Page not found | Colorado Music Experience https://colomusic.org/ Colorado Has a Story to Tell Thu, 29 Feb 2024 20:58:54 +0000 en-US hourly 1 The Colorado Music Experience, a non-profit organization established to preserve the legacy of Colorado music, serves as a repository for informational and archival resources and presents them in intriguing, engaging and entertaining ways. Page not found | Colorado Music Experience yes episodic Page not found | Colorado Music Experience admin@colomusic.org admin@colomusic.org (Page not found | Colorado Music Experience) Colorado Has a Story to Tell Page not found | Colorado Music Experience https://colomusic.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/colorado-music-experience-3000x3000a.jpg https://colomusic.org Red Rocks Amphitheatre 2007-2022 https://colomusic.org/photo/red-rocks-amphitheatre-2007-2022/ Thu, 29 Feb 2024 20:05:29 +0000 https://colomusic.org/?p=8593 Having shot hundreds of concerts as a house photographer at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Lisa Siciliano has generously culled images from her voluminous collection in this gallery for Colorado Music Experience.

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GALLERY: Red Rocks Amphitheatre 2007-2022

Photography by Lisa Siciliano

Self-taught Boulder-based photographer Lisa Siciliano shoots entirely on black-and-white film, with a distinct style of tone and texture that has gained national attention for her company, Dog Daze Photo. Having shot hundreds of concerts as a house photographer at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Siciliano has generously culled images from her voluminous collection in this gallery for Colorado Music Experience.

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R.I.P. Mojo Nixon https://colomusic.org/blog/r-i-p-mojo-nixon/ Fri, 09 Feb 2024 16:28:57 +0000 https://colomusic.org/?p=8585 Rock eccentric Mojo Nixon—a motor-mouthed guitarist and singer-songwriter and nutcase radio personality—died on February 8, 2024, aboard a country-music cruise. He was 66.

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Rock eccentric Mojo Nixon—a motor-mouthed guitarist and singer-songwriter and nutcase radio personality—died on February 8, 2024, aboard a country-music cruise. He was 66.

Nixon had always been gonzo. Using his real name, Kirby McMillan, he lived in Denver circa 1980-81. “I was a young man with no plan,” he recalled when his 1988 tour brought him to Denver’s Casino Cabaret. “I was in VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America, a domestic service agency akin to the Peace Corps), and they said I could go to Colorado. I thought, ‘Hunter Thompson lives in Colorado, and Gary Hart the sex machine lives in Colorado—I guess I can go there.’

As a member of Zebra 123, he was questioned by the U.S. Secret Service for the punk band’s part in the Assassination Ball at the notorious Capitol Hill club, Malfunction Junction. “It took place November 22, 1980, which happened to be the anniversary of Kennedy being caught in the triangulation there at the grassy knoll,” he recalled. “Zebra 123 had been banned from everywhere. We weren’t skinny-tie new-wave cute, we were pissed off—three chords and a cloud of dust. We got together with two other bands and decided to put on our own show. This girlfriend of mine took a picture of Carter and Reagan—the election was going on then—and made it look as if they’d been shot from below and their heads were exploding, not unlike JFK’s. That got the Secret Service all over us. They came and gave us a big lecture, and they didn’t like our show. So there’s a file on me somewhere.

“(Then) I went to New Orleans and had the Mojo Nixon revelation. I was told to change my name and bring pop culturecide to the world.”

In 1983, the iconoclastic musician teamed with washboard player Skid Roper in San Diego to begin his assault on the American public’s sensibilities, delivering his obnoxious diatribes in a stomping roots-rock format. “It’s what I do best, a kind of spontaneous, profane thing,” he admitted.

Nixon got away with such subversive lyrics as “I saw Allah at an Arby’s” and “the Dow Jones can suck my bone.” He wrote a delicate love-letter ditty to MTV veejay Martha Quinn (“Stuffing Martha’s Muffin”) and a topical ode to the just-say-no crowd, “I Ain’t Gonna Piss in No Jar.”

Nixon’s declamations usually didn’t qualify as commercial fare, but he scored a novelty hit in 1987 with the epic “Elvis Is Everywhere,” a disrespectfully exaggerated tribute that caught on during the 10th anniversary of the King’s death. “He’s in your cheeseburgers, he’s in your mom,” he ranted to a rockabilly beat. The lyrics cited Elvis as being responsible for the Bermuda Triangle (“Elvis needs boats!”) and as being in everyone from bag ladies to Joan Rivers—although in Rivers’ case, he was trying to get out.

In 1989, Nixon performed at Denver’s Aztlan Theater and at Boulder’s Tulagi, and his Elvis watch continued. “629-239-KING” was an honest-to-goodness phone number tied to an answering machine with a plea for Elvis to phone home and for callers to leave messages about Elvis sightings.

“It was in my house, but now it’s set up where paid professionals are monitoring it,” he crowed. “It’s always busy, but a lot of people aren’t leaving messages—the weak, the puny, the pusillanimous just giggle and hang up. But one in 10 calls is a certified raving nut/lunatic/psychopath who should probably be locked up. That makes me feel good.”

Nixon’s raucous social commentary was also featured on “Debbie Gibson Is Pregnant with My Two-Headed Love Child.” “We made love 14 hours straight,” he insisted. “She’s denying that she’s incubating the incubus, but there’s even a slight chance that Debbie will be in the video.” Nixon had become a fixture on MTV, but the network decided not to air the clip.

Nixon appeared onscreen with Dennis Quaid in Great Balls of Fire, playing the drummer James Van Eaton in Jerry Lee Lewis’ band. “Jerry Lee can’t separate when he’s a nut and not a nut—shooting his wife or talking to God, it’s the same thing,” he allowed. “It’s almost like I have a career now. Before, I was in the bleachers, and now I’m in left field. But I’m still not running the basepaths like Poison—I’m in the corner taking bets from Pete Rose.”

