Music

There’s a handwritten notice taped to the window of the Squire Lounge, a not-necessarily clean, well-lighted (with fluorescent bulbs) place on Colfax at Williams, just across the street from one of the city’s few 24-hour Taco Bells. In a Magic Marker scrawl, the sign advises patrons that, owing to a…

Jim Carroll’s ties to Colorado go beyond a few spoken-word performances at Boulder’s Naropa Institute with the late Allen Ginsberg. Thanks to the black trenchcoat worn by Leonardo DiCaprio in a disloyal film adaptation of Carroll’s 1978 cult memoir, The Basketball Diaries, Carroll found himself unfairly connected to the rampage…

Mosaic’s sound is not for the jamophobic: The band’s overarching embrace of blues, funk and even countrified rock lies squarely on the freewheelin’, groove-happy side of the stylistic divide. But the dueling-frontwoman dynamic that exists between vocalist Jessica Goodkin and guitarist/vocalist Wendy De Rosa works as a grounding agent: Goodkin,…

In the last ten months, the public image of the New York Police Department and former mayor Rudy Giuliani have undergone makeovers as drastic as those performed on tawdry daytime talk shows, where delinquent reprobates turn into model citizens with the help of some cosmetic rehabilitation. This point is not…

Joel Haertling doesn’t lack high-art credentials. A slight, brisk-mannered fellow with a weakness for vintage suits and snappy fedoras, he’s worked alongside director Stan Brakhage on a number of projects, even joining the well-known avant-gardist at a series of European festivals where celluloid offerings made by Haertling were also viewed…

With impeccable timing, Syd Barrett appeared at Abbey Road studios in the spring of 1975 after seven years in a sanatorium. His old bandmates were adding the finishing touches to “Shine On, You Crazy Diamond” — a tribute to Barrett’s drug-enhanced schizophrenia and the lengthy centerpiece of Wish You Were…

In some ways, artists whose debuts are lousy, or competent, or fairly strong but not fabulous, have an easier time of it than do performers who knock the cover off the ball during their first at-bat. After all, no one counts on acts that occupy the vast qualitative middle ground…

Can the music be called Brit pop if the musicians in question take more influences from the Mississippi Delta than from their Liverpool-area origins? Lacking a better term, Gomez describes its music as “psychedelic blues.” And while there’s no easy way to explain the trippy country-blues-electronica-folk-rock genre melt that defines…

Electronic-music promoters have had a tough go of things in Denver for the last couple of years, ever since a statewide crackdown on clandestine events pushed most parties up from the underground and into more conventional venues. Today’s club events may lack the spontaneous, kitchen-sink-and-disco-ball thrill of the golden age…

The band’s name is shorter by three letters — namely R, E and O — but its songs are getting longer. Though Speedealer used to play twenty songs in under fifteen minutes, its new album, Second Sight, showcases more finesse, maturity and songwriting depth. Some songs on the album even…

Craving a little Rock Soup? The title of the debut CD by Concrete Sandwich is partly a description of the hodgepodge of musical influences working upon the Denver trio. It’s also a recommendation for an appropriate side dish. A hard-rock-and-loud-guitar outfit that’s been plugging away in the local music circuit…

Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock were once known as the Flatlanders. But truth be told, they’ve hardly used the name since 1973, when their debut, Jimmie Dale and the Flatlanders, was released — exclusively on eight-track, believe it or not — to little acclaim and fewer sales…

More likely to set fire to the Punk Inc. bandwagon than jump on it, the Emmas are throwbacks to a different time — when young misfits on society’s fringes created simple, squalid, stripped-down rock and musical proficiency was a damning trait. Favoring prickly attitude over technical talent, the Denver-based band…

Dean Fertita, songwriter and lead guitarist for Detroit-based pop group the Waxwings, might be the least career-minded musician this side of Guided by Voices’ Bob Pollard to make a great album. Fortunately, he has luck on his side — as evidenced by the chance way in which his band wound…

The Athens, Georgia-based duo Jucifer an alt-metal combo comprising Amber Valentine on guitar and her boyfriend, Ed Livengood, on drums mixes up a lethal cocktail of punk, heavy metal and plain ol buzz-saw rawk, redefining Southern gothic. The couple self-released a debut album in 1998 titled Calling All Cars on…

Worldly and wild, MaggieJack mixes funky-feeling Latin and African grooves into a unique concoction. Lyrically, the band offers a rootsy environmental message; it’s music to make you think as you dance. Led by the boisterous Lisa Maria Maestas, who sings lead and plays a variety of percussion instruments — including…

It could have been a beautiful score. “The guy in front of me was dancing around, and out of his pocket came a vial of my drug,” recalls Steve. “It was sitting on the floor in front of me. I was looking at it.” For many years, Steve was the…

Earlier this year, Tony Hajjar was in Vancouver, recording a new album with his band, which is both exactly where he should have been and not where you’d expect. Let’s back up. In 2000, At the Drive-In, an El Paso quintet featuring Hajjar on drums, released Relationship of Command, the…

It’s a buyer’s market for jam-band fans as the ranks of musicians with heroic endurance have swelled in the years since the Grateful Dead went belly-up and Phish went on permanent hiatus. Everyone from Les Claypool to that kid down the street is in a group these days. The challenge…