Duane Johnson Jr. occupies two worlds that most people see as mutually exclusive. By night, he is Defari Heru, a rising hip-hop star whose impressive debut album, Focused Daily, was recently issued by Tommy Boy Records. But during the day, he is simply Mr. Johnson, a 27-year old geography and…
How could anyone be surprised that Howard Stern made tactless remarks about the Columbine High School shootings during his April 21 broadcast? After all, his appeal, in large part, is based on his willingness to make tactless remarks about anything and everything, so he was simply running true to form…
If the mythology surrounding it is to be believed, the 1954 discovery of Elvis Presley turned as much on race as on talent. The story goes something like this: Sam Phillips, whose Sun Studios concentrated on songs aimed at the average rhythm-and-blues consumer, wanted to break into the musical mainstream–and…
Jim McIntyre, the brain behind Von Hemmling, lives among amps and mikes and dogs and cats at Pet Sounds, the shabby yet illustrious recording haven of the Apples and other acts affiliated with the Elephant Six imprint. In doing so, he’s grown accustomed to having indie-pop royalty traipsing through his…
Gomez is an up-and-coming English rock group, but its members don’t act like it. Their clothes aren’t terribly exciting, their music doesn’t “shimmer,” “jangle” or “pulsate” from the speakers of a dance club near you, and they resist the urge to tell the press that their British peers are either…
“I try to imagine what the scene in Denver would be like if we hadn’t been here–myself, Darrin Choice, John Chamie, Hipp-E and the other visionaries,” says Ken Hamblin III, better known as DJ K-Nee. “And I’m not certain it would be as interesting. We all saw that this music…
In conversation, bluesman R.L. Burnside exudes satisfaction. He doesn’t have an unkind word for anyone, and his comments glow with a sort of beatific acceptance: He delivers his most common replies–“Mmmmmm-hmmmmm,” “That’s right,” “Oh, yeah” and “I really believe that”–in a sweet growl, like James Earl Jones after being mellowed…
Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, Dolly Parton Trio II (Asylum) When Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt recorded the first Trio in 1987, the collaboration made sense. Harris had been building a respectable country audience, Parton had earned a couple of number-one country hits and some acting credibility in 1980’s…
Despite author Thomas Wolfe’s definitive warning, lots of people regularly try to go home again, only to find that the old place is no longer what it used to be. But not all such journeys end in disaster. Take the Smashing Pumpkins concert on April 19 at the Ogden Theatre–the…
Schrasj F (Ojet) the buddyrevelles September, November (Motorcoat) Kitty Craft Beats and Breaks From the Flower Patch (Kindercore) Masters of the Hemisphere Masters of the Hemisphere (Kindercore) Over the past several years, the buzz over indie rock has become a barely audible murmur, and for a very simple reason: The…
When it comes to the Denver club scene, the Eighties are in. Expensive venues such as Polyester’s and Lucky Star are treating expanding crowds to a diet laden with plenty of the Human League and the Cure, and nightspots associated with modern rock or current dance music, including Tracks 2000,…
Standing six-foot-seven and sporting a dark, frizzy coif straight out of the Handsome Dick Manitoba playbook, Zen Guerrilla vocalist Marcus Durant looks more like a refugee from the White Panthers than a budding soul sensation. Yet Durant insists that within his lanky, bohemian frame beats the heart of an honest-to-God…
Colorado has never provided fertile ground for independent labels: With only a few exceptions (most notably, Boulder-based W.A.R.?), most area imprints that started with high hopes wound up quickly dying on the vine. But that hasn’t stopped hearty local entrepreneurs from attempting to buck the trend–and Fort Collins’s Morris Beegle…
April 7, 1999: Prologue to the experiment: ABBA, a Swedish quartet starring Agnetha “Anna” Fältskog, Benny Andersson, Bjsrn Ulvaeus and Anni-Frid “Frida” Synni-Lyungstad-Fredriksson-Andersson, was immensely successful during the 1970s and early 1980s, when it churned out one massive smash after another. Nevertheless, the group was widely despised by critics, who…
Virginia Rodrigues Sol Negro (Hannibal) As the global village shrinks, strife seems to grow, and terrorism, trade tiffs and border skirmishes tempt us to forget about the accompanying merits of intellectual and artistic continental drift. Sure, airport lines are longer, and the economics of NAFTA are debatable. But at least…
Medeski, Martin and Wood may record for Blue Note, the most venerable of jazz labels, but the trio’s music is practically impossible to describe without using a hyphen: Sometimes it’s jazz-soul, sometimes it’s jazz-funk, sometimes it’s jazz-hip-hop, and sometimes it’s an ultra-cool orgy of all this and more, more, more…
“You know what it is about our band?” asks Marq Lyn, vocalist for the Slackers, a New York City-based ska act. “We have the be-humble-and-shut-the-fuck-up policy. If anything slightly good happens to us, that makes our day. If someone gives us half a peanut butter sandwich, that makes our day.”…
Late last November, the 15th Street Tavern, Denver’s favorite venue for ear-splitting punk, was filling up with the usual suspects: Most of the audience members sported either ripped T-shirts or chains. But did they protest when the Cherry Bomb Club, an electro-dance band, took the stage and unleashed a torrent…
Trends come and trends go–which means, no doubt, that the current swing revival is likely to become the dead-and-forgotten swing revival before too many more flicks attempting to exploit it can stiff. (Did you see Blast From the Past? Me neither.) Still, James Glader, 24, is confident that this craze…
Guitarist/vocalist Blake Schwarzenbach isn’t quite sure what to make of the “emo-core supergroup” tag journalists have bestowed upon his new project, Jets to Brazil, but it’s safe to say he doesn’t much care for it. “I think it’s a little ridiculous,” he says. “When you had a supergroup in the…
Paul Shellooe, the hard-rocking frontman and guitarist for Dirty Pool, is a software designer by day, so it’s no surprise that he’s eager to discuss his outfit’s plans for using the latest whiz-bang gadgetry to achieve success in Colorado and beyond. But that’s not to say he’s averse to more…
Some critics feel that open-mindedness is a waste of time. For instance, an ex-colleague at a Westword sister paper once pitched music editors like myself on a review of a Rolling Stones kickoff tour date by guaranteeing to rip the band a new one, despite the fact that the gig…