In 1990, Nixon performed at the Gothic Theatre, singing the cruelly honest “Don Henley Must Die”—“He’s a tortured artist/Used to be in the Eagles/Now he whines like a wounded beagle.” His record company claimed it had to remove a sticker (a round picture of Henley with a line through it and containing the warning “Please Don’t Play ‘Don Henley Must Die’—It Might Upset Him”) from the album due to “legal saber-rattling from a certain powerful record industry mogul.” The label said the mogul (undoubtedly Eagles manager Irving Azoff) feared—correctly—the sticker might actually have the opposite result and encourage airplay.

“I’d love to have Don Henley come and play a few songs with me in front of 500 crazed Mojo fans,” Nixon said. “We probably agree on a lot of left-wing political issues.” Sure enough, in 1992, Henley appeared in the audience at one of Nixon’s Texas shows, climbed onto the stage and instigated a rowdy rendition of the song.

Like most in the industry, Nixon wasn’t above a bit of seasonal exploitation. At a 1992 performance at the Mercury Café, he and his band the Toadliquors performed material from an album called Horny Holidays. “You can’t find it in the big chains,” he said, “but it’s in the weird record stores—the ones run by guys with the funny haircuts, who’ve got things pierced that you didn’t know you could pierce.”

For the past two decades, the rabble-rousing musician shifted his focus to radio, joining a show on SiriusXM satellite radio’s Outlaw Country channel in 2005, “The Loon in the Afternoon.” He suffered cardiac arrest after performing a show on the Outlaw Country Cruise, an annual music event where he served as a co-host and regular performer.

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R.I.P. Wayne Kramer https://colomusic.org/blog/r-i-p-wayne-kramer/ Mon, 05 Feb 2024 17:41:13 +0000 https://colomusic.org/?p=8576 Wayne Kramer, the co-founding guitarist of the seminal rock band MC5, whose social activism carried on throughout his lengthy solo career, died on February 2, 2024, after battling pancreatic cancer. He was 75.

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Wayne Kramer, the co-founding guitarist of the seminal rock band MC5, whose social activism carried on throughout his lengthy solo career, died on February 2, 2024, after battling pancreatic cancer. He was 75.

Kramer roused the rabble long ahead of his time, one of a handful of guitar players who changed the direction of rock music from his early days in the MC5. Though the storied group’s lifespan was brief, its influence was vast, providing the prototype for what would later divide into both the heavy-metal camp and the ’70s punk-rock revolution. Formed in Detroit when rage and uprising was tearing apart the city, the MC5 first rose to fame as the cultural spearhead of John Sinclair’s White Panther Party, whose radical politics cost the band its first record deal.

The MC5 battled its high-energy course through three albums—notably the incendiary 1969 debut Kick Out the Jams, whose expletive-inclusive title track put the band in hot water immediately, and Back in the USA, produced by critic Jon Landau before he shepherded Bruce Springsteen’s career. Kramer and his bandmates brought flash and fury to performances, from riots and street parties to legendary psychedelic venues such as Detroit’s Grande Ballroom and New York’s Fillmore East to some of the great open-air festivals of the time.

But the members found themselves ignored by the mainstream, slugging it out in the no-man’s-land between the commercial music industry and political extremism. The MC5 burned hot—and, by 1972, burned out. Kramer went downhill for years, including a high-profile stint in federal prison for dealing cocaine and a decades-long war with his personal demons.

The new millennium signaled a rebirth for Kramer as a happy and healthy solo artist, writing and producing projects and launching a label. In 2002, he promoted his loose ’n’ loud Adult World album with a club tour, hitting the Bluebird Theater in Denver.

“It was a long road,” he said. “I got off track for a while. I’m an alcoholic and a drug addict, and if I’m in the active part of that disease, it’s a full-time job. So a lot of those years, nothing got read and nothing got written and records didn’t get made. In the process of getting sober, I realized our time here is finite. If I’m going to make any mark, I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

Kramer still wanted to rock hard, but his lyrics touched on thoughtful, deliberate topics, among them a mid-century noir fiction writer (“Nelson Algren Stopped By,” featuring X-Mars-X, a Chicago avant-jazz group) and Fidel Castro (“Love, Fidel’). “I was intrigued with the idea that Fidel Castro was having an affair with this wife of a bourgeois doctor in Havana society,” he said. “I always loved Fidel—he’s one of my old revolutionary heroes. But to find out how human he was, too, that song had to be written. I write ’em because I have to.”

Kramer continued to rage against the machine. A dollar from every ticket sold on his tour went to the West Memphis Three Defense Fund, to aid three young men who were convicted in 1994 of murdering three 8-year-olds (supporters believed their conviction was in error and blamed “Satanic panic” due to the defendants’ alleged Satanic practices). Adult World was released on Kramer’s own MuscleTone records.

“You gotta get up in the morning and go to work, nothing but,” Kramer said. “And I’m loving it. We went to the (Small Business Administration), which I find ironic—here’s the same government that in the ’70s locked me up, and today is giving me a small business loan to start a record company. I feel like Don King—‘Only in America! Land of opportunity! Horatio Alger!’ They required us to go to business school, and I thought that was going to be a holy bore, and it was anything but—the instructors were high-end corporate consultants, very sharp. It was fantastic to learn why people really buy the things they buy, because I always thought everybody bought things according to price. But if that was true, we’d all eat at Taco Bell and drive Yugos.

“Ultimately, I would like to be the guy that could say yes. Maybe take these years that I’ve been in this game and apply them to good purpose, to help somebody else’s music find an audience.”

And that he did, spending the last two decades walking the talk. In addition to numerous musical endeavors, he served as an advocate for Jail Guitar Doors—a charity, named for the 1978 Clash song, that provides musical equipment to prisoners as a means of rehabilitation.

