Phish Story: Bootlegged Phish merchandise presented to courts

This week’s cover story, “Phish Story,” outlines how bands, specifically Colorado favorites Phish, battle the parking lot bootleggers who make money — some it defend as a way to keep following the band on tour, while others says it’s profit-driven — off the band’s likeness, name and image. Below are…

Phish Story: View the injunctions that keep Phish bootleggers at bay

Dave Anver, the pony-tailed man in this video from Phish’s show at Dick’s on Friday, September 2, is the subject of this week’s Westword cover story, “Phish Story.” Anver says his job is “serving federal injunctions against people for selling counterfeit merchandise,” but his methods came into question after the…

A Tribe Called Quest’s The Low End Theory is 20 years old

On September 24, 1991, A Tribe Called Quest released The Low End Theory, a beautiful fusion of hip-hop, jazz, and esoteric lyrics aimed at a new generation of hip-hop. Twenty years later, the album sounds just the same in 2011, as it did, frankly, whenever you heard it. Inspiring such…

Andy Cabic of Vetiver on songwriting and Michael Hurley

Andy Cabic of Vetiver (due tonight at The Bluebird Theater) started out in more rock-oriented bands when he was a college student in North Carolina in the 1990s, rubbing shoulders with some of the great underground bands of the era, as will be outlined below…

T. Rex’s Electric Warrior turns forty on Saturday

As a record, T. Rex’s Electric Warrior wears both the flickering flame of ageless cool and the glaring time stamp of what was 1971. Flagged as the entry point for glam rock, this second record for T. Rex (the sixth, technically speaking, as the band endured line-up changes and a…

Ween’s The Pod turns twenty years old today

Twenty years after its release, it’s no wonder that many still consider The Pod to be Ween’s most challenging album. Released on September 20, 1991, less than two years after the band’s freshman release, GodWeenSatan: The Oneness, the 23-track EP took the group’s flair for surreal sounds and heady humor…

JT Nolan of Beats Noir on making a hip-hop hybrid

Although JT Nolan, who made his guitar debut at thirteen by playing Van Halen’s “Eruption,” and Paul Mulikin, who plays for the Boulder Philharmonic, have know each for a decade, they never imagined starting a hip-hop project until last year when they started passing ideas back and forth. The duo…

Five songs that foreshadowed 2Pac’s death

On this day fifteen years ago, Tupac Shakur was gunned down on the Las Vegas strip while riding in a car driven by Marion “Suge” Knight. The seeming culmination of a media hyped East Coast vs West Coast rivalry, the murder of 2Pac has been shrouded in mystery and conspiracy…