Denver Music Blog

​In honor of tomorrow's Veterans Day, we'd like to honor not only those brave men and women that served our nation, but also those fictional souls that impressed upon us the spirit of valor, patriotism, sacrifice ... and entertainment value. The few, the proud, the wartime characters of American pop culture.

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Halloween, the time when adults decide to don their favorite witty getups, whether it be the intellectual "Freudian slip" or the pop culture driven "Christian Bale Yelling." We're sure some of you are short on ideas, so we've compiled a list of band inspired costumes to wear to your favorite party. So then, what are you going to be?

Better Than Ezra

​There have been a lot of bands in the history of the universe and most of them, at one point or another, have broken up. Surprisingly, we've found the majority of them have reformed despite themselves. Another surprise is the amount of bands still playing -- Better Than Ezra, Seven Mary Three, the Troggs, and the Zombies -- despite their lack of a mass audience. Last week, we waxed on our dream reunions. This week, we offer up ten bands we think should just stay dead, for one reason or another.

There's just something so refreshing about new Yorke

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It seems like we can't go a year without running into a few new supergroups popping up  to play a show or record an album. Whether it's Danger Mouse teaming up with Sparklehorse, Monsters of Folk, or, most recently, Flea and Thom Yorke, musicians are constantly looking for new ways to present their ideas and sounds. It got us wondering about what potential super groups might be waiting on the horizon, simply biding their time before a surprise show or pay-what-you-want download. Check out the ten potential collaborations we'd dreamed up after the jump and, of course, feel free to contribute some ideas of your own.

Photo by Michael Lavine

​Skinny boys in glasses, girls in knit jumpers, record collectors of all stripes, rejoice! This Saturday, October 10, college-rock heroes Yo La Tengo are bringing the noise, the melody and the irony to Denver in the best indie-when-it-meant-something show this side of the Pavement reunion.

Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley and James McNew have been consistently excellent for about twenty years, and the trio knows more about music than eight of your average rock critics. They famously host a fundraising set each year in the studio of New Jersey's WFMU where they cover call-in requests; past efforts include everything from "My Sharona" to "Raw Power" to "Meet the Mets," the fight song of the band's favorite team. Between their prolific original output and their staggering repertoire of other people's music, there are about a thousand songs you could conceivably hear on Saturday. After the jump is a list of the songs we'd like to hear. Shouting these requests at the show is highly encouraged.

Gail Butensky

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In recent history we've been treated to the reunions of Mission of Burma, Gang of Four, Antipop Consortium, among others. This year, Faith No More, Sunny Day Real Estate and Pavement got back together, and, of course, there's the ever pervasive rumors of Soundgarden reconvening at some point. But who's still left? Are there any bands out there with the majority of their members still alive that haven't reunited already? Here's the reunions we'd like to see. Check out our wish list and feel free to weigh in with yours.

​The new Billboard Hot 100 keeps coming out, and despite an alarming gain by some guy named Jay-Z, the Black Eyed Peas' "I Gotta Feeling" remains on top, further proving that the Peas are the greatest pop ensemble ever assembled (even better than those old guys above).

Don't believe that the Peas are one of the greatest pop groups ever? What follows are nine of the many otherwise acclaimed bands or musicians who've been bested by the Peas over the course of their twenty-five weeks (and counting) atop the Hot 100.

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All right, a few weeks ago we offered up our take on the ten worst moments of crossover disaster, ill-advised efforts to mate movies with music. Now it's time to look at the flip side of the coin, the ten movies in which music and Hollywood made great bedfellows, outstanding cinematic turns that were win-win in terms of elevating the film and being a boon to the artist in question. Follow the jump for the full list.