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R.I.P. Jimmy Buffett https://colomusic.org/blog/r-i-p-jimmy-buffett/ Mon, 04 Sep 2023 05:35:52 +0000 https://colomusic.org/?p=8318 Singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett, whose brand of laid-back island escapism on hits like “Margaritaville” and “Cheeseburger in Paradise” made him a hero to devoted fans known as Parrot Heads, died on September 1, 2023.

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Singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett, whose brand of laid-back island escapism on hits like “Margaritaville” and “Cheeseburger in Paradise” made him a hero to devoted fans known as Parrot Heads, died on September 1, 2023.

Raised in Alabama, Buffett had never seen the mountains until a friend from Colorado’s Timberline Rose turned him on to the Rockies in the early ’70s. “I had been up to Montana to visit people, but I hadn’t spent a long period of time out West,” Buffett said. “Denver was the first place I went on tour—I got out of humidity and came to the mountains to play. The Cafe York on Colfax was my first gig in Colorado.”

Dressed in Levis and a cowboy shirt, his hair long, Buffett carried his two Martin guitars from the small coffeehouses to college campuses. There, with a distinctive southern-flavored accent, he entertained. “No flashing diamond rings, no skin-tight tuxedo, no Las Vegas marquees,” he said. “I lived in a little sleazy hotel in metropolitan Denver, and then I went to the mountains, as everybody has done—up to Evergreen, Bailey, then Breckenridge where I did the summer mountain circuit, having a glorious time. I wound up the tour in downtown Pueblo, not known as the most beautiful spot in Colorado. But seeing every side of Colorado eventually led to me settling there for a while.

“Circa 1971, when I was doing my mountain touring summers in Colorado. I’d gone out to San Francisco and was living in a Howard Johnson’s in Marin County. I left my girlfriend, who later became my wife, in Aspen. I was thinking about her and I wrote ‘Come Monday.’” The song became Buffett’s first hit single in 1974. The song “A Mile High in Denver” eventually appeared on Buffett’s Before the Beach album. 

The artist made his home in Aspen for many years before relocating to the Caribbean. “Most people always consider going to Colorado for the winter, but my attachment was a summertime thing,” he testified, having made yet another survey of Aspen’s bars. “There’s so much to do.”

With the million-selling Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes, Buffett’s following had swelled gradually to reach major proportions. “Margaritaville” was a perfect example of his charming brand of let’s-go-down-to-the-Caribbean lifestyle, and its huge popularity shot him into the national spotlight and cemented his status as a Colorado favorite. He considered his Red Rocks Amphitheatre show in 1977 as the greatest of his career to that point. For his 1978 concert at McNichols Sports Arena, Dan Fogelberg came down off his mountain to join the band for an encore; Buffett had the entire audience hanging on his every word. His appearance at the CU Events Center in 1982 was notable as singer Katy Moffatt returned to Colorado as a backup singer in his entourage.

By 1985, Buffett was still a performing animal first and foremost, maintaining his status as a top-drawing concert attraction. As part of his show at Denver’s Mile High Stadium, the Denver Symphony Orchestra joined him and his Coral Reefer Band on stage for three songs. But he’d recently diversified—he’d finished a screenplay for a long-rumored film version of Margaritaville and opened a store in Key West called Margaritaville, selling all sorts of Buffett paraphernalia and merchandise, including his own line of “Caribbean Soul” clothing. His Last Mango in Paris album contained an entry form to win a cruise aboard Buffett’s yacht for three days.

But radio ignored his music in the ’80s. “It stands for the quality of our stage show that when the record business went a different direction from where we were, we kept going,” he shrugged. “Hey, you know me—I never work too hard. When the weather’s beautiful, I’m on my way to the golf course.”

In 1986, for a special Sunday afternoon concert, the only daytime gig on his Floridays tour, 9,000 Parrot Heads crammed into Red Rocks Amphitheater in the midday heat. “They know every word to every song I ever wrote,” he marveled. “They seem to be relatively normal people most of the time—but when they come to my shows, they put on their ‘feathers’ and go nuts.” The show resembled an oversized backyard barbeque—the Hawaiian shirts were off, imbibing was mandatory—and Buffett maintained his usual upbeat atmosphere for his following of “cultural outpatients.” “I haven’t seen this much white meat since Thanksgiving,” he surmised.

The tropical rocker performed two shows at Denver’s Fiddler’s Green in 1988. “You can be the president of the band or work at the 7-Eleven, but on that day when I come to town, if you’re a Parrot Head, you can act pretty insane—and get away with it.” The “son of a son of a sailor” had added a new element to his lifestyle by piloting his own seaplane, a Lake Aircraft Renegade. “Flying gives you total freedom,” he said. “I haven’t given up sailing, but when you’re up there, you can really let go of things. The plane’s opened up—pardon the pun—a lot of horizons for me.”

Many fans assumed Buffett was the laid-back, carefree character portrayed in his songs, but his protean output revealed an industrious side. He was also an author (The Jolly Mon, a children’s book), an environmentalist (chairing and doing major fundraising on the Save the Manatee committee) and a restaurateur (his “Margaritaville Café”).

“I basically run it like a boat,” he said of his business empire. “The secret is to find competent people to work for you, to keep it within a family. A lot of folks who were on the road with me for years decided they didn’t want to tour anymore, so they stay home and run the Florida businesses for me.” He had aborted plans for his Margaritaville movie. “I’m gonna take a little more time off next year and work on my book, because with a book you don’t have to have meetings with accountants and lawyers. If I want Godzilla to eat the conch train, they can’t tell me it costs too much.”

His 1989 summer tour came to Denver’s Fiddler’s Green Amphitheater for two sold-out shows. “This is the 17th consecutive year I’ve gone out on tour and wound up in Colorado,” he said. “I’m glad people have liked me for so long, because I don’t want to remake myself. But even when you’re sailing in one direction, you still have to tack a lot. In other words, every now and then you’ve got to scrape the roux off the bottom of the gumbo pot—it makes it better.”

