Denver has never been widely associated with an essential rap scene. The city’s proximity to the Continental Divide leaves it just a scaled-map millimeter or two from the dead center of the country, a fact that means bad news for sushi lovers and puts rap musicians in a geographically dictated…
Various Artists Return of the grievous angel — a tribute to Gram Parsons (Almo Sounds) Before his death of an overdose in 1973 (he was 26), Gram Parsons worked with the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers and put out a couple of moderately interesting solo albums that supposedly influenced…
The place was crawling with chicks. Short, fat, tall, thin — they came in droves, making their way from the farthest reaches of distant suburbs and cities, traversing vast parking lots on foot. They came en masse like pilgrims, toting Indian blankets and sealed bottles of Evian. Some brought daughters,…
Gilberto Gil, Sunday, September 5, at Jazz Aspen at Snowmass, Tuesday, September 7, at the Fox Theatre in Boulder and Wednesday, September 8, at the Gothic Theatre in Denver, has taken his Fifties inspiration from fellow Brazilian and bossa nova legend Joao Gilberto several quantum leaps further. The guitarist, multi-instrumentalist,…
The Perry Weissman 3 at Seven South, Friday, September 3, were recently selected to perform at New York City’s infamous CMJ Music Festival later this month, and it’s raised a bit of a problem. A good problem, to be sure, but a problem nonetheless. The five-person band, which includes the…
Was it Magnet, Spin or Pulse! that first coined the insidious term “stoner rock” in an effort to describe a new sound emerging from the desert — the sound that’s at times lethargic yet prone to getting loud and sonorous at the crack of a high hat? Personally, I’m hoping…
Playing house band for the oppressed worldwide is one way that Ozomatli, an eleven-piece, L.A.-based, genre-splicing outfit, wants to party in 1999. By proudly wearing a “politics for the people” philosophy on its sleeve, the multi-cultural group is a pre-millennial answer to the infamous question posed by Los Angeles denizen…
Like a lot of guys who spend their lives toiling away in the oft-thankless world of unsigned local bands, Chuck Tinsley is looking forward to the day when music will make him rich — or at least provide him with a comfortable income. But as a guitarist in the Denver…
Trish Murphy Rubies on the Lawn (doolittle/Mercury Records) With her new release, Austin-based singer/ songwriter Trish Murphy has leapt a considerable distance. On Rubies on the Lawn, Murphy stretches her coffeehouse folkster beginnings across a decidedly more accessible landscape to create an impressive, from-the-heartland pop gem. Rubies is a scrumptious…
Just us folks: Chances are good that those who’ve frequented downtown and Capitol Hill coffeehouses during the past eight years have, at some point, been privy to the quiet stylings of singer/ songwriter Micah Ciampa. After a prolonged stint as a member of the local folkie roster, however, Ciampa has…
L7, Thursday, August 26, at the Bluebird Theater, recently shrunk to a trio when bassist Gail Greenwood left the band for geographical reasons (the band lives in L.A., Greenwood doesn’t). No matter. It doesn’t take a specialist to create the kind of raw and raunchy music these gals are famous…
Thinking Plague, 8 p.m. Wednesday, September 1, at the Mercury Cafe, released In Extremis last fall — and collected the kind of global critical praise that forces the skeptics among us to reread it as a reality check. Much like its three predecessors, the release led admirers to speak of…
You cannot pick your parents. This is one of life’s few truths, and it propels us all into a biological crapshoot wherein some are truly born lucky — and others just seem like they are. Julian Lennon didn’t ask to be born the son of Cynthia Powell and John Lennon…
There’s a good reason that so many members of the public see music critics as twerps: Plenty of us are. Scribes with pretentious stripes routinely disregard the stuff that real people enjoy hearing (regardless of its quality or lack thereof) in favor of the outré (regardless of its quality or…
Reggae music has historically been sung by the disadvantaged, and although the members of John Brown’s Body don’t reflect the standard image of the oppressed or downtrodden, they have overcome a sizable obstacle: They’re white and they’re from Boston. “It’s definitely a handicap and a challenge,” explains Kevin Kinsella, with…
Local rock-scene staples the Pin Downs are on a roll. The kind that rocks, blessedly hard. Combining big-muff pedals with a humor-tinged attitude, the all-female party-crashing punk band of guitarists Heather Dalton and Ginger Richards, bassist Sara Fischer and drummer Jen Frale has worked its way into revelers’ happy hearts…
To all you Johnny Rebs and Rottens who genuflect to the anarchist’s symbol, to every weekend “reactionary” who ever spray-painted the Hester Prynne-sized letter A in an alley, then circled the scraggly looking thing with a hearty, shitfaced laugh — listen up, little heroes: Recess is over. Your new two-headed…
Leon Huff & Gladys Knight & the Pips
As if you hadn’t noticed, the low cost of manufacturing CDs still hasn’t been passed along to the average consumer — but at least it’s inspired reissue companies to bring long-forgotten obscurities like these back to the marketplace. Here to Create Music, from 1980, is the only solo album made…
Moby
If you hope to greet the Void by hosting a rave on the rim of a crater (to paraphrase Henry Miller), the understated, rather sad-eyed Play might sound faint and indecisive compared to the multi-tracks and the single minds of the Prodigy or the Chemical Brothers. Yet Moby, the vegan/Christian/moralistic…
Michael Roberts didn’t do me any favors as my predecessor in this position. For one, he promised, though not in print, that he would review every single local release to pass through the Westword office, no matter how fleeting the mention. And so he did. Whether or not they liked…
GZA, at the Fox Theatre on Tuesday, August 24, drops lyrical moves that will keep you in check. Touring in support of his third release, Beneath the Surface, this elder statesman of the Wu Tang Clan executes lines that are both visual and abstract. For instance, the title track asks,…
Oyoyo, Friday, August 20, at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, is a Denver-based five-member percussion ensemble specializing in traditional African folk music. Leader Emei Ezidinma is Nigerian; “oyoyo” is the Yoruban word for “beauty.” The group, however, uses a pan-African assortment of instruments: the talking drum, the kalimba (thumb piano),…
