Dick Weissman, who’s lived in Denver since 1972, is a performer, the chairman of the music and entertainment studies department at the University of Colorado-Denver, and an author of several books, including The Folk Music Sourcebook (with Larry Sandberg), Music-Making in America and The Music Business: Career Opportunities and Self-Defense,…
“The punk you see around now is the glam metal of the Nineties,” says Josh Lent, the vocalist for Clusterfux. “It’s almost to the point where it’s embarrassing to say you’re a punk, because people think of that cute little kid bouncing up and down with the pink mohawk wearing…
When musical superlatives are dished out, they usually come with qualifiers attached–the greatest rock and roll group, the top hip-hop act, and so on. There’s no shame, then, in ACubanismo!, an outfit fronted by brilliant trumpeter Jess Alemany, being characterized as the finest traditional Cuban combo on the scene today…
Last week in this space, we took a musical trip through the first half of the twentieth century–one tune at a time. This week the journey continues. In the list below, each year between 1950 and 1999 is twinned with a pop song that says something about the music scene…
Teletunes is one of the longest-running music-video programs in the country: It began appearing on PBS affiliate KBDI-TV/Channel 12 under the handle FM-TV in February 1981, a full six months before MTV debuted. But after more than eighteen years, it may–may–be headed to the scrap heap. Furthermore, transitions taking place…
Roommates Juliet Shango and Yukiko Moynihan just got fired from slinging hash at a Washington, D.C., eatery. As Moynihan puts it, “I’m just sitting at home, jobless.” Fortunately, the summer’s sultry weeks won’t find these young women moping about an apartment sans air conditioning where help-wanted ads are used for…
Composer and accordionist Guy Klucevsek makes music of a very high order–but in some ways, he sees his work as kid stuff. In 1988 he was asked to appear on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood because, as he writes in a bio wittily titled Accordion Misdemeanors: A Musical Reminiscence, the program’s producers…
Mathematicians know the next millennium doesn’t begin until January 1, 2001, but at this point, that hardly matters: The citizenry at large has decided to party a year early, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it. And what better way to anticipate the celebration of such a benchmark…
A lot has changed in downtown Denver over the past two decades or so, but there’s been at least one constant: Soapy Smith’s Eagle Bar, at 1317 14th Street. For 23 years, Dick Bacon and his wife, Beth, have run the watering hole, which has earned a deserved reputation as…
Ron Bucknam regularly plays his guitar for the benefit of pastry-noshing literati at the Tattered Cover Bookstore, and his country-swing band, the Barncats, puts a charge into folks at VFW halls. But behind this modest musician is another one–an introspective virtuoso who has bravely, maybe foolishly, dedicated himself to the…
Here’s a statement that demonstrates a keen grasp of the obvious: Most local record companies fail because of a lack of money. Realizing this, Le-Jon Vivens, LaQuin Starks and Steve Jackson, three of the men behind Under Pressure Records, went to the trouble of lining up backers before launching their…
Argan South Moroccan Motor Berber (Barbarity) I know that a lot of you have been burned by world music: You’ve picked up a supposedly catchy album after reading a rave review by a writer with a couple of tattered tour guides and a vocabulary with a glandular condition only to…
On wax, Bantam Rooster’s T. Jackson Potter comes across like a certifiable head case, whooping and hollering like a man on fire and twisting his vocal cords into all sorts of intriguingly weird positions. But away from the mike, the native Michigander is amiable, soft-spoken, even inhibited–the polar opposite of…
Seattle’s Hovercraft remains best known not for its fascinating instrumental music, but for the love life of bassist Sadie 7, aka Beth Liebling, who’s married to Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder. In fact, Vedder played drums with the instrumental trio during its 1995 tour with Mike Watt and the Foo Fighters…
From the outside, Bill Cook’s house, perched atop a heavily forested hill on the periphery of Woodland Park, near Colorado Springs, looks like a posh but typical mountain hideaway, and most of its interior follows suit. The basement, however, is a completely different story. Placed against its unfinished walls are…
Electric guitars fade up from a distance and start ringing like the chimes in rock-and-roll heaven. A moment later, a drumbeat kicks in with the force of an Oklahoma tornado while an organ blares its warning siren. Then a voice at once fragile and full of raw muscle, sweet like…
John Williams Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace–Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Sony Classical) The week before the film that birthed it arrived in theaters, the Episode I soundtrack entered the Billboard sales charts at number three, vaulting past Shania Twain and Britney Spears and lingering behind only Tim McGraw…
When Michael Chapman speaks, his words make him seem like the sagest of club veterans. “You want to get that positive response, watching people dance and go nuts to your music,” he says authoritatively. “If you’re not reading the crowd, they’re not going to respond to what you’re doing, and…
Humor is a fairly rare commodity in pop music, in part because artists who display even a modicum of it are often dismissed as wannabe comedians. Such is the lot of the Kiss Offs, a group that dares to spice its spritely sound with, of all things, entertainment value. “We…
During the early years of his career, Bob Dylan could do no wrong–but by the late Sixties, he’d figured out a way. Over the last thirty years, he’s interspersed good-to-great albums (Blood on the Tracks) with erratic but worthy curiosities (Empire Burlesque), predictable filler (Real Live) and downright stinkeroos (I’m…
“I didn’t set out to write kids’ music,” says Molly Bowers, “and I didn’t plan to do anything topical, either. I just wrote this song that was so cute and catchy that I decided to write more songs like it. And before I knew it, I had a whole album…
The Tom Guralnick Trio makes challenging music–but that doesn’t mean that Guralnick, an Albuquerque saxophonist, is insulted when people actually enjoy it. “Putting together the pieces and developing the pieces is a very collaborative, interactive process that’s really fun,” he notes. “And I think it’s okay to have fun. And…