He was so pleased with his 17th album, Off to See the Lizard, that he finished a collection of 16 short stories that Harcourt Books published, titled Tales from Margaritaville. “I wanted to be a writer long before I ever thought about music, so I’m real proud. I finally used my journalism degree (from the University of Southern Mississippi). I forgot how much motivation putting Catholic guilt in front of a deadline was.”

At a winter book signing at Lakeside Mall, 1,500 people came in freezing snow. “It was overpowering how everybody expressed their opinion as to where I should play in Denver—which is Red Rocks. It was definitely on their minds, so I listened intently to them. If we’d have gone back to Fiddler’s Green, I think people would have started not coming. I wanted to play Red Rocks if I could get reserved seating instead of general admission, because G.A. is a combat zone in the front rows. It’s fine if people want to camp out all day, but if that’s what I’ve got to play over to get to the other 90 percent, it’s hell up there. I know reserved seating makes for a better show.”

And that’s what he got for two nights at Red Rocks in 1990. “I saw some shows this year that my daughter is interested in. I won’t name names, but one begins with an ‘M’ and ends with an ‘a.’ And the lack of true performing sense that’s out there really dawned on me. A show is considered good if somebody actually sings live! I guess I’m showing my age, but to me, lip-synching in performance is appalling, the lamest excuse. It’s just fear—the point of being a live performer is taking the risk that anything can happen.” Instead of playing golf or sailing before showing up for days of rehearsal, he worked for weeks enhancing his show, dissecting harmonies and beefing up theatrics. “My daughter paid me the ultimate compliment. She said, ‘Dad, it sounds so good they’re gonna think you’re lip-synching.”

Buffett did return to Fiddler’s Green for two nights in 1992. While delegates at the Republican convention in Houston were supporting President Bush, the sold-out audiences at Fiddler’s boosted the campaign of another nominee with “Jimmy Buffett for President” bumper stickers. “My success is still unexplainable. I defy all odds—no hit singles, no videos, and I’m the top concert draw in the country. I’ve done it my way—I haven’t taken a summer off in 20 years, and it’s paid off. I’ve regenerated my audience—I’m 45 and the demographics at my shows are getting younger. I’ve got the war babies’ babies.”  He was playing “A Mile High in Denver” in his sets. “It’s dated, but sort of funny—I guess you could say I hear the potential,” he laughed.

By 1994, when he played Fiddler’s Green for two nights, he was a record company CEO (his Margaritaville Records) and a best-selling author (Where Is Joe Merchant?, his novel about a seaplane pilot investigating the disappearance of a rock star in the Caribbean). And he’d begun working with Herman Wouk on a stage musical based on Don’t Stop the Carnival, Wouk’s 1965 novel about a Broadway press agent who quits his job and buys an island hotel hoping to find paradise (he doesn’t).

Fans saw snow on the ground three days before Buffett’s two performances at Fiddler’s Green in 1996. “The October outdoor dates don’t bother me,” he said, wondering if the Parrot Heads would turn into Penguin Heads and the drinks they dragged out of their coolers would be frozen margaritas. But his musical with Wouk opened in April 1997 at the Coconut Grove Theater in Miami and had a seven-week run.

“I had no expertise in the theater, but it hasn’t been that hard to cross over,” he said before previews. “I’ve got 30 years of successfully navigating the waters of rock ’n’ roll, which is pretty similar. I said going in, ‘There’s nothing that I have not seen in maintaining a band that they could throw at me,’ and, so far, it’s rung true. My experience lies in the fact that I believe I’m a good showman, and that’s why I love musical theater as a consumer.”

By 1999, only six authors had reached No. 1 on both the New York Times’ fiction and non-fiction lists: Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, William Styron, Irving Wallace, Dr. Seuss—and Buffett. Where Is Joe Merchant? had achieved No. 1 in 1993, and he reappeared at the top with A Pirate Looks at Fifty, a prose documentation of a three-week, 17,000-mile trip around the Southern hemisphere he took with his family upon turning 50 on Christmas Day 1996.

“It’s funny that I’ve never won anything for music, but the awards are selling out venues and going to the top of the best-seller list and selling tens of thousands of hardback books. You’re reaching and pleasing your audience. I’ve always run on my own set of rules and bucked the establishment in every way—but not head-on. I just wanted to do what I wanted to do. But when all of a sudden they can’t deny the fact that you’re successful—yeah, there’s a great bit of satisfaction.

“I don’t consider myself a musician—in the lineage from theologians, we’re descendants of court jesters. Our job is to make people happy. It’s not to save the world. The core of what I do is entertain. I can entertain on stage, or I can entertain in a book now.”

By 2002, Buffett didn’t expect to receive airplay between the teen-pop stars and rap-rockers of the world, but his ability to draw audiences hadn’t diminished. He did a show at Pepsi Center in 2003, and it was like his previous tours. Otherwise normal human beings came arrayed in hula skirts and coconut bras—women included. They drank beer until their aim got fuzzy, then hurled beach balls at the stage. They danced the land shark.

“I’m simply a working guy who gets up there to do a show and give everybody the bang for their buck—Southern work ethic meets Catholic upbringing,” he said with a laugh. “There’s no end in sight, so I’m going to ride it, keep doing exactly what I’m doing. People will tell you when they’re tired of you. You can never please everybody at once—they’re going to bitch about anything from ticket prices to not getting tickets to whether you’re doing their favorite songs. But as long as 99 percent of the people talk about how much fun they have, I’ve got to think I’m doing something right!

“How much more do I need? Nothing. But if you’re somebody that loves what you do, why would you quit? (Football coach) Don Shula once told me, ‘Jimmy, do it as long as you can. There are only so many fishing and golf tournaments you can go to.’”

