In the world of hip hop, too many performers think that playing sampled funk grooves behind their own bad raps magically transforms them into composers. Mel Simpson, the producer and conceptualist behind the jazzy hip-hop project called Us3, disagrees. He feels that brand of rap is a rip. “So many…
Marilyn Manson Portrait of an American Family (Interscope/nothing) If this is a legitimate effort to piss people off, it’s a failure: Although borrowing pseudonyms from serial killers (bandmembers here include Daisy Berkowitz, Madonna Wayne Gacy and Twiggy Ramirez) may upset a certain percentage of elderly schoolteachers, the rest of us…
To Rivers Cuomo, singer and guitarist for the L.A.-based guitar pop band called Weezer, the glass is half empty. “I’m a real pessimist,” Cuomo says in a dour monotone. “When we put out this record, I thought everyone would completely ignore it.” The four Weezers (Cuomo, bassist Matt Sharp, drummer…
As members of the Lost Angel Stone Ensemble, Boulderites Tom Wasinger and Jesse Manno play with rocks–literally. With the exception of melodic fragments produced on a small jade ocarina, their music is performed entirely on resonating stones. “There’s not anybody who makes instruments out of rocks anywhere in the world–at…
Just like the lunchroom staple for which he’s named, Meat Loaf is a mixture of many elements. The one he seems to prefer is rebellion: By way of explaining the course of his career to date, the once-rotund retro rocker says, “I’ve always swum upstream.” Born in Texas, the former…
There was a time when the idea of the Who’s vocalist, Roger Daltrey, teaming in concert with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra to perform “the songs of Pete Townshend” would have sounded like a comic’s satirical prediction. During their heyday, Sixties rockers struck most of us as the last performers who…
“We’re the most insecure band in Denver,” says Heather Dalton, vocalist for the Shrinking Violets. Adds Alex Slagg, the group’s guitarist: “I think one of our strengths is that we’re our own worst critics as far as stage performance, writing and practicing.” That’s saying something in light of the reviews…
James Brown knows what he wants to say and he’s going to say it whether you like it or not. Ask him virtually any question and he’s apt to answer with something like this: “I’m a man from the other side of the tracks who’s come back and changed the…
“In Ted’s world, we want the death penalty to be imposed at the scene of the crime,” says veteran guitar-slinger Ted Nugent in a voice somewhere between a bark and a howl. “The only good bad guy is a dead bad guy. You want to rape my daughter, you’re a…
Vince Bell Phoenix (Watermelon) Bell’s singing is quite ordinary: He delivers most of these eleven fascinating songs in a voice he seemingly forgot to clear several years ago. And that, believe it or don’t, is one of the primary reasons Phoenix is so effective. The musicians who accompany this obscure…
Keb’ Mo’, Monday, July 25, at the Fox Theatre, with Koko Taylor, got his start as a multitalented L.A. session player and sideman to Papa John Creach and Monk Higgins. His first album, Rainmaker, appeared in 1980 on Chocolate City, a defunct division of Casablanca Records, under his given name,…
Speaking about the work of the San Francisco-based band known as Swell, bassist Monte Vallier says, “I think it’s really colorful music, and I hope listeners would just let it take them away on a journey. Or else put it in the car stereo, open all the windows and drive…
Brian Setzer, former leader of the Stray Cats, admits that he’s no jazz-and-blues expert. “I don’t know a lot of those songs, to be honest with you,” he says. “But I think all that stuff is great, and it is there as a foundation. You take from it and learn…
“I’ve been playing golf for a little over a year,” says Vinnie Paul, drummer and producer for the Texas thrash-metal band called Pantera, “and if I hit the first ball of the day good, I can hit them all good all day long. The key is that I generally don’t…
“It’s strange to think that a year from now I might be doing what the people that I think of as rock stars are doing.” So says Rob Schneider, the unassuming frontman for the Denver-based pop quartet called the Apples. But while it’s presently difficult to imagine Schneider and his…
Rolling Stones Voodoo Lounge (Virgin) Of course, no one expected that this band would sound all that different without Bill Wyman–except maybe Bill Wyman, that is. And it doesn’t: Clearly, the Stones that remain have decided that they’re better off doing what they’ve done since time immemorial. Hence, Mick Jagger…
Jeff Buckley, Thursday, July 14, at the Bug, is the son of Sixties contemporary-folk stalwart Tim Buckley, but you’d never know it by listening to his music. Although this Manhattan-based singer/songwriter (second from left) usually performs as a coffeehouse solo act, his angelic avant-rock compositions have more in common with…
Many of us who grew up in the Seventies are convinced that the pop music of that decade is universally wretched. Of course, this isn’t entirely true, but it is true enough: Listen to most of the smashes from that era and you’ll find it all but impossible not to…
King Sunny Ade was worldbeat before worldbeat was cool. A legend in his native Nigeria, where he began working as a professional musician more than a quarter century ago, Ade made his American debut in 1983 and quickly became a cause celebre among aficionados of African styles. His first tour…
Slim Cessna, leader and namesake of the Denver-based combo Slim Cessna’s Auto Club, is sitting in the cozy living room of his Englewood home, listening to a Lefty Frizzell record with a beatific smile on his face. His wife, Victoria, isn’t nearly so happy. She loves Frizzell, too, but she…
Michael Hill’s Blues Mob Bloodlines (Alligator) In blues circles, Michael Hill is being lauded as a musical revolutionary, and given how resistant to change most of the genre’s practitioners are, maybe he is. This young guitarist is no James “Blood” Ulmer (he’s clearly interested in selling a few records), but…
Call the Denver rock scene incestuous and you’ll likely get no argument from the members of Somebody’s Sister. In retelling the group’s history, founders/ spouses Doug and Annette Conlon drop more band names than the autobiography of professional groupie Pamela Des Barres. Doug, in particular, has plenty of experience on…