Joe Tone

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As the Guy Who Sits in the Media Tent and Updates Our Live Music Fest Coverage, there are two perks to my job:

1. Proximity to free food.
2. Opportunity to pick which photos we use in our slideshows and live-review blogs.

Monolith, like Mile High before it, served up scores of photos that captured the weekend perfectly. Here are my Ten Favorite. Be sure to click the photos to enlarge them:

Photo by Rob Lee

​There's roughly a gazillion bands playing at Monolith over the next two days and there's no way you can see them all (see, there aren't a half-gazillion hours in a day), so we've come up with this handy list of five can't-miss acts at Monolith. These are the bands that are worth stopping in to check out even if you don't much care for them -- the acts capable of so much awesome, they might just change your mind, or at least completely fucking blow it. If nothing else, you don't want to damage your hipster cred by admitting you didn't see them -- much better to say, "Yeah, I was there. Not that great," while standing with arms crossed and sporting a slight smirk/scowl on your stubbled face (or, for the ladies, your ironically blue-eye-shadowed face). Continue on through the break for our list, and don't forget to leave a comment to tell us what your top picks are.

​TV theme songs have gotten a little more hip in recent years -- from Cake lending "Short Skirt, Long Jacket" to Chuck to Lazlo Bane doing "I'm no Superman" for Scrubs, to any of the seasonal iterations of Tom Waits' "Way Down in the Hole" on The Wire.

But there was a time -- it still happens today, but to a much lesser extent -- when songs weren't borrowed from popular playlists, but written specifically for a television series. They were designed to make you identify them with their respective shows -- but they're also songs that deserve a listen once in a while by themselves.

(Fair warning: "Suicide is Painless" was written for the movie version of M.A.S.H., not the TV show, which sadly disqualifies it here. Also, the Rembrandts' "I'll Be There for You" is not on this list, even though it was written for Friends, and a huge hit besides. It was a decent song, but then the show lasted for 137 years and you want to kill yourself when you hear it.)

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With Taking Woodstock in theaters today, hippies are on our mind. Specifically those scantily clad, flowers-in-the-hair, joint-tugging types who make us children of the '80s wish we had a DeLorean, a six pack of plutonium, and plenty of road.

We're sure there are some lovable hippie chicks in this flick, but they'll be hard pressed to top these five.

​ Taking Woodstock is in theaters Friday. Maybe it will be really good, or maybe taking a stand-up comedian and sticking him in a semi-dramatic movie about Woodstock that doesn't feature any -- any! -- musical performances is a terrible idea. Still, rock 'n' roll and Hollywood have been ugly, messy bedfellows since both things started, and Taking Woodstock would have to work pretty hard to do worse than any of these moments of crossover disaster.

You may notice an overabundance of selections from a certain ten-year span in this list. Indeed, an alternate title for this list could just be, "The '80s: What the fuck were we thinking?"

Photo by Michael Alan Goldberg

Over the next couple of weeks, Backbeat will feature some Top Ten lists from around the Village Voice Media chain. Click here for previous year-in-review coverage from Backbeat and VVM.

Two young blondes with toothy smiles and hard-core work ethics, Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood, helped country expand its fan base in these years of shrinking music sales. Meanwhile, Kenny Chesney, Rascal Flatts, Alan Jackson, Toby Keith, Tim McGraw, Brad Paisley and George Strait kept filling arenas and at least maintaining their popularity on the road, if not with record sales. But as has often been the case, the best country music has little to do with what's successful in the genre. It's made by those who care more about songs and arrangements than about what the radio is playing or what sparks an arena concert. Country music's strengths come from timeless elements; the same can be said of this list of albums.

Over the next couple of weeks, Backbeat will feature some Top Ten lists from around the Village Voice Media chain. Click here for previous year-in-review coverage from Backbeat and VVM.

A couple of weeks ago, an expert on the Harry Potter series told an audience of high school kids how lucky they were to have this Big Shared Experience--these seven books and 41,000 words in common. What does Harry Potter have to do with hip-hop in 2008? In an age when many year-end lists should be subtitled "Ten More Albums You've Never Heard of and Will Never, Ever Hear," plenty.

Technology has made the world smaller, and in response, we've found smaller and smaller worlds to inhabit. Think of a specific era--in some cases, a specific artist's work from a specific era, or even a specific year--and someone, somewhere is re-creating those very sounds. Which is fine, and sometimes a lot of fun. It's just that those folks who are still striving for the Big Shared Experience were the most interesting stories of the past year in hip-hop. They were the people who believed that hip-pop didn't automatically equal T-Pain, or the real pain of automatic IQ loss.There were several such moments in 2008.

See the Top 10 after the jump ...