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Purnell Steen https://colomusic.org/podcast/purnell-steen/ Mon, 14 Aug 2023 17:45:12 +0000 https://colomusic.org/?p=8303 The renowned jazz pianist preserves and plays the music of Denver’s legendary Five Points neighborhood.

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Born in 1941, Purnell Steen grew up in Denver as a student of classical piano and part of a musical dynasty, with cousins including 5-time Grammy Award-winning vocalist Dianne Reeves; keyboardist, composer and producer George Duke; saxophonist Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson; and legendary bassist Charlie Burrell. Between the 1920s and 1950s, the Five Points neighborhood was a sanctuary for the African American community and the heart of Denver’s thriving jazz community, with over fifty bars and clubs playing host to local players and all the greats, from Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday to Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald. Jack Kerouac called the cultural and entertainment mecca the “Harlem of the West.” For nearly 40 years, with his bands Le Jazz Machine and the Five Points Ambassadors, Steen has been a favorite on the Denver scene, dedicated to preserving and playing the “Five Points style” of jazz at clubs and festivals. In September 2022, the Ambassadors toured Denver’s sister city, Brest, France, as part of a cultural exchange.

Time Code

Purnell talks to G. Brown about the influence of his cousin Charlie Burrell, who broke the color barrier in symphony music (2:50); growing up in Denver (7:10); the legacy of George Morrison, who played a major role in the careers of many Black musicians (13:41); the development of the Five Points neighborhood and jazz scene (16:43); his accomplished relatives (22:40); studying with Dr. Antonia Brico, whose most famous student was folk singer Judy Collins (28:15); returning to Denver to resume his musical career after a tour of duty with the US Army and having lived in Germany as a civilian (32:08); his intersecting passions for the Denver Broncos, good barbeque and Willie Nelson (33:20); performing as the leader of Le Jazz Machine and the Five Points Ambassadors (36:11) and why Denver is one of the best places to hear live jazz (41:21).

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The renowned jazz pianist preserves and plays the music of Denver’s legendary Five Points neighborhood. The renowned jazz pianist preserves and plays the music of Denver’s legendary Five Points neighborhood. Page not found | Colorado Music Experience 39:19
R.I.P. Robbie Robertson https://colomusic.org/blog/r-i-p-robbie-robertson/ Thu, 10 Aug 2023 17:18:16 +0000 https://colomusic.org/?p=8274 Robbie Robertson, the legendary guitarist and songwriter who led the Band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, died at age 80 on August 9, 2023.

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Robbie Robertson, the legendary guitarist and songwriter who led the Band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, died at age 80 on August 9, 2023.

Robertson had the magical skill to evoke places and people of early rural America with such Band classics as “The Weight” and “Up on Cripple Creek.”

“I have great gratitude and respect for the musical journey that got me here,” Robertson said over breakfast at Denver’s Brown Palace Hotel in 1998. “But I’m not real good at retracing my footsteps. One of the things that I’m thankful for is my curiosity factor. What makes me uncomfortable is not knowing what’s going on in music. I can’t hide under a rock. A lot of my friends from my generation decided a few years back that everything happening now is shit, and they just don’t listen or acknowledge it. Well, it isn’t for me.”

Robertson devoted the middle years of his career to the moody, atmospheric byways of popular music, making nods to his Native American roots. He had long hoped for a project to explore the music of indigenous Americans. He was half-Mohawk—his mother was raised on the Six Nations of the Grand River reserve in Canada. He formed a group called the Red Road Ensemble for The Native Americans, his soundtrack to a six-hour TBS documentary series by the same name in 1994.

“In the late ’60s, it was easier to find some ‘juice’ to take out of the air—there was incredible music coming from every crack in the woodwork,” he recalled. “Now I don’t have the same kind of juice. I’ve got to challenge myself. Rather than Paul Simon going to Brazil or Peter Gabriel going to Africa, what’s wrong with helping some people who live right here? It’s about time somebody made the effort to send out a taste to the world.

“I thought that the documentary was honorable, based on the fact that Native Americans would be speaking on their own behalf. It’s giving me the opportunity to make a record that’s been building in me ever since I was a little kid. We all try to find some events in our lives that give us inner satisfaction. This was it for me, a calling.”

Using Native Americans at all levels of production, Robertson teamed with a variety of talent. “For months, I listened to thousands of pieces of music—a lot of it is very local, you can only buy it on the reservation where it’s made. There are 400 nations. At the end, I thought, ‘Well, I’m the guy—I’m the foremost authority on Native American music in the whole world, thank you!’ Well, I’m not, but I felt that way.”

Robertson, who went into the project “thinking in traditional terms,” said he soon “discovered you can’t pretend it’s 100 years ago—you can only be inspired by that. We live here and we naturally think that Native American music is the cliched stuff we hear in movies, that the people live on the plains or in the woods. But I recorded in Manhattan—all of the people I worked with are very contemporary in what they do.”

When we spoke, more than two decades had passed since the Band had broken up. Robertson said he wasn’t the impediment to a reunion—it was Levon Helm, who accused Robertson in a book of taking sole credit for many collaboratively composed Band songs. In 1993, Helm, Rick Danko and Garth Hudson had put out Jericho, the first Band studio album since 1977.

“I have no problem with those people making a living—it’s with my blessing,” Robertson said. “I’m not interested in doing anything with the Band anymore—a lot of it has to do with Richard (Manuel, who committed suicide in 1986) not being there. But I’d hate to be carrying around that bitterness and anger. I didn’t even know it was there. If I was in Levon’s shoes, I’d be bitter, too. Things haven’t gone great for him, and he’s trying to blame me for it. But sour grapes just doesn’t play.”

On 1998’s Contact from the Underworld of Redboy, Robertson set out to plumb more of his past. “I returned to the reservation, and it triggered all these things that I felt I had to deal with. In Indian country, these traditions are all handed down to you like a gift. And you’re not supposed to hoard the gift, you’re supposed to pass it on. I had taken the gift and stored it in a trunk in the attic. And it didn’t feel good to me.

