How devastating was the magical musical tour 63-year-old Velvet Underground co-founder John Cale conducted at the Bluebird on Sunday? The legendary Welshman’s final song, “(I Keep a) Close Watch,” caused one young hippie girl to collapse to the floor in tears. OK, so maybe it wasn’t just the song. But Cale’s first solo concert in the Denver area since 1996 was a rare and rocking though criminally underattended musical treat.
Backed by a powerful trio of young protégés, Cale opened with Lou Reed’s “Venus in Furs” but concentrated on his own deconstructed and reinvented ’70s solo classics, with plenty of rhythmic, guitar-swirling sprinklings from his new masterpiece “Black Acetate.” The old guy’s voice and muse intact, Cale glided lithely among viola, keyboards and guitars with songs that moved just as gracefully from pure blues to lush, moody jams to string-sampled hip-hop to rockers both old (“Gun”) and new (“Perfect”). But it was the ballads that simply wrecked the Bluebird crowd (“Gravel Road”).
As he left with a kiss for the crowd, he said, “That’s the things we do in Denver when we’re alive.”
-John Moore
Iron & Wine/Calexico
Sam Beam has a beard older than the “Garden State” teenybopper who screamed, “I wanna have your baby,” as the Iron & Wine lo-fi messiah took the stage Oct. 26. Most of the kids know Beam and sister Sarah only for his Postal Service soundtrack cover, but local brimstoners Woven Hand put the fear of God into them, followed by Calexico and Iron & Wine. The constantly shifting groupings made for a trippy marathon that was alternately sleepy and sensational, though the Fillmore was clearly far too expansive a venue.
Calexico wowed with extended versions of “Not Even Stevie Nicks” and the joyous “Crystal Frontier,” which only made Beam’s hushed confessionals such as “Naked as We Came” feel like church-retreat campfire singalongs. But give Beam a band, and it turns out the reclusive basement nerd can really rock. Or at least jam. After playing all of the “In the Reins” Calexico collaboration, the bands gorgeously covered Willie Nelson’s “Always on My Mind.”
-John Moore
Devendra Banhart
At a previous stop here, Devendra Banhart sat unaccompanied and played so softly the people in the front strained to hear him. In a complete turnaround Sunday at the Fox Theatre, Banhart and his six-piece band, the Hairy Fairy, rocked loud and full and filled with festivity. He’s compared, usually inappropriately, to anyone and everyone considered an “outsider,” including Syd Barrett, Roky Erickson and Tiny Tim. But Banhart proved closer to Harry Nilsson, with songs about animals and bugs: “Little Yellow Spider” had the band hilariously impersonating the sounds of psychedelic squids, dancing crabs and sexy pigs. But it was his encore – a solo, acoustic cover of Caetano Veloso’s “Nine out of Ten” – that made Banhart seem really alive.
-Nick Groke
Larimer Lounge Halloween
Yes, it was fun seeing the Swayback dressed as some seriously sexy Draculas (one in bell-bottoms!) and the Hot IQs as the Ghostbusters, but the Larimer Lounge’s deep-into-Sunday Halloween party was most memorable for Mr. Pacman appearing as a hysterical Swedish death-metal band. Pacman’s makeup, spikes and platinum blond wig struck a fetching cross between Heidi and Gene Simmons. He sang “Happy Birthday” to Lucifer, complete with a candled cake of frosted evil, which soon was strewn all over the delirious crowd.
-John Moore
