When he began a career in the brave new world of New Wave, Joe Jackson, Saturday, December 9, at the Paramount Theatre, seemed poised for long-term success in the vein of equally iconoclastic contemporaries like Elvis Costello and Graham Parker. But Jackson’s subsequent and frequently hard-to-peg meanderings into ska, jump-swing…
Popular saxophonist Vic Cionetti, Sunday, December 10, at the Gothic Theatre, officially returns to the Denver jazz scene with his first public concert in more than ten years. Jazz Alley TV will tape the 8 p.m. show for future broadcast. It will be Cionetti’s first appearance on stage since he…
The Trans-Siberian Orchestra pulls into town on Friday, December 8, at Magness Arena, with Christmas Eve and Other Stories. The performance is the work of producer Paul O’Neill (pictured), who has created a modern format for traditional Christmas music. The evening aims to meld a rock concert, a Broadway musical…
It’s nearing eleven o’clock on Monday, Open Stage Blues night at the Atrium Bar and Grill. In the corner, five musicians — mostly middle-aged white guys with borderline mullets and let’s-get-down looks on their faces — run through a clumsy reading of “Thunder and Lightning.” After they finish, they pass…
When Armando Zuppa’s wife suggested it was time for her Italian-born husband to get out of Rome, he agreed that it was a good idea. “She came into our apartment one day,” he recalls, “and I was standing in front of my stereo with my cowboy hat and boots on,…
At one point during the Wallflowers’ November 22 gig at the Fillmore Auditorium, frontman Jakob Dylan acknowledged that “maybe I don’t have anything that important to say.” But the chuckle this offhand remark earned revealed more about the audience than it did about Young Jake. In truth, Dylan doesn’t have…
The Internet is a strange thing, indeed. Damien McCarron, lead Celt of the Indulgers, has noticed a significant increase in traffic to the Irish band’s Web site (shamrocker.com) since posting an MP3 of its song “Brave New World” — which first appeared on the band’s debut, In Like Flynn, in…
Rockabilly’s endurance continues to defy those who regard the genre’s resurrection as more of a fashion statement than a musical movement. While you’ll probably see less gingham and grease in local clubs these days, interest in rockabilly’s rabble-rousing sounds remains solid. Big Sandy and His Fly-Rite Boys, Friday, December 1,…
Ah, the holiday season is upon us, a time when even the most hardened individuals feel compelled to give a little something extra of themselves. In the case of the musicians participating in a charity benefit for Children’s Hospital, Saturday, December 2, at the Iliff Park Saloon in Aurora, it…
You wouldn’t be completely off base if you characterized René Heredia (right) as a romantic: As one of Denver’s most well-known flamenco guitarists, he teases unusual and exotic sounds out of his instrument, introducing his audiences to the styles of a different culture. It seems fitting, then, that Heredia and…
The Chicago-bred, Brooklyn-based rapper Common (born Lonnie Rashid Lynn) has never been one to follow doctrines — or to shy away from voicing his opinions, even when those opinions differ radically from the general American party line. Consider his thoughts on the case of Assata Shakur, an African-American woman who…
It’s November 9, two days after the American presidential election, and the media is simply delirious, scrambling to provide the latest updates on the as-yet-undecided race, reveling in the chance to use words like “historic” and “unprecedented.” Almost everyone in the United States has their eye on Florida, waiting –…
Kristina Ingham was in the Austin, Texas, airport a few years ago, waiting for a flight to somewhere or other with her guitar slung over one shoulder. Three fashion-conscious, almost-teenage girls ran up to her and shrieked, “Are you Sheryl Crow?” “I was like, ‘No I’m not,'” says Ingham. “This…
Born in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Adrian Romero spent many years in Denver as the frontman of Love Supreme, an enigmatic outfit whose embrace of myriad styles — from introspective and richly textured melodicism to a carnivalesque kind of fusion — earned it a sizable local following, an invitation to…
With the release of Sweet Bird of Youth, the Rock*A*Teens, Wednesday, November 29, at the 15th Street Tavern, with Kudzu Towers and Witter Cofield Conspiracy, again demonstrate that strange art sometimes comes from strange places. The bands fifth full-length CD was recorded in its Cabbagetown, Georgia, home, and is a…
The Denver Barn Dance, November 25 at the Gothic Theater, showcases Denvers emerging underground country music scene with performances from Marty Jones and the Pork Boilin Poor Boys, Chester Everett and his Ranch Rythmaires, and Halden Wofford and the Hi-Beams (pictured). The evening seeks to reconcile the gap between new…
Actor Woody Harrelson and marijuana always seem to find themselves side by side, and the film Grass brings the two even closer together. Harrelson, an advocate for vegetarianism, the use of hemp in mainstream products and the sheer enjoyment of the herb, narrates this humorous documentary directed by Ron Mann…
Kay (pronounced kai, like sky) — who, like the other members of mostly punk outfit Sunshine prefers to go by his first name — keeps apologizing for his English. “I’m sorry, it’s very difficult to speak on the phone with me,” he says for the third time. “Many people tell…
As much ink as underground rock acts waste bemoaning the constraints that genre-geared fans and media inflict upon them, many still fall into forms that readily lend themselves to easy definitions. For every hundred bespectacled Jawbreaker wannabes who stamp their feet and cry about being called emo, or Mohawked crust…
Many rock historians (a rather portentous title for people who write about their favorite bands for a living, but what can you do?) tend to gravitate toward narrative extremes. Either the chronicle of a performer is a tale of unabashed triumph over a series of seemingly insurmountable obstacles, or it’s…
Joan of Arc was signed by Jade Tree records, sound unheard, as a result of the posthumous popularity of Cap’n Jazz, a teen project that included three-fifths of the Arc contingent. One EP and four full-lengths later, the players continue to exhaust the freedom afforded by that initial license: To…
The “cool” West Coast sound of the ’50s and ’60s is perhaps Southern California’s foremost contribution to the development of jazz during the century we’re just concluding. Yet the style didn’t spring full-blown from the brow of Gerry Mulligan; its smooth, often muted feel was heavily influenced by the jazz…