“And I didn’t know how to share it without it coming off wrong—a few years ago, I didn’t feel that there was a receptive place in people’s hearts. But the stars have moved into position or something. This is original roots music of North America that’s been so secretive, so sacred, so private. And to think that people would not be interested in it and embrace it is strange.”

Robertson crafted a unique, charming album that owed very little to the Band’s enduring sound. The music blended traditional Indian tribal chants and rhythms with an up-to-the-minute electronic and ambient vibe interspersed with Robertson’s coarse guitar phrases and vocals. It was disquieting and richly textured.

“When Elvis Presley mixed country music and R&B, or when I first played with Bob Dylan and we were mixing folk and electric music—on paper, it didn’t look right. And not only that, people resented the change. But when those sparks do fly, it’s mystical. This was the experience of a lifetime. We didn’t have another record to compare it to. We knew that we were making a record that people had not heard before. That’s the good news. And the bad news, too, because it’s a little scary. You’re treading in unknown territory. So your barometer can only be, ‘Is this working for me emotionally, pushing buttons that send chills down my spine?’ That’s the reason we all like music.”

The rhythms came courtesy of London club underground deejay/mixer/producer Howie B (whose credits included U2, Bjork and Massive Attack) and Marius de Vries (the Romeo & Juliet soundtrack). A 53-year-old rock star keeping company with cool beat programmers, Robertson was also executive producer of the Phenomenon soundtrack—he put Eric Clapton and producer Babyface together with the song “Change the World,” which subsequently won Grammy Awards for Song of the Year and Record of the Year. He also rekindled a creative relationship with director Martin Scorsese, producing the soundtrack to his film Casino.

But Robertson hadn’t toured since “The Last Waltz,” the band’s final concert held in San Francisco on Thanksgiving of 1976. “Touring was like smoking,” Robertson said. “It was unhealthy for me. So I gave it up—so badly that I made a movie and a three-record disc about it. That lifestyle is tremendously beneficial financially, but I’m not interested in it. People go on the road and say, ‘Oh, I just love to feel the audience.’ Trust me—I did it for a long time and made that connection, but it becomes a business. And when it was no longer a growing process, I thought, ‘I want off this train.’ And then to come back and say, ‘Just kidding’?

“When it became clear to me that I needed to make this record, it wasn’t a decision that I weighted up in dollars and cents. It was, ‘What’s the best medicine for your soul?’ Nobody is telling me what to do. I don’t have to account for some pop formula. I’m fortunate enough to be in this free zone. I need to take advantage of that position and make whatever contribution I can.”

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R.I.P. Randy Meisner https://colomusic.org/blog/r-i-p-randy-meisner/ Mon, 31 Jul 2023 22:15:15 +0000 https://colomusic.org/?p=8263 Randy Meisner, a creator of the Southern California rock sound as a singer, songwriter and bassist who achieved fame with the Eagles and Poco in the ’70s, died on July 26, 2023. He was 77.

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Randy Meisner, a creator of the Southern California rock sound as a singer, songwriter and bassist who achieved fame with the Eagles and Poco in the ’70s, died on July 26, 2023. He was 77.

Growing up on a farm near Scottsbluff, Nebraska, Meisner pursued his musical ambitions working clubs and bars throughout the Midwest. An affable, easygoing sort with a sweet high voice, he cut his teeth playing with the Drivin’ Dynamics and arrived in Denver in 1966 to play a battle of the bands. He linked up with one of the competing groups, the Soul Survivors—not the New York-based blue-eyed soul group of “Expressway to Your Heart” fame, but a well-produced pop-rock act that scored two No. 1 hits on Denver’s Top 40 giant KIMN (“Can’t Stand to Be in Love with You” and “Hung Up on Losing”).

“When they lost their bass player, they asked me if I wanted to jump ship and move to Los Angeles with them,” Meisner said. Hard times inspired a name change of his band to the Poor. Meisner shared a space on the living room floor of a one-bedroom apartment with four other people for $85 a month. Gigs were few and far between. “We didn’t realize how much competition was out there,” he recalled. “My jacket was my first pillow. We really had nothing at all.”

The one plus was that the Poor shared management with Buffalo Springfield. When that group disbanded, Jim Messina and Richie Furay formed Poco and recruited Furay’s friend, Rusty Young from Colorado’s Böenzee Cryque. Young called in two buddies from Colorado—drummer George Grantham, also from Böenzee Cryque, and Meisner. Poco’s Pickin’ Up the Pieces debuted in 1969, blending sweet country harmonies with a driving rock beat.

But Meisner left in a dispute over the final mixes to the album. Rick Nelson, a Fifties rock ’n’ roll legend determined to establish an adult identity and gain the respect he deserved as a country-rock musician, marshaled the Stone Canyon Band with Meisner, who contacted lead guitarist Allen Kemp and drummer Patrick Shanahan, his buddies from the Poor, the band that first brought him from Denver. Meisner recorded two albums with the Stone Canyon Band, stacking his vocals in angelic high harmony on top of Nelson’s.

He quit and rejoined, then quit again to hook up with Glenn Frey and Don Henley, deciding to fly with the Eagles. He experienced the high of co-writing and singing the signature hit “Take It to the Limit,” but he left in 1977, disenchanted, to pursue a solo career, giving up the security of one of the country’s top bands.

Meisner recorded a self-titled album in 1978. “It was a revelation,” he said. “I had to do a lot of things I’d never encountered before, like come up with a full album’s worth of songs, sing all the leads and put together my own band. I was very excited, but I wasn’t prepared for what was involved—I left a lot of things up to other people.”

After a brief club tour, which included a performance at the Rainbow Music Hall in Denver, Meisner spent time reflecting in his Nebraska hometown. “I had to take a hard look at myself and my strengths and weaknesses as a musician, my personal and creative barriers. I decided I wanted to make another record, and I was fortunate that things clicked.”

