Music

The collective lyrical output of rock and roll reads like a shopping list of things that are hard to do. Breaking up. Making up. And, inevitably, just plain old growing up. Through cracked vocal cords and hormone-scalded nerves, the Jealous Sound’s Blair Shehan came of age in Knapsack, a small…

As darkness fell on the KROQ 106.7 Weenie Roast and Blink-182 finished its goof-rock set, I waded through 50,000 drunk and disorderly concert-goers toward the dozens of bonfires dotting the lawn area of the Glen Helen Blockbuster Pavilion, about an hour’s drive from Los Angeles. Plumes of toxic black smoke…

Details magazine proclaimed I’ll Take It “the best album by a New York band since Remain in Light” — such hyperbolic gushing has been commonplace for Brooklyn’s Mink Lungs. Unlikely candidates for anti-scenester royalty — Talking Heads be hanged — the band is infinitely more adventurous than the one-note gutter…

Making terrific music is its own reward. In a way, though, it’s also the gift that keeps on taking. Excellence creates expectations of greatness every time out, and no one this side of the river Styx (not to mention the band Styx) can pull that off. As a result, good…

There’s a reason Dwight Yoakam’s recordings are the lone country albums in many a rocker’s collection. For nearly twenty years, he’s been the lone country artist making intelligent, rebellious twang that appeals to rock-and-roll sensibilities. He takes the dumb completely out of country, with music that bleeds the heart and…

Drummer Don Ogilvie has taken a pretty bumpy path through the music scenes of Denver and Chicago over the past twenty years. He started out in numerous noise bands in suburban Illinois in the mid-’80s, including a short-lived combo with Todd Rittman — later of U.S. Maple fame — called…

Long before the Butthole Surfers discovered the aural-application possibilities of orange sunshine or windowpane, a San Francisco-based blotter veteran and guitar phenom named Helios Creed co-founded Chrome in 1977, with the late Damon Edge. After launching underground-style, Stooges-inspired music that was referred to at the time (and much maligned) as…

Wanna get “Defleshed”? Enjoy being “Covered in Maggots”? If you’re in the mood for music that’s raw and wriggling, Brutal Infliction has just the thing. Debuting new songs, including the two mentioned, the Brutes will also be showing off newest member MC Trip Crazy. Recruited to “add some extra groove…

The Rasta always try to live a life within the system, at the same time living around the system,” declares Winston Rodney, the international reggae superstar better known as Burning Spear. “So he’s preventin’ himself from feedin’ the system and preventin’ the system from taking all of him. So regardless…

It’s no wonder that roots-music traditionalists don’t quite know how to take Chris Thile. Still in his early twenties, Thile is a mandolin maestro fully capable of limning acoustic classics note for note — yet he wants his group, Nickel Creek, to be known for more than gifted mimicry. Over…

There was a time not too long ago, before the plague of Good Charlotte and Sum 41, when it was still viable — even respectable — to be an underground pop-punk band. Instead of appearing on slick, big-label, CD-only releases, groups sacrificed months worth of beer money and practice-space rent…

Concept albums can be a dicey proposition for a young group. But once an act has established itself as a top-of-the-heap bluegrass-influenced jam band and has already released a few true-to-its-roots platters — not to mention live shows that draw a gaggle of free-spirited, granola-munching souls — well, what the…

Rexway’s third CD, Last Call Scars, delivers the shit-kicking twang-meets-rough-rock that the act’s fans find irresistible. A band talked about as much for its inner turmoil as its music, Rexway members Mike Mitchell, Skot Lain, Chris Dockter, Susan Phelan and Craig Dubin have managed to stop squabbling long enough to…

In recent years, the local hip-hop scene has grown; new groups and artists have sprouted in every corner of the city. Along with this growth has come opportunities for crews to strut their stuff in local clubs and as opening acts for major artists who roll through town. Roadside Profits…

It’s after 10 p.m. on a Thursday — a school night for most folks — and Herman’s Hideaway is packed with nearly 500 people being worked into a frenzy by a brand-new act. Near the end of the set, the tattooed freak show behind the mike says, “Let me clear…

These days, singer/songwriter types are a dime a dozen. There’s no shortage of one-dimensional, heartbreak-soaked troubadours saturating the sonic landscape — they’re as interchangeable as the multicolored faceplates made for cell phones. This is precisely why it’s refreshing to discover an anomaly like Las Vegas native Franky Perez. Discovered by…

Denver lost a mighty source of rock power the day the Volts disbanded. From 1991 to 2002, the quartet — led by the circuit-blowing vocalist J.R. Spiegel — was as forceful as its name, fusing rowdy Oi! and sleazy street punk into a single, sizzling shock. When Spiegel left Colorado…

Ask anyone from the ’90s music scene about Diggie Diamond, and you’ll get quite a reaction: shock, fear, awe, reverence, gagging noises. You might even be regaled with tales of a few dozen legendary gigs fraught with seared retinas, scorched lungs, ruptured eardrums and flagrant displays of genitalia. As the…

The typical artist has no head for business — which is why the typical artist is starving. Like it or not, a creative person who can use the marketing machine to his advantage (rather than allowing it to use him) is far likelier to find an audience than someone who…

It’s tempting to dismiss the Deftones’ latest effort as evidence that the band is in a holding pattern. The opening track, “Hexagram,” begins with a trademark Stephen Carpenter riff, and when the rest of the band joins him, the song lumbers around an all-too-familiar groove. With ten more songs to…