The Soundtrack to Your Future Unemployment: Five More Songs

We’re knee-deep into Depression 2.0. We’re running out of jobs, and we’re overwhelmed with the amount of people looking for them. You’re unemployed — or if you aren’t, then there’s a good chance that you will be, because your job can be combined with the guy in accounting and the…

Mike Jones Gives Margaret Cho a Hand

Before Margaret Cho arrived in town for the May 3 performance of her one-woman show, Beautiful, her manager contacted once-and-future masseuse Mike Jones, who’s back in Denver after putting his one-man play, Naked B4 God: Exposing the Hypocrisy of Ted Haggard, on hiatus. Cho wanted to meet Jones, the manager…

Q&A With Be Your Own Pet’s Jemina Pearl Abegg

Jemina Pearl Abegg may be the lead singer of Be Your Own Pet, a Nashville combo profiled in Westword’s May 8 edition, but she’s hardly rejected her family in favor of punk-rock mayhem. Far from it: The following conversation took place while she was riding in a car piloted by…

Do You Believe In Magic?

“Hey, you guys like magic?” It was Saturday night, and I was standing outside Scruffy Murphy’s, 2030 Larimer Street, with Chris Shelby, Dave Lamoth, Braden Rauen and Andy McQueen of sixtysixdays, a local Irish-rebel-music band taking a smoke break before starting their first set of the evening. We were catching…

DeVotchKa on NPR’s All Songs Considered and Conan

Fresh off of an overheated performance at Coachella launching its latest tour, DeVotchKa continues to garner great national exposure. Next Friday, May 16, NPR will be broadcasting the act’s Washington DC show at 9:30 Club live for its All Songs Considered program. Then, three nights later, the eve before its…

Nine Inch Nails Truly Joins the Free Download Revolution

In a recent Playlist review, I complained about the frequency with which music-scene observers equated the Nine Inch Nails set Ghosts I-IV with Radiohead’s In Rainbows during discussions about major artists releasing material for free or at radically reduced rates online — my point being that Ghosts constitutes a series…

Albert Hofmann’s Problem Child and Other Assorted Goodies

Here’s a selection of the best of last week’s music blogging from around the Village Voice chain: Learn the history of Seattle music as seen by John Roderick of The Long Winters in a special two-for-one show of love, because I somehow missed part one last week. Here are the…

Tom Waits for No One

So, the one and only Metropolitan Tom Waits, once a mainstay around these parts, has announced his summer tour plans. Guess what… no Denver date!! Two freaking shows in Phoenix (two!!), and he’s even making his way to St. Louis, but nothing for us?! Waits explains the glaring oversight routing,…

Over the Weekend…A Bevvy of Aural Pleasures

Instead of a rundown, I simply give you a list of the amazing stuff we heard and saw this weekend: Cut Copy and Black Kids @ Larimer Lounge; Kool Keith, ManeLine and the Americans @ the Oriental Theater; Destroyer and Josh Queen @ the Walnut Room, Bad Weather California, Velella…

Westword Music Showcase, Year One

Neither I nor most of the other folks who helped put together the first Westword Music Showcase had the slightest clue what we were doing — not really. It’s nothing short of a miracle, then, that the event — then called the Westword Music Awards Showcase — has not only…

A Proposed Cinco de Mayo Song for Colorado

So, when I first heard the song “Colorado” by the Tijuana-based Nortec Collective with its chorus line of “Run, Colorado! Run, Colorado!”, I thought it was either exhorting illegal immigrants to head towards our fair state or run away from it – a lyric that takes on new meaning given…

Beyond Playlist: Madonna and More

Madonna Hard Candy (Warner Bros.) Most embarrassing album cover of the year? It may only be spring, but Hard Candy’s up-front image of Madge flashing her leather-clad crotch and opening her lips like the inflatable co-star of Lars and the Real Girl will be tough to beat – and that’s…

Last Night…Oblio Duo, Vitamins, The Pseudo Dates @ Larimer Lounge

Last Night: Oblio Duo, Vitamins and the Pseudo Dates Thursday, May 1, 2008 Larimer Lounge The Pseudo Dates took to the stage with a good-time vibe that was strangely contagious, so contagious that your goodly, cynical bastard reviewer started to feel the urge to dance. With guitarist Nathan and bassist…

Last Night… Roger Waters @ Pepsi Center

Wednesday, April 30, 2008 Pepsi Center Better Than: Anything and everything you could possibly imagine — truly a don’t-miss show. What can I say about Roger Waters playing Dark Side of the Moon last night? To be honest, I’m kind of at a loss for the right words. There’s awesome,…