Blogs

Malas Semilla, Light Travels Faster and Dark Meat
August 28, 2007
The hi-dive
Better than: A psychedelic tent revival

Malas Semillas was the sound of an alternate universe where hipster culture spontaneously generated in the Appalachians, complete with irony and punk rock roots intact, but lacking all other indie touchstones. These kids pumped out hillbilly pop on banjos, mandolin, acoustic guitar and standup bass, with the occasional dollop of saw, washboard and spoons. It was silly and chock full of fun. The song about Pauly Shore and the cover of the Dead Milkmen’s “Punk Rock Girl” were fun if inessential; the cover of Ween’s “Baby Bitch” did little for me; but the original song “Bowl Me” – an innuendo and entendre-laden tune built around a bowling metaphor – was charming, catchy and funny as hell. The closer, a high-speed hoedown that references the Devil himself, was pretty fine too.

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There’s a lot more to Richard Swift than what’s in our August 30 issue. Swift himself said, “I think primarily people think of me as just some dude behind a piano singing, you know, like sad bastard songs.” Sure, his latest Dressed Up For the Underdog might be heavily steeped in Beatles-inspired melodies, with hints of Nick Drake and Elliott Smith’s moodiness, but Swift says he has plans to release two vastly different records, which draw from a larger pool of his interests, everything from Can, Kraftwerk and Aphex Twin to Link Wray, Bo Diddley and Muddy Waters. Swift also talks about the music that inspired him early on before embarking on his musical career. Here is our interview with him in its entirety.

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Jason Roth, Cap’n Fresh & the Stay Fresh Seals, and All Teeth And Knuckles
August 27, 2007
Larimer Lounge
Better than: Weeping into your Miller Lite over the incisive musings of another brilliant singer-songwriter.

Tard-tronica. Electrobotomy. Hip-schlock. Call it what you will and make of it what you will, but the deliberately dumb dancefloor detonator is back with a vengeance. Tonight’s bill at the Larimer proved there’s plenty of life left in analog synthesizers, TR-505 drum machines and intentionally clumsy white-boy raps. Blame Daft Punk. Blame LCD Soundsystem. Blame the disaffected youth who now lose more sleep over global warfare than any generation since the Cold War ended and just need something – anything – to take their minds off their troubles.

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Inland Knights & Luke Solomon
August 24, 2007
Vinyl & Two A.M.
Better than: You know what they say about half a loaf…

When something seems too good to be true, it probably is. Something like, say, getting two headlining DJs – Inland Knights and Luke Solomon in this case – at one club night. When none of them had arrived by 11 p.m., I began wondering how that was going to work. By the time Inland Knights started at midnight, I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to. At least they didn’t leave much to complain about. They played everything from typical deep housers to some hip-hop/R&B influenced tracks to some bouncy, chirpy and abstract tech house.

Their mixing skills were impeccable and they kept everything smooth and groovy throughout the night. The mood they set was great, it was well-paced and the energy was good. Sure, there were too many people sitting down and not enough people there to fill the place, but none of that was their fault. Denver just seems to go for the higher-energy, big-room stuff.

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Rock the Bells @ Red Rocks
Wednesday, August 22
Red Rocks

Better than: Ninety percent of the hip-hop you see on television and hear on the radio. This acts on this bill hardly get any radio or video play anymore.

It’s been almost ten years since a quality hip-hop festival played at Red Rocks. It was called the Smoking Grooves Tour and featured such acts as Cypress Hill, the Fugees, Gangstarr, Public Enemy, A Tribe Called Quest, Busta Rhymes, among others. Smokin’ Grooves tried to make a comeback in 2002, with fewer artists and it was held at Coors Amphitheatre. But now with the Rock the Bells tour, hip-hop heads have a chance to spend a cool summer day watching legendary acts at the best venue in the nation.

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Lez Zeppelin
Wednesday, August 22
Bluebird Theater

Slide Show

Better than: Physical graffiti in the houses of the holy when the levee breaks.

All right, first things first. Lez Zeppelin, if you can’t tell by the name, is an all-female band paying tribute to the almighty Led Zeppelin. To get anywhere near the brut force that Page, Plant, Bonham and Jones created is a Herculean task. But these gals did a pretty damn good job getting the Led out Wednesday night, their first Denver show since March.

