…don’t play “Stump the Band” with him for money, whatever you do. Adam Marsland, the lead singer for LA-based Cockeyed Ghost, played Mead Street Station, a cool little bar in Denver’s Highlands neighborhood, Thursday evening. In addition to doing several cuts from the new Ludlow 6:18 CD and treating us to killer covers from The Beach Boys (“Surfer Girl”), BJ
Read moreI think it was fall of 1989. My friends John and Cindy Cavanaugh called to say that “Paul’s band” was playing in Winston-Salem that night, and that they were driving up from Charlotte, and did I want to meet them for the show. Sure, what the heck. I’d been hearing about John’s old buddy Paul for a long time, and
Read moreFrom time to time somebody I know will ask if I can burn them a copy of something – I own something like 1000 CDs, and I push my tastes on others, which makes me a would-be opinion leader, I guess, and sometimes that can backfire. My gut reaction is always one of embarrassment – on the one hand, of
Read moreLullaby Pit “Best of” lists tend to suggest a theme in the popular music of the year, but 2k1 defies quick description moreso than any year in memory. No one genre dominates, although there were plenty of strong entries in everything from Power Pop to Metal. Most of the best releases were produced by independent labels, but that’s hardly a
Read moreSome of the best things in life we trip over completely by accident. A few years back a friend of mine invited me to come see his band play a warm-up gig at The Snake Pit in Denver. The headliner was Plexi, a band he was really big on, so it was one of those two bird/one stone deals. Plexi
Read moreI’ve been doing this annual CD review for several years now, even though few people notice, let alone care. So lately I’ve been pondering why I’m so obsessive about this ritual of seeking out new music, listening, buying, evaluating, ranking, and reporting, especially in a world gone so relativistic that we’re afraid to suggest that one thing is actually better
Read moreIn my not-so-humble estimation, Don Dixon is one of the four or five best producers alive. He’s twiddled the knobs for Kim Carnes, The Connells, Marshall Crenshaw, Pat DiNizio, Emmet Swimming, Guadalcanal Diary, The Pinetops, James McMurtry, The Windbreakers, Moxy Früvous, Marti Jones, Let’s Active, The Spongetones, Chris Stamey and Matthew Sweet, to name a few. He co-produced Tommy Keene’s
Read moreJeff Foster’s first band, The Right Profile, remains one of the three best bands I ever saw that never “made it.” They managed a remarkable balance of verve and melancholy, moving easily between house-shakers like “Shacktown Road” and hauntingly beautiful ballads like “Underneath the Window.” I once saw them take the stage in front of a packed, jacked house, only
Read moreL.A. pop diva Wendie Colter recently took a few moments out from the busy task of promoting her new CD, Payday, to play 22 Questions with The Lullaby Pit. Payday was #4 on the Pit’s Best CDs of 1999, and despite a complete lack of help from the corporate music complex, it’s getting spin on stations across the country. 1:
Read moreFrom a creative standpoint, the popular music industry has been on life support for some years, but I may well remember 1999 as the year when we finally pulled the sheet up over its head. There was a lot of fine music produced and released, but unless you had the time, energy, and determination to go hunting for it your
Read moreBelow is my Best CDs of the 1990s list. I never kidded myself for a second that I could produce a definitive review – if I can’t even convince myself that the list is as good as I’d like it, I can hardly fault others for disagreeing here and there, can I? In the end I wound up deciding on
Read more1998 was probably the oddest in the several years I have been doing a Top 10 list. For starters, a lot of the best stuff I heard came from new or relatively new artists. A lot of the more established artists I admire didn’t release anything in 1998, so that’s probably part of the reason, but I also suspect I’m
Read moreThis was the hardest time I’ve ever had trying to put my year-end list together. Maybe I’m not being “critical” enough or something, but I liked a lot of music this year. Also, I decided to change my format a bit. Every year I do my Top Ten, then spend the first two months of the following year finding music that
Read moreA Paper Presented to the Music Area of The Popular Culture Association April 13, 1995 Samuel R. Smith Center for Mass Media Research University of Colorado Up through The Unforgettable Fire (1984) U2 were generally regarded as relentless critics of political repression and religious/ethnic violence, especially as practiced by warring Protestant and Catholic factions in Northern Ireland. They had established
Read moreNovember, 1989 It’s a cruel crazy beautiful world One day when you wake up I will have to say goodbye It’s your world so live in it -Johnny Clegg On Tuesday, November 20 – two days before Thanksgiving – Robert Lewis, Jr., 34, was knifed to death in the parking lot of the Burlington Coat Factory in Raleigh, where he
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