Journalists like yours truly are fond of claiming that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but that’s not always the case–and Prince Roger Nelson can prove it. He almost single-handedly made pop music in the Eighties tolerable, but as the decade wore on and his eccentricities mounted, critics and…
Many of the pop sounds that crowd the airwaves are not so much the spawn of earlier eras as they are slightly embellished clones of their forebears. Make no mistake–the many genres that are competing in this fin de siecle revue are valid, with rich histories. But all too often,…
Although numerous reggae lovers feel that 55-year-old Justin Hinds is one of the best vocalists in the music’s history, only a handful of Americans are familiar with him–and many of them know him better as a hotelier than as a singer. “I have a big house out in the country,…
Singer-songwriter Jeb Loy Nichols is flattered that many of those who’ve heard his new CD, Lover’s Knot, feel that his writing is poetic. But that doesn’t mean he does. “I don’t write poetry; I write lyrics,” he says. “And the lyrics that I write are very structurally concerned with being…
Tony Villanueva, singer and guitarist for the Texas-based Derailers, sports a hairdo like no other. Buzzed close on top, left long and slick on the sides, it’s the quintessential anti-pompadour, more Glenn Ford and Fuller Brush than Elvis Presley and pomade. “A ‘Hollywood flat top’ is what my barber Pete…
In 1977, when Gary Givant got his first job as a DJ, his mother wished he would get a real job instead. Two decades later, she’s still wishing. In a profession where career longevity is often measured in months rather than years, Givant remains a powerful force on the Denver…
Contests: We’re chock-full of them. When the members of the Reejers decided to enter the Jim Beam One Shot to Stardom contest earlier this year, none of them had the slightest expectation that doing so would lead to anything; as guitarist Nick Iurato notes, “We didn’t think we had much…
Bob Dylan Time Out of Mind (Columbia) There’s a federal statute prohibiting anyone who doesn’t admire Bob Dylan from becoming a rock critic, so it’s no surprise that I’m crazy about a great many of his recordings. Highway 61 Revisited and The Basement Tapes are my favorites, followed by Bringing…
Puff Daddy & the Family’s No Way Out is as stunningly slack a piece of work as has ever been issued by a major rap act. Puff Daddy, born Sean Combs, has one of the weakest verbal flows of all time: He mouths wan rhymes in a pinched, charisma-free monotone…
During the course of an average set, the Boulder-dwelling white boys in Wojo play more funky music than Wild Cherry did during its entire career. In this regard, they’re little different from peers in seemingly hundreds of lousy Front Range groups. So why do these other acts suck while Wojo…
The members of Denver’s thriving jazz scene are a varied lot. But musicians like Ginger Baker, Ron Miles, Hugh Ragin, Art Lande, Joe Bonner, Geoff Cleveland, Sam Coffman and University of Colorado jazz-studies head Greg Carroll have one thing in common: their fondness for bassist Artie Moore. A native Coloradan,…
There was agony and ecstasy at the third annual Westword Music Awards Showcase. And I should know: Of the 41 sets offered up by a like number of acts at various LoDo nightspots on Sunday, September 21, I caught 37 of them. Being a glass-is-half-empty kinda guy, I was distressed…
At this point, more people have heard of The Great Milenko, the fourth CD by the Insane Clown Posse, than have actually heard it. The disc gained notoriety earlier this year when powerful agents of Disney-owned Hollywood Records, the firm that originally agreed to issue it, balked at putting their…
Oasis Be Here Now (Epic) Many reviewers tackling this disc have complained that it’s too derivative. Well, duh. You’re likelier to get a lie-detector test from John Ramsey than originality from these blokes. But such sniping entirely misses the point of Oasis. The Gallagher brothers, Liam and Noel, aren’t trying…
At 22, Ryan Adams, frontman for the Raleigh, North Carolina-based band Whiskeytown, has already penned more songs than most tunesmiths do in a lifetime. And even he’s not sure how he’s done it. “Songs just come to me,” he insists. “I don’t really try to write them.” Maybe not, but…
In the middle of a late August afternoon, members of Denver’s Elephant 6 collective mill sleepily about the duplex shared by Robert Schneider and Hilarie Sidney, both members of the Apples. The musicians, including Athens, Georgia-based singer-songwriter Jeff Mangum and horn-player Scott Spillane of the critically acclaimed group Neutral Milk…
Elsewhere in this issue, you will find the mammoth guide to the third annual Westword Music Awards Showcase, featuring profiles of all 65 of the event’s nominees. Included in this roster is an update about the Samples, who are among the five aspirants in the Favorite Major Label Act category;…
In 1958, Ronnie Dawson, a nineteen-year-old Dallas native, cut “Rockin’ Bones,” a wildcat anthem about boogying beyond the grave whose refrain boasted, “There’s still a lot of rhythm in these rockin’ bones.” Almost forty years later, Dawson has reached an age when most of his peers are rocking in chairs,…
Now in its third year, the Westword Music Awards Showcase is rapidly becoming a Denver tradition. But it seems like only yesterday that it was nothing more than an idea. In 1995, several Westworders wondered what we could do to raise the profile of local music in Denver. From these…
Carla Bozulich, lead singer and primary songwriter for Los Angeles’s Geraldine Fibbers, is in a drab New York City hotel room, waiting to cut Kevin Fitzgerald’s hair. Fitzgerald, the Fibbers’ drummer, is not the only bandmember whose noggin Bozulich trims on a regular basis; she’s also sheared the follicles of…
As any lover of the blues realizes, one of the music’s principal themes is love gone bad. It’s a subject with which Chicago-based bluesman Son Seals is extremely familiar. After all, he was shot in the face on January 5 of this year, and the alleged gunwoman was his estranged…
By almost any measure, Wayne Shorter, 64, is among the most influential jazz musicians of the past two generations. The saxophonist first made his mark during a late Fifties/early Sixties tenure with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Then, in 1964, he took on the nearly impossible task of filling the chair…