After powering through tunes like “Immigrant Song,” “Custard Pie” and “Misty Mountain Hop” early in the set, they slowed it down a bit on “In My Time of Dying,” where guitarist Steph Paynes did some fine slide work on what looked like a Danelectro guitar. And if you’re a hardcore Zep gearhead, you might know that Page played a Danelectro on “In My Time of Dying” and on “Kashmir,” which the gals interpreted faithfully, and Helen Destroy was beating the crap out of the drums, as she was on literally every song they played. She definitely learned a few things in the Bonham school of power drumming.

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Although our August 23 interview with Tower of Power founding member Emilio Castillo mostly focused on the band’s new album, the sax player also talked about the early days of playing in Bay Area, coming in at the tail end of the psychedelic scene and having the group’s first record released on San Francisco Records, which was headed up by legendary music promoter Bill Graham. Castillo also enthusiastically recounted the first time he saw Sly Stone. Here's the interview in its entirety.

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Korn guitarist Munky appeared to be more than a little befuddled during a conversation with Westword for an August 24 profile. A sizable percentage of questions during the interview (which took place on August 1, the day after the release of Korn’s eighth studio disc, Untitled) seemed to confuse him, and several of his answers returned the favor. Even he couldn’t figure out what one of his responses meant.

That, my friends, is the story of rock.

The topics covered, more or less, in the Q&A below include Korn’s megabucks profit-sharing deal with EMI, the company that owns its label, Virgin; the members’ decision to re-record demos made with the Matrix, the songwriting crew that assisted them on their previous studio CD, See You On the Other Side; the difficulties of doing without longtime drummer David Silveria, who split shortly after the departure of guitarist Brian “Head” Welch; the ways Korn’s sound has changed now that only three of its original members (Munky, bassist Fieldy and singer Jonathan Davis) remain in the fold; Welch’s book, which details his drug addiction, depression and eventual Christian conversion; Munky’s displeasure at missing his daughter’s sixth birthday because of touring commitments; and his continuing enthusiasm for his longtime band.

Call in Munky business.

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The Dave Navarro who was interviewed by Westword for the August 23 Message column is very different from the one who chatted with the paper by phone in late 1990. During that conversation, he was slurring his words, sniffing loudly, bumping into furniture, losing track of his thoughts and otherwise acting as if he’d just shot up, which, in all likelihood, he had. Hence the headline affixed to the article that resulted: “Panic in Needle Park,” which predated Westword’s online archive, but is reproduced below.

There’s plenty of irony in the piece, not the least of which is the guitarist’s rant about hating interviews. Now, of course, a cleaned-up Navarro is the one doing the interviewing on Spread Entertainment, his program for Denver-based ManiaTV! -- a development as unexpected as his survival.

For more flashbacks, read on:

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Slide Show

“This song is not a rebel song. This song is ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday!’”

This song is beset by incorrectly tuned guitars.

But let’s not get too nitpicky about local U2 tribute band Under a Blood Red Sky’s performance of “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and the rest of their act at Red Rocks last night, a largely faithful re-creation of the original U2’s June 5, 1983 performance at the amphitheater, a now-mythical show that helped launch the Irish foursome — and the venue itself — into international stardom. Sure, Under a Blood Red Sky lead singer Billy Bunting’s Bono-mullet was a little thin on top, the Irish accents were a bit garbled and the Edge stand-in (aka “the Tedge”) flubbed a few chords. But what the group lacked in polish it made up for in heart, exhibiting the same end-of-the-world determination that helped earn U2 the title “The best band in the world.”

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Backyard Tire Fire, Year Long Disaster, Clutch
August 20, 2007
The Boulder Theater
Better than: an actual backyard tire fire or yearlong disaster

When I first saw Clutch in Austin in 1994, the audience was mostly clad in backward baseball caps and was there as an alternative to bar fighting. Elbows, grimaces and teeth flew in the perpetually swirling mosh pit. Last night’s sold-out show at the Boulder Theater, however, was quite a different scene. Through its 16-year existence, the Maryland-based heavy hardcore outfit has evolved from a relentlessly violent, hip-hop-inflected metal hybrid that presaged rap-rock to a complex, proficient, blues-based beast that appeals to a very different kind of fan. From teenagers to near-retirees, frat boys to stoners, hippies to metalheads, the crowd jockeying for drinks at the theater’s bar was even more eclectic than I’d envisioned. I decided to forego the bar ballet and made my way to the front fence at the apron of the stage, taking my place next to a Les Claypool look-a-like, who happened to be wearing a Les Claypool t-shirt.