Over the next couple of weeks, Backbeat will feature some Top Ten lists from around the Village Voice Media chain. Click here for previous year-in-review coverage from Backbeat and VVM.

Americans who still think of Latin music as mariachi bands and gyrating Ricky Martins and Shakiras might want to lend a closer ear to the genre. This country's Hispanic population isn't just growing, it's growing more diverse. More and more unique musical styles are being gobbled up, and that should come as good news to alternative gringos hoping to spruce up their castellano. This year's Latin-music highlights come from all over the Spanish-speaking map. We'll start in the farthest geographic corner: an island in the Mediterranean.

BUIKA
Niña de Fuego
(WEA International)
Afro-Spanish artist Buika epitomizes cultural and ethnic diversity. Over three decades ago, her parents fled political turmoil in the former Spanish colony of Equatorial Guinea and made a new life for themselves in a gypsy neighborhood on the island of Mallorca. After stints as a Tina Turner impersonator in Vegas and as the vocalist on some chic house and funk albums made for the European clubs, Buika has found her niche in flamenco and Latin jazz. This year's Niña de Fuego contains many of the same gitano elements found on her successful LP Mi Niña Lola, and pushes the boundaries further by adding Mexican ranchera. Only someone as strangely bohemian as Buika could pull together these emotive styles with just the right amount of melodrama.

Over the next couple of weeks, Backbeat will feature some Top Ten lists from around the Village Voice Media chain. Click here for previous year-in-review coverage from Backbeat and VVM.

Pop music often gets a bad rap for being disposable or vapid, and in many cases that's true. (Katy Perry, Danity Kane and the Pussycat Dolls, step right up!) But every year, a few irresistible bits of innovative ear candy rocket up the charts and seep into our subconscious.

The following ten singles saturated the Top 40 -- or what passes for hit-oriented radio in this topsy-turvy musical climate -- while proving that accessibility doesn't necessarily preclude creativity.

In a year worthy of your rage, metal delivered in spades. What with the economy circling the drain and Sarah Palin coming down from the tundra and then refusing to go back, 2008's been the kind of year that really makes you want to smash your head into walls or punch random strangers in the face. Good thing there were so many awesome records available to serve as a soundtrack for exactly that kind of behavior. The following ten discs are just the tip of a very big, very heavy iceberg. Metal seems to grow stronger each year; 2009 will bring new albums by Mastodon, Deftones, Lamb of God and more. In the meantime, check these out.

Over the next couple of weeks, Backbeat will feature some Top Ten lists from around the Village Voice Media chain. Click here for previous year-in-review coverage from Backbeat and VVM.

It's time to rank the best of what went around and came around again.

BILLY JOEL
The Stranger
(Columbia/Legacy)
As punk and disco exploded, the Piano Man's deeply unhip 1978 breakthrough proved that top-shelf Broadway/Brill Building songwriting could still sell - and, occasionally, rock. "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant" and "Anthony's Song (Movin' Out)" remain priceless snapshots of Annie Hall-era NYC, the title track bares real teeth, and the Kenny Chesney fave "Only the Good Die Young" - banned from several college-radio stations for its unseemly insinuations about Catholic schoolgirls - is still a corker.

Over the next couple of weeks, Backbeat will feature some Top Ten lists from around the Village Voice Media chain. Click here for previous year-in-review coverage from Backbeat and VVM.

Picking the best folk and Americana records of the year isn't nearly as hard as discarding those great records that just didn't feel right stuck in the category. Releases by Calexico and DeVotchKa felt far too worldly to pigeonhole as folk or country, for instance, while Blitzen Trapper's fantastic Furr smells more like the Kinks than Neil Young. [Editor's note: That's why we put it on our indie-rock list.] We likewise discarded Shearwater's near-masterpiece Rook, despite the fact that the album's instrumentation includes both banjo and a hammered dulcimer. And while we certainly returned to releases by Bon Iver and Bowerbirds throughout the year, we actually heard both records last year, when they were first independently released.

Over the next couple of weeks, Backbeat will feature some Top Ten lists from around the Village Voice Media chain. Click here for previous year-in-review coverage from Backbeat and VVM.

