The Magnetic Fields The Charm of the Highway Strip (Merge) The 6ths Wasps’ Nests (London) The man behind both of these projects is Stephin Merritt, whose unique pairings of obvious scenarios and basic instrumentation border on pop genius. But although he claims ABBA and classic Top 40 as his primary…
“You can print this on my tombstone if I’m wrong,” says Jon E., drummer for Spoon Collection. “I’m in the right place at the right time.” Jon’s bandmates, vocalist/guitarist S’aint Willy and bassist/backup vocalist Schneid, share this sunny sentiment. They believe they’re perfect matches for each other and that this…
Judged on the most superficial level possible, KTCL’s Big Adventure, a music festival staged on June 3 at Fiddler’s Green, was a good deal. The show featured fifteen bands, most of whose performances were generous and energetic. Moreover, the ticket price (around $12) was exceedingly modest. If nothing else, it…
Uncle Joe’s Big Ol’ Driver, Wednesday, June 7, at the Mercury Cafe, plays the kind of meat-and-potatoes rock and roll that critics tend to love or hate depending upon how much they had to drink the night before. Chick Rock, the Drivers’ sophomore opus (on Headhunter Records) is no exception…
You can’t blame Micky Dolenz for being cranky. After all, he’s sitting in a hotel room in Rochester, New York, where he’s currently appearing in a production of that theatrical landmark Grease. Worse, he’s got a cough and a touch of the flu that he’s been unable to kick. He…
The music of New York-based guitarist Donald Miller and saxophonists Jim Sauter and Don Dietrich, collectively known as Borbetomagus, has been slapped with some pretty dandy labels. Industrial Strength. Punk Jazz. Trash Jazz. Thrash Jazz. Sauter acknowledges that the trio’s sound has “inspired writers to be very creative. I’ve found…
Anyone hoping to explore the width and breadth of music in general during drive time is out of luck. Over the course of the twenty-plus hours of Colorado radio analyzed for this article, we heard plenty of rock, country and pop, as well as dollops of salsa, Christian music, R&B,…
part 1 of 2 In 1978 (back when he mattered), Elvis Costello recorded “Radio, Radio,” a virulent, wide-ranging assault on the title medium. The key lines neatly encapsulated his views: “The radio is in the hands/Of such a lot of fools/ Trying to anesthetize the way that you feel.” Seventeen…
part 2 of 2PUBLIC RADIO The furor over the funding of public radio is probably fueled by ideology; the Newt Gingriches of Congress don’t like paying for what they see as NPR’s liberal bias. But setting politics aside, does Denver really need three public-radio stations? After all, a lot of…
Christie Front Drive Christie Front Drive (Caulfield) There are an oodle of pop-core bands slugging it out in the indie underworld right now, but nary a one gets to the euphoric heart of the punk-pop aesthetic quite like Denver’s Christie Front Drive. On this, their debut album, guitarist Eric Richter…
“There’s a lot of dissonance involved in our music,” notes Martyn Leaper, 26-year-old vocalist, guitarist and chief songwriter for the Denver pop trio known simply as INK. “I don’t think we can control what we’re going to do next. A lot of times, I just start fiddling with my guitar…
While rap and hip-hop remain inaudible on most radio stations, the genre continues to represent the music of choice for a hefty percentage of the under-25 crowd, whose members dump more of their cash on CDs than those in any other single group. These are the people who put Friday,…
There’s nothing like an early death to prompt critical reconsideration–and the reputation of Frank Zappa, who succumbed to cancer in late 1993 at the age of 52, has gotten a major boost as a result of this phenomenon. At the time of his passing, the music made by this grumpy…
Tricky Maxinquaye (Island) Tricky is already carrying a heavy burden: The British press has labeled him the king of trip-hop, a mixture of hip-hop, acid jazz and other compatible ingredients that’s reportedly the latest subgenre to turn England on its collective teacups. Whether any of that is true, I can’t…
Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy knows a thing or two about rock journalism. “The Flying Burrito Brothers have to be mentioned in any article about a country-rock band,” notes the singer/guitarist. “It’s like the Velvet Underground or Big Star. For rock critics, its a reference point. Which is fine. That’s cool with…
Denver’s Zoon Politikon has been playing catchy power pop in seedy area clubs and crowded living rooms since 1989, but its members still haven’t received their fair share of acclaim. Maybe this has something to do with the players’ professed laziness with regard to booking shows. Possibly it’s because the…
It was a scene to warm the heart of anyone fearful that the generation gap has widened into an unbridgeable chasm. There, on May 8, in the parking lot of McNichols Arena half an hour prior to the not-quite Led Zeppelin reunion, was a mother on the cusp of forty…
“I don’t really know any musical terms,” concedes Kembra Pfahler, the woman behind the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black. “I identify with someone like Chubby Checker, who went into rehearsal and described how he wanted a song to sound without getting technical–he would say, `Make this one sound fat and…
Bill Nelson Practically Wired, or How I Became… Guitarboy! (Gyroscope) Hard to know exactly how Nelson avoided becoming the kind of six-string hero who appears on the cover of Guitar Player two or three times a year. Maybe it’s because his best-known band, Be-Bop Deluxe, was too resolutely English for…
A confused businessman recently got lost in the Capitol Hill area. Looking for help, he stumbled into the basement of a nondescript office building, which was at that moment being used as a practice space by the Denver-based punk quintet Hell’s Half Acre. Clutching his briefcase, he looked around the…
During the mid-Seventies, a handful of New Orleans natives armed with kazoos and a small drum earned a reputation, and a few cheap thrills, by tagging along at the end of parades. Initially, this routine was considered a good-timey joke, but over the course of several years, the punchline gave…
M. Doughty, the mind behind the magnetic, brainy amalgamation called Soul Coughing, didn’t attend Juilliard or a pricey guitar institute. No, he received his musical education at the Knitting Factory, an avant-garde breeding ground in New York City. And he got paid for the privilege. “Yeah, I worked there,” Doughty…