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Pelican, Clouds, Your Black Star
August 19, 2007
Marquis Theater

Better Than: The spiciest hot wings you ever ate.

First to the stage was Louisville’s Your Black Star, a power trio that seemed to have an instrumental thing going at first, but a promising lead on some psychedelic and noisy prog rock soon turned to a short set of alt-rock confusion. The other opener, the Boston quartet Clouds, made things quite a bit more interesting. Clouds mixes thrash, punk, and classic rock into an unpredictable, throwback style that takes you on a condensed history lesson of underground heavy rock and milks something new from that synthesis.

For their headlining set, Pelican opened with the first two tracks off its new album, City of Echoes, “Bliss in Concrete” and “City of Echoes.” The post-metal, post-rock instrumental four-piece sticks to a formula that works, generally sticking to the framework of album they're touring to support. After all, why mess around; the explosive Chicago outfit makes albums meant to flow in a particular direction so sticking to the blueprint for its live show only makes sense.

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The Ron Miles Group
Saturday, August 18
Dazzle
Better than: A mint julep on a hot summer day

Trumpeter Ron Miles has style, man. And that tone, that gorgeous tone, it’s just downright classy. And to hear him do mainly a stylish, subdued set of ballads during Saturday’s 9 p.m. set, well, it was damn near the ideal setting to hear the man play.

Drummer Rudy Royston, who’s been playing with Miles off and on since 1991, started the show off with some trills, which gradually built into something of a snare solo, with sticks clicking on the on the rim. The band then joined in on the Miles original “Close,” which he recorded on Heaven, his duo album with Bill Frisell. It's a slow waltz, which mildly resembles to Burt Bacharach’s “What the World Needs Now.” Miles would toss in a few more Bacharach-isms throughout his set: here and there he added little phrases that just sound like they were pulled from the Bacharach songbook. And Miles has this knack for occasionally hitting the blue notes, those notes that sound a little bit out of key, but that definitely still work.

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Jim Bianco, Paper Bird, Bitter:Sweet
August 15, 2007
The Walnut Room
Better than: Any variety show I’ve ever seen.

Question: What do you get when you add a musical comedian, an old-timey girl group and a smooth, downtempo chanteuse? Answer: Last night’s show at the Walnut Room. It started an hour after it was supposed to and I was getting restless and cranky by the time Jim Bianco took the stage. With just his voice – a rough croon with a raspy edge – and his slight, spare guitar playing he managed to change my mood instantly. He was genuinely funny, enough so that he could have ditched the guitar and done his act as straight stand up and it would have worked. That’s a compliment to his sense of humor and connection with the audience, not a knock on his music, which was excellent. By the time he ended his set with a sing-along version of “Rainbow Connection” he’d made more than a few new fans among the audience.

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Westword’s August 16 profile of Hilary Duff finds the junior pop star touching on a number of tabloid friendly topics, including her breakup with Good Charlotte’s Joel Madden, who got over his heartbreak by quickly impregnating Nicole Richie. Below, scope the entire interview, in which the nineteen-year old emphasizes her desire to escape adolescence once and for all.

Topics include the title song from Dignity, her new CD, and how much the tune is, and isn’t, about scolding misbehaving celebrities; the disc’s jacket photo, in which its name is superimposed over a photo of Duff looking like genuine royalty, as opposed to the kind that gets slimed on Nickelodeon’s Kids Choice Awards; how songs about her parents breakup have been wrongly assumed to be comments on the Madden-Richie match; her contributions to Dignity’s songwriting, and her contention that the co-writing credits she receives are fully earned; her fragrance and clothing lines; her resistance to being seen as a brand as opposed to a human being; and War Inc., her forthcoming movie, which actually sounds like something people will fully functioning brains might want to see.

Will wonders never cease?

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