Okay, so the only reasonable explanation for Rock Star Supernova — the CBS-spawned rock monstrosity featuring ex-Metallica bassist Jason Newsted, ex-Guns N’ Roses guitarist Gilby Clarke, ex-Pam Anderson hubby Tommy Lee and some Canadian ex-nobody dude on vocals — is that it’s all just an elaborate hoax. Seriously. Three aging…
Call it a revival, a tribute, a throwback, whatever; any synonym will fill the space, but it won’t really say anything. Music is a vast universe, each band a tiny blinking light, collectively influencing any who would gaze into the infinite black sky. So to call an act such as…
Have you Backbeat readers out there been wondering what happened to Playlist? For a variety of reasons, our regular collection of national and local CD reviews hasn’t appeared in the published issues of Westword since December — and as a result, the critiques we prepared for January papers are no…
After her nanosecond turn on The One last summer, I’m sure the last thing in the world that Aubrey Collins wanted to be thought of was a one-trick pony. Funny thing is, if everything pans out with her current endeavor, that’s precisely what she’ll be. In a manner of speaking…
Playing in a band means steeling yourself to judgment. At some point, your group is bound to get noticed, prompting all kinds of horrifically unqualified people to make snap decisions about your sound, categorizing in the simplest, lamest, laziest terms the art for which you’ve sacrificed, the music that you…
Singer-songwriter Marc Cohn admits that his first visit to Colorado since August 2005, when he was shot during an attempted carjacking, has been weighing on him. “I would be lying if I said I didn’t have a little bit of anxiety about it,” he concedes. Cohn was returning to his…
Cred Sheet is a periodic gauge of cultural stimuli for those unwilling or unable to think about such shit for a living. (Note: These people are often smarter and better compensated than those who are willing and able.) It seeks to be a reliable font of valuable info and ostensible…
Cradle of Filth has been polarizing metalheads for fifteen years. While the British band’s fan base goes rabid for its symphonically pomptastic black/thrash song-suites, others just loathe the group. Hardcore black-metal fans resent the act for getting lumped in with their hermetic and surly genre, accurately claiming that no group…
Who was the first well-educated white smartass who realized the comic potential of hip-hop? No one knows for sure, but the prank-filled legacies of the Beastie Boys and the Bloodhound Gang are in good hands with MC Lars, a California native who uses his laptop raps to gleefully piss all…
Guitarist/vocalist Michael Pace, bassist/vocalist Adam Rizer and drummer Dan Fetherston, known collectively as Oxford Collapse, don’t sound like every other buzz band that’s emerged from Brooklyn over the past several years. Instead, they recall far-flung buzz bands from days gone by on Remember the Night Parties, their debut for the…
The shtickiness of Porsches on the Autobahn (joined at Bender’s by Mr. Pacman) argues against taking the alleged “facts” about this musical vehicle as gospel. For instance, the group’s members supposedly hail from Germany — a background that, if it were true, might lend a certain legitimacy to their cheeky…
A dog can only gnaw on the same bone for so long before it finally dawns on the old boy that he needs something substantive in his belly. Likewise, when the alt-country outfit Slobberbone called it quits in 2004, Brent Best realized he needed something a bit more significant to…
Buckcherry does a more convincing Guns N’ Roses these days than Guns itself. Rising up from the same sleazy Sunset Strip gutters that spawned Axl Rose and company, Buckcherry debuted in 1999 with a decadent single titled “Lit Up,” which contained the memorable refrain “I love the cocaine, I love…
Greeley Estates hails from Phoenix, Arizona, rather than the Weld County town known more for its smells than its sounds — but that hasn’t stopped Coloradans from embracing the act. The quintet has only been around since 2002, but it’s already made a splash in punk-metal circles, with stints on…
Team Awesome! knows what fun is all about. Like grownups attempting to recapture their youthful exuberance, the Awesome! ones approach their celebratory indie pop like an adolescent-minded PBS program. The group’s jaunty, lighthearted songs are all about love, crushes, rocket ships, dogs, board games, robots — the sorts of things…
The Heyday is still wet behind the ears. Nine. That’s the number of shows that the Heyday has actually played. In this week’s Beatdown, I speculated that number was fewer than fifty. And before the ink was even dry on that column, I received an e-mail from Heyday bassist Pete…
Oh you broke my heart, but you saved my life that day that you walked right out the door. So just stay away ’cause I just can’t take the thought of you coming back for more. The saline-drenched mewlings of a jilted ex-lover, or a lament to unrequited love torn…
Shhh. Don’t say the C-word. In the secular world, it’s like a scarlet letter. Just ask Alice Cooper. The venerable shock rocker was once quoted as saying, “Drinking beer is easy. Trashing your hotel room is easy. But being a Christian, that’s a tough call. That’s rebellion.” Indeed. Christianity truly…
Joe Bonamassa is caught between the blues and a hard place. A nouveau bluesman, he favors a hybrid blues-rock sound that employs simple song structures and puts the emphasis on powerful fretwork. Such an approach was fresh back in the ’60s, when British players such as John Mayall, Jeff Beck…
In March, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame will see the induction of Patti Smith, R.E.M., Van Halen, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, and the Ronettes. These blessed few will be inducted in an extravagant ceremony full of hirsute paunches, stale pot smoke and enough Ben-Gay to choke…
January 9 was a day of contrasts for singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith. Mere hours before an evening-ending show at a small club in Hoboken, New Jersey, he co-starred on an episode of Conan O’Brien’s NBC chat program with pompadoured troglodyte Donald Trump. “I didn’t get to meet him,” the ultra-polite Canuck…
Alice Cooper would be wealthy beyond his wildest dreams if every corpse-painted, absurdly theatrical band that has walked the earth since 1969 paid him royalties. Even at his most shocking, though, Cooper couldn’t hold a candle to guys like Varg Vikernes, who upped the lurid-extreme ante by murdering Euronymous, the…