Any knucklehead with DSL and a laptop can now make an electronic track. With a half hour of clicking and fiddling, you can sample enough cheesy beats and mashups to clog arteries from here to Berlin.

By now, hopefully you've had a chance to peruse this year's Moovers & Shakers. A lot of great stuff released this year, yeah? Too much, in fact. There were more releases that moved us than we had space in the paper. Thank God for the web, eh? As promised, here's more Moovers and Shakers picks. By no means should any of the following albums be considered also-rans. Each of the releases listed after the jump had just as big an impact on us this year as the others. Oh, and this is the first batch. Be on the lookout for more write-ups to come, all of which will be added to this post in the interest of keeping things tidy. -- Dave Herrera

Every year, as I finish up my mandatory end-of-year lists I'm struck by the fact that each year, some of my most interesting, influential and important musical experiences find themselves homeless, unlisted and unknown. Everyone wants to know the top releases of the year, top shows and similar, obvious categories. But what about the other stuff? The stuff that weighed heavily in my musical mind, yet don't fit into any of these neat, familiar categories? Well, thanks to the power of blog, where space is unlimited and talk is cheap, this year I bring you my top five list of musical miscellanea, a list of stuff that fits no other lists.

Over the next couple of weeks, Backbeat will feature some Top Ten lists from around the Village Voice Media chain. Click here for previous year-in-review coverage from Backbeat and VVM.

Hip-hop A-listers including Rick Ross, Akon and Plies were caught grossly exaggerating their gangster credentials this year. (Turns out they were painfully law-abiding. The horror!) But even if your favorite rapper wasn't caught in a lie, you can bet he or she put out a hilariously absurd record or two in 2008. Here are the most preposterous rap songs of 2008. -- Ben Westhoff

RICK ROSS, FEATURING T-PAIN
"The Boss"
(Def Jam)
Though Rick Ross claimed on his debut album, Port of Miami, to know Manuel Noriega, The Smoking Gun website found that Ross was a prison guard rather than an international drug kingpin before he was famous. Perhaps they met in the can? In any case, his assertion on "The Boss" that he "made a couple million dollars last year dealing weight" is absurd. Still, we're tempted to give him a pass on his claim that "I don't make love/Baby we make magic," because, well, we wouldn't know.

The Mile High Music fest drew a lot of interest from local music fans in '08.

This blog churned out more than 1,400 posts in 2008, about life, death, plastic surgery, and even some music. Here, in case you just joined us or are really taking stock of your year, a quick-clicking guide to the ten most popular blogs of the year. Stay tuned in '09 for even more reviews, previews, insight, and inanity.

1. AEG's Mile High Music and Arts Festival
It was all a dream ...

2. Amy Fisher, RIP
A music-scene staple ducks out far too early.

3. Q&A with Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig
So, Ezra, what kind of name is that?

4. Tickle Me Pink's bassist, Johnny Schou, found dead
Before the show went on, fans stopped to reflect.

5. Q&A With Cedric Bixler-Zavala of The Mars Volta
Hey, man, at least your name's not Ezra.

Over the next few weeks, Backbeat will feature some Top Ten lists from around the Village Voice Media chain. Today, our own Michael Roberts runs down his favorite indie albums of 2008.

In 2008, independent rock returned to the underground, where it belongs. Given the grand catastrophe that is today's record industry, most major-label executives don't have the time or energy to convince music fans they might like something a little out of the ordinary. They're too busy recycling variations on what were once sure things while desperately searching for career exit strategies that don't involve tall buildings, open windows and running leaps. As a result, fringier artists have had the opportunity to develop outside the spotlight, sans the sort of unrealistic commercial expectations that can lead to self-consciousness, compromise and a lifetime of regret. Not selling means not selling out, as the following albums demonstrate. -- Michael Roberts

In this week's Westword, Backbeat's trusty music scribes break down their favorite local albums of 2008, from Abracastabya to Yerkish. Check out their picks at westword.com/music, and check back all week for more of our favorite albums and songs of 2008. And don't forget to tune into to 101.5 FM tonight from 8-10 p.m. for Mile Hi-Fidelity. On tonight's show, we'll be talking about and playing some of our favorite music from this year's Moovers & Shakers list.