Meisner’s saga resumed with One More Song, produced by Val Garay, a highly reputed engineer with a string of platinum albums by Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor to his credit. Garay introduced Meisner to songwriter Eric Kaz. As a team, Meisner and Kaz came up with two Top 40 standouts—“Deep Inside My Heart,” featuring a guest appearance by Kim Carnes, and the rollicking “Hearts on Fire” with Wendy Waldman on harmonies.

In 1982, Meisner released his third solo album, featuring help from members of Heart and a sonorous single, “Never Been in Love.” In the late ’80s, he toured with the Roberts-Meisner Band, joined by former Firefall singer-songwriter Rick Roberts. Reuniting with Poco for the Legacy album and tour, he sang lead on “Nothin’ to Hide,” a Top 40 single. But Meisner never took part when the Eagles resumed touring; his health deteriorated and he eventually stopped performing. In 2020, he made remote appearances via video with his friend Furay at two livestream concerts.

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R.I.P. Sinéad O’Connor https://colomusic.org/blog/r-i-p-sinead-oconnor/ Thu, 27 Jul 2023 00:42:45 +0000 https://colomusic.org/?p=8254 Sinéad O’Connor, the outspoken Irish singer-songwriter who went to the top of the charts at a dizzying speed with her biggest hit, the Grammy-winning “Nothing Compares 2 U,” died on July 26, 2023. She was 56.

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Sinéad O’Connor, the outspoken Irish singer-songwriter who went to the top of the charts at a dizzying speed with her biggest hit, the Grammy-winning “Nothing Compares 2 U,” died on July 26, 2023. She was 56.

O’Connor roared into view in 1988 releasing The Lion and the Cobra, which garnered rave reviews and topped alternative music playlists. With her shaved head and doe-eyed stare, the 20-year-old Irish singer generated an auspicious aura when she performed at the Rainbow Music Hall in Denver. She claimed that she was simply a novice albeit precocious talent.

“I’m trying very hard not to be mysterious,” she said quietly between sips of coffee and drags on a cigarette. “Before they even hear me, people tend to think I’m a rather dramatic, fiery person because I’m Irish and I’m a woman. But I’m not.”

Yet she readily admitted to an independent streak, wanting to be a source of conflict. She first recorded at age 14 with the Irish band In Tua Nua. She worked with U2 guitarist The Edge on his soundtrack for the movie The Captive, although she was careful to downplay any affiliation with the famed supergroup. She co-produced The Lion and the Cobra herself after an aborted effort with an outside producer. “I didn’t feel I could explain to anybody else exactly what I wanted,” she shrugged. “A complete fool could produce an album—I think I’m proof of that. As long as you can punch the right buttons…”

The Lion and the Cobra was indignant and angry, her attempt to exorcise the effects of her turbulent childhood. She wrote the majority of songs, vehicles for her remarkably flexible voice. The spacy atmospheric textures of her music had drawn uninvited comparisons with Laurie Anderson and Jane Siberry. “It’s bound to happen because I’m another girl artist,” she sighed. “But it bothers me when I’m compared to people I can’t stand. I’m not saying I’m better than anyone else, but I’m certainly not like Suzanne Vega.”

O’Connor was touring America with her nine-month-old son in tow, striving to keep the experience “as normal as possible—I can’t understand why the album has done so well,” she admitted. “It never occurred to me when I was writing the songs that any of this would be happening. It proves that it’s not a problem to do what you want to do. I don’t want to be considered a poet or a genius, and I don’t try to convey any image in my music. I just write songs for myself. I’m just Sinéad.”

Then came the massive success of “Nothing Compares 2 U,” her cover of an obscure Prince ballad that became a No. 1 hit and MTV staple. In singing intimately about her quest for serenity, she sounded like she’d learned a lot in her 23 years—her seductive commentaries about philosophical transformation and personal exorcisms were sensitive and straightforward. At Red Rocks Amphitheatre, her voice covered a symphonic range, shifting octaves in mid-syllable from banshee wailing to a child’s whisper.

But the only thing greater than her magnificent voice was her talent for being at the center of controversy. Audiences were outraged when she refused to allow the national anthem to be played before a concert in New Jersey (Frank Sinatra said she deserved a “kick in the ass”). The following year, she tore up a picture of the Pope on Saturday Night Live, making front-page headlines around the world. The incident led to a demonstration in New York, where protesters hired a steamroller and drove over a stack of her records. Two weeks later, she was booed off stage at a New York Bob Dylan tribute concert.

O’Connor’s Universal Mother album expressed her sadness, and it coincided with a near-nervous breakdown. After intensive therapy, she retreated from public view to quietly put her life back together. She concentrated on loving herself, her son Jake, 10, and daughter Roisin, 1.

“I remember that I was voted the ‘most loved’ and the ‘most hated’ in Rolling Stone, which is really an achievement,” she said prior to a concert at the Paramount Theater in Denver in 1997. “America is full of people who are jumping out of every doorway dying to have a fight over something. How the media writes does not reflect how people feel. I’ve never experienced anything but the utmost respect from people on the street with regards to the actions I’ve taken in public. The only hassle or disrespect I’ve ever gotten has been from the media.

“But that’s been all across the globe. It’s worse in England, to tell you the truth. It’s just that in America, people are more inclined to come out and march, or hire a steamroller. In a way, you have to admire it. In England, they wouldn’t have the courage to do that. Basically, I think an artist’s job is to create conversation about things which need to be talked about. I’ve done a good job there.”

At age 30, the confessional singer-songwriter had reached a turning point. She was preoccupied with motherhood and spirituality, as indicated by the sweet, comforting tones of her Gospel Oak EP. She’d started a healing process toward her abusive mother, the Catholic Church and those who had victimized her in the past. She considered herself more of a Rastafarian than a Catholic. “Catholicism teaches that God is dead, that he was crucified on the cross. Rastafarianism teaches that God is a living creature, some sense that lives in all of us and is present in every moment of every day in every conversation.”

