Ladysmith Black Mambazo, DiBango holds the…
Things are not always what they seem–especially when it comes to Smackjacket’s John Bogovich. On the surface, this 26-year-old vocalist/ guitarist seems the epitome of Nineties hard-rock nihilism: His scalp is shaved, his ears sport large, primitive earrings that look as if they were ordered from the back pages of…
Various Artists The Lion King: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Walt Disney) On the heels of the relatively strong material from Beauty and the Beast and the okay tunes from Aladdin come the generally treacly songs from the faux-Bambi currently monopolizing the screens at your neighborhood multiplex. Elton John wrote…
“Most rockabilly bands don’t really like us,” says Rex Moser, guitarist and lead warbler for the Denver-based punkabilly trio known as the Throttlemen. Given the threesome’s irreverent passion for grafting traditional rockabilly riffs onto accelerated punk-rock tempos, it’s not surprising that many local rockabilly disciples have a problem with them…
Singer-songwriter Freedy Johnston owes much of his newfound prominence to the fledgling Adult Album Alternative (or Triple A) radio format birthed by Boulder’s KBCO-FM–and he knows it. But that doesn’t mean he spends a lot of time absorbing music made by the other artists whose careers have been boosted by…
