Legendary music writer Lester Bangs (1948-1982) was the hilariously loudmouthed James Joyce of Western civilization’s most dubious “literary” achievement — rock-and-roll journalism — who injected himself into every music review like a self-absorbed maniac, both delighting and enraging readers of Rolling Stone, Creem and the Village Voice (among other publications…
In the book Those Magnificent Mountain Women, author Janet Robinson recalls the ways in which, in the mid- and late-1800s, brave ladies would snowshoe or ride horseback across the formidable Colorado terrain, walking or riding for hundreds of miles before settling among the pines to “fetch a bite of cheese…
The Residents American Composers Series, begun in 1984, was perhaps the most ambitious uncompleted project this anonymous, San Francisco-based, avant-garde pop group ever announced. After they abandoned their early-’70s full-length dadaist music-video project Whatever Happened to Vileness Fats? and left the Mole Trilogy unfinished, another idea struck the Residents’ collective…
Let’s dispense with the easy digs first: The members of AC/DC are probably each old enough to be your grandpa. And at that age, the schoolboy getup preferred by Aussie axmeister Angus Young is less cute than disturbing, as are the sounds put forth by the presumably scarred mass that…
For a movement intended to destroy every bloated, redundant, stereotypical genre in its path, punk rock sure turned out to be conservative. Most bands currently operating within its boundaries wouldn’t think of trying anything new. Their idea of success isn’t exploding expectations but catering to them by slavishly imitating every…
A couple of years ago, Wolfie was a young band — a group of teenagers, really — that played lots of gigs in the Midwest and composed punky tunes that were cute and loaded with talent, yet not very emotionally or intellectually revealing. The songs were assembled from jumbled synthesizer…
You can learn a lot while circling LoDo searching for a parking spot on game day. For example, Backwash heard this factoid on NPR just the other day: Colorado is the sixth most-visited state in North America, attracting tourists from far and wide who’ve heard tales about the splendor of…
Lil’ Brian & the Zydeco Travelers, Wednesday, June 14, at Brendans Pub, are an accordion-toting crew from Barrett Station, Texas, that aims to prove that modern zydeco music can carry the same hipness quotient as other urban genres like rap and hip-hop. Foundationally, the Travelers music is rooted in crawdad…
8 Bucks Experiment, with Hate Fuck Trio, King Rat and Uphollow, Friday, June 9, at the Raven, celebrates the release of Payback, its second full-length recording, with a quadruple bill that packs a punk-rock punch. The band, which includes the brothers OMeara (songwriter/guitarist Paige, drummer Alfred and singer Evan) and…
In all likelihood, Beatle Mania, Friday, June 9, at the Bluebird Theater, wont feature Paul, Ringo or George (or even Yoko, Sean or Julian — thank goodness). But it will offer an evening of nostalgia for the Liverpool lads, courtesy of a band of wannabe mop-toppers who do a mighty…
No one’s ever accused Sascha Konietzko, the man behind the now-dead KMFDM and the very-much-alive MDFMK, of suffering from incurable optimism. Since the ’80s, he’s made hard-as-nails electro/industrial music whose lyrics focus on topics such as inhumanity and anguish, not true love and thongs. But last year’s massacre at Columbine…
In 1985, when Uz Jsme Doma first got together in the tiny border town of Teplice, north of Prague in what was then communist Czechoslovakia, the band experienced an existence that would make its American contemporaries think twice before using the word “underground” as a self-descriptor. The band’s music –…
On stage at the Eagles Lodge in Thornton, Halden Wofford and his mates in the Hi Beams (steel guitarist Bret Billings, multi-instrumentalist Kevin Yost and his wife, bassist Sandy Yost) are laying down a set of classic country music. The band anchors the far end of the lodge’s modest, low-ceilinged…
Tony Furtado is on the road again. He has been since early April, when he and his new touring band — which includes locals Erin Thorin on bass and Marc Dalio on drums — hit the highway in support of Furtado’s new self-titled release. Life in the back of a…
Todd Rundgren, Monday, June 5, at the Gothic Theatre, and Tuesday, June 6, at the Fox Theatre, is an artist who can rightfully claim the Renaissance Man title. A successful pop craftsman with the Nazz in the 60s and occasional solo hit-maker in the 70s, Rundgren took a turn for…
Psychologists have long studied the secret languages that sometimes develop between identical twins. In extreme cases, there are entire complex codes of communication shared only by the siblings — something that is sure to alternately puzzle, frustrate and fascinate the non-fluent. The Twins, with the Dinnermints, Saturday, June 3, at…
What makes a good detective? Is it the wit of Sherlock Holmes or the collected cool of Detective Steve McGarrett from Hawaii Five-0? The folks at Dave & Busters are guessing it all depends on the individual. On Saturday, June 3, theyre giving gumshoe wannabes a chance to test their…
Like all of Elliott Smith’s best songs, “Junk Bond Trader,” a key track on Figure 8, his fine new album, is more than its title indicates; instead of merely telling the story of a Wall Street bottom-feeder, it uses such an individual as a jumping-off point for a more personal…
John Mooney doesn’t give a damn about blues “purity,” whatever that is. While many of his peers have stuck to just one brand of blue-hued music to the point of repetition, Mooney has spent the past thirty years deftly melding two disparate forms: straight-from-the-fields Delta blues and complex New Orleans…
In the recent flick High Fidelity, Rob Gordon (a record-store owner played by John Cusack) muses that his excessive exposure to pop music — replete with messages of “heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss” — has perhaps contributed to his own desperate unhappiness. “Did I listen to pop music because…
Although “soundtracky” isn’t a term recognized by the folks at Webster’s, everyone knows what it means — instrumental music that may work when paired with cinematic imagery but seems empty and uninteresting without it. Detractors of Jean-Benoit Dunckel and Nicolas Godin, a French twosome collectively known as Air, have used…
Taking cues from the late Argentine tango wizard Astor Piazzolla, the three conservatory-trained East Coast musicians who make up the Tin Hat Trio continue to tinker with “world music” — and boy, do they like to tinker. Recorded almost completely without overdubs, Helium marks the skilled followup to the group’s…
