The annual Westword Music Showcase enjoyed a bonus for this year’s event on June 25: Temperate weather and enough attendance to support the musicians without overwhelming the casual music enthusiast.
The day’s bulging lineup featuring around 60 local bands on nine stages in the Golden Triangle neighborhood. Highlights included:
Wisecracking DJ duo White Girl Lust cultivated a killer, dual-format dance music recipe. Vinyl traditionalists might snub the Milk Bar regulars for overly strategic selections, but Saturday’s hip-hop/rock mash-up was a head-turner.
Fort Collins cello-punks Matson Jones should be applauded for falling out of their tour van and onto the showcase stage. Their set fused familiar tracks from the group’s CD with new songs featuring more sweeping, soulful percussion and Bjork-sounding lyricism than their earlier material.
DJs continued spinning at La Rumba as teen rock crooner Aubrey Collins took the stage. That was jarring, but Collins lit up the room anyway like an amped-up Alanis Morissette. Her songwriting should bloom nicely once the performer bites off a wee bit more life experience.
The Swayback’s disco-punk was tighter and more focused than during other recent shows.
Love.45’s nice-guy vibe surfaces in the band’s catchy emo-rock. Unclear on Saturday was whether working with 3 Doors Down guitarist Chris Henderson on their new CD has resulted in more substance.
Let’s hope anyone curious about where old-school cats and hip-hop heads hid among this indie rock/electronica-heavy crowd found the rooftop scene at Vinyl and the blues-centric party at the Milk Bar. Those sites provided the kind of eclecticism that makes this event special.
– Elana Ashanti Jefferson
Jonathan Richman
“To win in love, you must surrender,” sang Jonathan Richman in a criminally underattended Tuesday-night show at Boulder’s Fox Theatre. To win at a Jonathan Richman show – as the former Modern Lovers frontman has proven in a combo with longtime drummer Tommy Larkins – you just have to show up.
A few notes into any of Richman’s songs – about Sunday afternoons, insecure 19-year-olds, changes in the seasons or dancing in a lesbian bar – and any audience cynicism vanished. There isn’t a more sincere performer in any popular medium.
Richman’s ability to say things like “the next song is a sad song,” and then pull it off without sentimentality, plastered a collective smile on the audience. Some jingle-bell solos, cowbell breakdowns and the occasional impromptu two-step reinforced Richman’s own advice: “If you’re angry, then you can’t surrender.” The crowd left happy.
– Nick Groke
Steel Pulse
The near-capacity concert on July 25 at Cervantes Masterpiece Ballroom featured none of the theatrical costuming that characterized live Steel Pulse in the 1970s and ’80s.
But that didn’t keep one of reggae’s most successful and recognizable acts from serving up a medley of crowd-pleasing classics including “Worth His Weight in Gold (Rally Round)” and “Roller Skates,” along with poignant, timely songs like “No More Weapons” from last year’s Grammy-nominated CD “African Holocaust.”
The devotees who turned out for this show sang out loud during complete stanzas, one of many indications that although the band is grayer and their ‘locks nattier than at the dawn of their career, Steel Pulse’s protest reggae is as relevant and popular as ever.
– Elana Ashanti Jefferson
