Okay, let’s get this out of the way right from the start. For years, I’ve had a crush on Keanu Reeves. My infatuation hasn’t blinded me to Reeves’s limitations: I didn’t come out of the 1994 film Little Buddha, in which Keanu portrayed Prince Siddhartha, declaring him to be the…
When Chuck Tinsley, guitarist for the Denver-based bluegrass act High Plains Tradition, talks about close-harmony singing, the accent is on “close.” In performance, Tinsley and his mates (mandolinist Doug Elrick, bassist Kenny Pabst and banjo player Dan Carter) croon while standing around a lone microphone. This approach makes for tight…
On the surface, the hip-hop revolution seems to be making precious little progress along the Denver-Boulder corridor. While national artists pass through on a semi-regular basis (witness the July 21 Smokin’ Grooves festival at Red Rocks), the area has not spawned an indigenous rap act that’s achieved anything like widespread…
Foo Fighters The Colour and the Shape (Capitol) Like most of you out there, I figured that the self-titled debut by the Foo Fighters would be on par with a Ringo Starr solo album, so the quality of the disc came as a pleasant surprise. However, the recording’s strength meant…
Like most Colorado jazz musicians with a taste for experimental sounds, multi-instrumentalist Geoff Cleveland puts food in his belly by playing mainstream and straightahead jazz in area clubs. Doing so is not a chore for him: “When I’ve been away from it for a while, like I have been recently,…
For the first time in months, the Apples are back in town–but if you miss their appearance Sunday, July 20, at the Fox Theatre with Neutral Milk Hotel and Sissy Fuzz, you won’t get another chance to see them for a while. “Oh, my gosh, we’ve got so much to…
Ahmir Khalib-Thompson, aka ?uestlove, drummer and bandleader of the hip-hop combo called the Roots, has been among the few rap personalities to actively criticize some of his peers for talking trash, endorsing anti-intellectualism and promoting a criminal lifestyle guaranteed to result in the bodies of more young men littering inner-city…
Sleater-Kinney Dig Me Out (Kill Rock Stars) When a band has been hyped as relentlessly as this one has, there’s always a risk that heightened expectations will lead to profound disappointment. After all, Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein, Corin Tucker and Janet Weiss aren’t doing anything that won’t be done tonight at…
Long before the word “Americana” defined a radio format, guitarist Dave Alvin was leading a musical cattle drive whose path is still being followed by performers caught up in the current alt-country groundswell. The Blasters, which Alvin formed in 1980 with his brother, vocalist Phil Alvin, delivered rousing romps that…
Whether you love him or loathe him, you can’t deny that South Africa-born Dave Matthews has become one of the most popular performers in contemporary music, inspiring the sort of fanatical support that has led to comparisons of his self-named band with the grandfather of all cult acts, the Grateful…
The most recent Denver appearances by Spell, including a June 28 date at Seven South, were the band’s first as a free agent in quite a while. Which means, as you might have guessed, that the act’s relationship with Island Records is over. Guitarist Tim Beckman, who plays with bassist…
The artistic history of the twentieth century is dominated by the transformation of low art (creative enterprises that deliberately or unintentionally break the rules of the established order) into high art (types of expression that are regarded by members of the intelligentsia and other ministers of culture as timeless, spiritually…
Joey D’Ambrosio makes no bones about his band’s place in music history. “We were the first rock-and-roll band to ever be signed to a major label, and the first rock-and-roll band to ever have a hit,” he says. “We were also the first to have a song in a feature…
“We’re not rock stars,” contends Bill Buffo, drummer for Kindred, a collection of teenage rockers based in Louisville. “We don’t, like, walk around all cocky and stuff like we’re these big musicians, you know?” Vocalist Cody Qualls seconds Buffo’s emotion. He maintains that he’s “a dork” at Fairview, the high…
When Under the Table and Dreaming first appeared in 1994, it garnered mostly positive reviews: People hailed it as sporting “a beguiling sound all its own,” while the New York Post dubbed it “hypnotic.” But within a matter of months, all that changed. In the years since, People called Matthews’s…
Last year, Jason Thirsk, onetime bass player for the Los Angeles-based punk quartet Pennywise, shot himself in the head and died. It was the kind of terrible event from which many groups never recover. But as Pennywise vocalist Jim Lindberg tells it, the other members of the band were determined…
This week’s Playlist (see page 82) looks at three veteran entertainers–Paul McCartney, James Taylor and John Fogerty–who see new recordings as the best way to keep themselves in the public eye. Other folks with decades of stagework under their belts prefer to accomplish this goal via live appearances. After all,…
The year was 1982, and Andy Partridge should have been on the cusp of stardom. Although the albums Drums and Wires and Black Sea (issued in 1979 and 1980, respectively) did not earn planetary fame for his band, XTC, they attracted a sizable cult following that seemed likely to grow…
As he prepares to perform at Thornton Fest, an annual event in the metro-area suburb, Denver’s Bob Haworth, clad in patriotic garb that includes a stars-and-stripes stovepipe hat and red, white and blue boots, quickly inventories the weapons in his musical arsenal. “There’s one,” he says, kicking his leg to…
John Fogerty Blue Moon Swamp (Warner Bros.) James Taylor Hourglass (Columbia) Paul McCartney Flaming Pie (Capitol) With rock and roll well past its fortieth birthday by now, the notion of the style being exclusively the province of the young is pretty much dead. But whether those of us who have…
Link Wray is American to the bone. “I’m half Shawnee Indian, you know,” he declares, his heavily accented voice imprinted with the unmistakable twang associated with his hometown of Dunn, North Carolina. But even though his guitar playing on his trademark Fifties instrumental, “Rumble,” laid the groundwork for hard rock,…
Throughout his remarkable career, Tito Puente–the Magnificent Timbalero who at age 74 is the undisputed king of Latin music–has made music shot through with joy. But he has seldom exhibited such effervescence to the media. Legions of journalists floored by his impatient manner have branded him a terrible grouch, a…
