Music
Winning musicianship
To be completely candid, we missed most of the Grammy Awards a couple of weeks ago, except for the segment where the ever camera-shy Madonna seemed to be commanding a legion of worshipping satyrs, a spectacle made only more surreal with the sound off at our local gym...
Leaving on a high note
We lead angelic lives,%u2028 Yet have a merry time of it besides. We dance and we spring,%u2028 We skip and we sing.%u2028 Saint Peter in heaven looks on...
Dark times make good music
Few people would have blamed the Deftones if the group’s new CD, Diamond Eyes, had been a dark and depressing album. The fact is, much of the past decade has not been kind to the group...
Of beer and bands
Kyle Hollingsworth, keyboardist extraordinaire, sees a lot of similarities between making music and brewing beer, his two passions of late. Within each combination of hops and grains, each interjection of an off-color chord into a jam, there’s an element of chance ...
Spawning time
Succumbing to a sudden fit of retro-surfing nostalgia, we recently spun Leftover Salmon’s seminal Ask The Fish for a fresh listen. A riot of colliding strings and goofball interludes and marksman-like musicianship, the band’s first live CD, recorded at the Fox in ...
Knowledge is power
The word ‘planet’ means wanderer,” the narrator says, explaining the captivating, wandering harmonies of Gustav Holst’s popular orchestral piece The Planets. “To the ancient world, the planets were the stars that changed position, that wandered from one place to ...
Masters and mash-ups at the Colorado Music Fest
If you stop by the Colorado Music Festival (CMF) at Chautauqua this summer (June 29 through Aug. 9) and order “the usual,” you might get almost anything, from Bach to Brazilian guitars to Radiohead...
Bucking the tortured artist myth
The idea that suffering makes for great art is one of those time-honored rock ’n’ roll tropes that even made its way into the title of a 1982 Todd Rundgren album (The Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect). And while Lucinda Williams has had her share of personal ...
Pretty Lights shine at Red Rocks
Fort Collins DJ Derek Smith, aka Pretty Lights, has quietly built himself into one of the most potent DJ acts this side of the Rocky Mountains, and he has done it mostly via word of mouth and by offering all his music as free downloads from his website...
Pigs on the Wing have Animal instincts
Most iconic rock bands from the 1970s, at least those that lasted long enough to still cast a visible shadow 30 or 40 years downstream, can usually be defined by neatly circumscribed periods, whether as a result of personnel changes, commercial ascendency or artistic...
Dogs in space
When we caught up to him after a morning jog at his home in Hawaii, we expressed some interest that Evan Bartholomew (aka Bluetech) had chosen Laika, the Russian dog remembered as the first living being to be launched into earth orbit, as the title of the leadoff ...
From desert soirees to swanksville
To our great disappointment, Denver post-rock group Woodsman aren’t whittling sticks in a log cabin when Boulder Weekly reaches guitarist Trevor Peterson by phone. At the first stop of their current tour, the group finds themselves in the rather plush Hotel Congress ...