At the Paramount, she didn’t perform any songs from her debut album or “Nothing Compares 2 U.” “I do the songs which don’t hurt me—I don’t do miserable songs because I don’t feel like that anymore,” she said. “I always wanted to be 30. The 20s were a very fearful time, and I figured that when I got to be 30, I’d acquire a certain serenity. And that’s how it turned out.

“Fame is a curse. It’s a weird ol’ thing, because there you are and the world thinks you’re great and you think you’re a piece of shit. It was the worst phase of my life, which I thank God I’ll never have to go through again. I think we all have to go through that dark night of the soul, and I’m just grateful I got mine over with when I was young. The only way to handle it is to learn by your mistakes.”

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R.I.P. Tony Bennett https://colomusic.org/blog/r-i-p-tony-bennett/ Fri, 21 Jul 2023 22:18:59 +0000 https://colomusic.org/?p=8245 Tony Bennett, the legendary pop and jazz crooner who famously sang “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” died on July 21, 2023. He was 96.

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Tony Bennett, the legendary pop and jazz crooner who famously sang “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” died on July 21, 2023. He was 96.

In the early ’90s, Bennett was an aging hipster at a crossroads. He’d had a prolific recording career, becoming a star with a chain of major hits in the ’50s that included “Because of You,” “Cold Cold Heart” and “Rags to Riches.”  But he hadn’t had a record deal since the ’70s.

With a management team led by his son Danny, Bennett popped up in some unusual places—appearances on Late Night with David Letterman, then a cartoon cameo on The Simpsons, then a Nike commercial. And in 1993, he stole the show at the MTV Video Music Awards with the tuxedoed Red Hot Chili Peppers, strolling on stage in a velvet top hat, T-shirt, shorts and sunglasses and crooning a few lines of a Chili Peppers song.

The gig really lit the firecracker, and after his Grammy-winning 1994 MTV Unplugged set, Bennett enjoyed a newfound cachet among a generation that was barely around for Watergate. The hair on the heads filling his shows ranged from blue to green. In 2001, the singer teamed up with k.d. lang for a tour that visited Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre in Denver. He had just celebrated his 75th birthday, exuding a mellow happiness that was contagious.

“You know what it is? A wisdom sets in. You accumulate a lot of knowledge,” he said in his smoky rasp of a singing voice. “I was lucky to catch the tail end of the old vaudeville days, when you went from town to town and they took time to allow you to break in. It takes about ten years to really learn how to work on a stage and feel competent.”

Musically, Bennett had never crossed the line between cool and campy. He was a conservationist of music history. The voice was thicker, but he still loved to belt Berlin, Porter, Gershwin and Ellington—the popular American songbook.

“That’s the treasure chest of the ’30s and ’40s. Beautiful music, a lot better than the music that is out today. In those days, it was people like Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald and Peggy Lee that went right to the top, because they were doing the best music. It’s a different era now. It’s who just sold the most records—the obsolescence, the super-greed going on.

“In America, we’ve made a lot of money, we’re very successful a lot of times, but down the line a couple of hundred years from now, they’ll say, ‘Well, what did you guys contribute to the rest of the world? It’s jazz—that’s our only tradition, that and baseball.”

Also an accomplished painter, Bennett exhibited his landscapes, portraits and still lifes in galleries worldwide under his real name, Benedetto. But painting was a choice for him. Singing was not.

“I love to work. I don’t have to do it, but I love it. I learn every time I hit the stage. The only advice I could give anybody that sings is to drink a lot of water and get a lot of sleep! Take care of yourself and you start singing good.”

Bennett walked the talk—and the song. Despite an Alzheimer’s diagnosis in 2016, he continued to sing at an impressive level until 2021, joining Lady Gaga—with whom he’d recorded albums in 2014 and 2021—at Radio City Music Hall on his 95th birthday.

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R.I.P. George Winston https://colomusic.org/blog/r-i-p-george-winston/ Thu, 08 Jun 2023 23:15:39 +0000 https://colomusic.org/?p=8235 George Winston, a solo pianist whose Grammy-winning sound helped define the new age genre, died on June 4. He was 74.

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George Winston, a solo pianist whose Grammy-winning sound helped define the new age genre, died on June 4. He was 74.

Winston’s soothing instrumentals, released on the Windham Hill label in the ’80s, sold millions, but he never cared much for efforts to pigeonhole his music as new age. A self-described “rural folk” pianist, the alternative superstar put his records of evocative ponderings high on the pop and jazz charts, but he still performed barefoot at his concerts—including a show at Macky Auditorium in Boulder in 1982 in support of a Christmas album, December, his fourth solo piano recording.

“People think I have a classical background, and that’s funny,” Winston allowed. “I consider myself the total antithesis of everything having to do with classical music, from stage manner and dress on down to practice. I do solo concerts where I can play anything I want and not have to watch the time. Maybe I’ll tell a few jokes. It’s better for me to spend my time playing three hours at a concert than to waste my time playing five minutes on The Tonight Show. Once the concert is happening, it doesn’t matter if one person is there or 10,000. A concert isn’t the big sacred act of all time, but it’s an event made for that point in time—that’s what the audience wants.”

December contained original, impressionistic pieces in tribute to the winter season, but it also included arrangements of seven traditional songs. It came to be his highest-selling album, and Winston raked in a lot of revenue. He used it to fund new artists through his own Dancing Cat Productions (to record practitioners of Hawaiian slack-key guitar, a genre he admired) rather than shopping at Famous Footwear.

“The money’s good, but so what?,” he reasoned. “You can have a bunch of money sitting in the bank and you may still be saying, ‘Ouch, I don’t want to wake up this morning.’ Money doesn’t increase happiness, it just lets me make other people happier. If this business didn’t make me more friends, I wouldn’t be in it.”

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