These days, John Common is pretty happy. During the past year or so, his band, Rainville, has become widely regarded as one of the more thrilling additions to the Denver scene. Along the way, he’s kept refining his approach to a wholly American songwriting style that echoes the best aspects…
These days, the bohemian types who live on the Lower East Side of New York are more likely to be addicted to hypertext than to heroin. Savvy bands understand bandwidth, and a “live performance” might mean a real-time broadcast uploaded from a Bowery bunker. At this year’s CMJ Music Marathon…
For all the differences that seem to exist between their audiences, jam bands and dance artists have more than a few things in common: Both create roving, spacey sounds that give virtue to aimlessness and repetition, and both draw audiences who use the music to channel a certain feeling –…
How about a Halloween show featuring local black-metal bands, a homophobic priest and…penises? Thats the plan for Bite My Halloweenie 2000, Tuesday, October 31, at the Gothic Theatre, with Father Cire Bentley and Powder Munki, Burn Circuit, Serberus (pictured), Filth Industry, Throat Culture and Maris the Great and the Faggots…
Sex or art, art or sex? Choose both at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Arts heavenly Exotica Erotica Ball. Earthly pleasures and erotic fantasies come together at the museums biggest and most Dionysian fundraiser, happening Friday, October 27. The historic, art-deco Boulder Theater sets the tone for the event, which…
An air of hushed tranquility cloaks the Boulder Junior Academy, an unpretentious cinder-block school in a residential section of the town whose name it sports, on this early October Sunday. A smattering of cars occupies spaces in its parking lot, and a handful of casually clad families — some carrying…
During a long-forgotten episode of American Bandstand in the late ’70s, Talking Heads bassist Tina Weymouth told Dick Clark, “We want to change the face of music” — something even Clark’s plastic surgeons might have considered a stretch. It was a bold declaration for anyone to make on national television,…
Consider, for a moment, the three long and distasteful years that have befallen the musical universe since the release of Radiohead’s succinct document of postmodern dystopia, the Grammy-winning OK Computer. Radio in 2000 is like Thom Yorke’s worst nightmare come true: A world up to its ankles in NutraSweet teen-pop…
On the surface, these recordings share nothing beyond a common label (Weed, an indie out of Berkeley, California). But a closer listen reveals at least one other similarity, not counting their quality: The performers who made the discs understand that instrumental music offers them a vast canvas on which to…
With all of the upheavals in the Denver radio market these days, the climate of competitiveness seems to have everyone ready to launch a defensive strike — even if it’s at the wrong target. On Thursday, October 5, in addition to representatives from the House of Blues and RCA Records,…
Bob Tyler, Friday, October 20, at the Bug Theatre, is a hands-down winner for best supporting musician in a local music scene. Over the past few years, Tyler has served as songwriter, backup musician and/or producer for numerous area heavies, from John Magnie and 3Twins to Marie Beer and newcomers…
It seems you cant be a member of Zeüt, Saturday, October 21, at Hermans Hideaway, with Mind Go Flip and the Choir Boys, if you dont play at least two instruments. This requirement might help explain the bands tendency toward busy, harmonic nature-core music. Its a sunny stew thats well…
Pigs must be flying. For a decade, the Wynkoop Brewing Company celebrated its anniversary with an official Running of the Pigs, a Hemingway take-off that featured a plethora of pigs hauling their well-fleshed butts — and here were talking about the media types who handled them, too — around a…
You must pay tribute,” says Jason Russell, gently grasping the base of a coconut adorned with red hair and fake eyeballs, “to the monkey head.” The head in question hangs from the rafters of a northwest Denver garage, the practice space for the Orangu-Tones, a quintet bent on reliving the…
Many an artist has enjoyed an entire career — and a lifelong income — from the lasting appeal of one smash, a single tune that somehow buried itself in the minds of listeners like a fiddler crab tunneling into sand. Unfortunately for Dale Hawkins, he’s not one of those artists…
Ask anyone involved in the underground rock scene what the future portends, and there’s a good chance they’ll sing the praises of emo, post-rock, post-hardcore, or whatever names happen to be in vogue at the moment. Call it what you will, indie rock — and all of its outgrowths –…
Most odds-and-ends collections aren’t nearly odd enough, and they generally don’t end well, either; remembering anything from the average leftovers compilation is about as easy as listing all the characters from War and Peace in alphabetical order. But there are exceptions, and this is one — a timely deck-clearing for…
Producer Joel Dorn, who founded the superb revival label 32 Jazz, is giving jazz collectors two more shots of the real thing (and the rare thing) with his initial releases on Label M. From the dusty archives of Baltimore’s old Left Bank Jazz Society, he’s plucked a wealth of jazz…
Whiskeytown is known primarily for lead singer Ryan Adams’s raw, emotional songs and often cocky swagger. Yet the question of whether that will change after the release of the band’s new album will remain unanswered until at least next year: Tied up in the Interscope/Geffen merger, the completed album is…
Two weeks ago, an item in this column mentioned that Mike “Big Mike” Colin plays bass with the excellent hip-hop and free-jazz collective, Ratiocination, a band with almost enough players to line a dugout at the World Series. Now, it appears, Colin can scratch Ratio duties off an already overfull…
San Diegos Pinback, Friday, October 13, at the 15th Street Tavern with Acrobat Down and Oer the Ramparts, combines the considerable talents of Armistead Burwell Smith IV (aka Zach), who served as the heart of Three Mile Pilot, and Robert Rulon Crow Junior. Yet unlike the heavier sounds that emanated…
Hugh Ragin is just one of the local jazz luminaries who will light up the stage at Vartans Jazz Club and Restaurant on Friday, October 13. The expressive trumpet player (and recent nominee for Best Jazz Artist in Westwords Music Awards Showcase) will be joined by excellent concert pianist Joe…
