30 Jan 2001

Comfortable as an Old Married Couple

By Jeff Ignatius
After a couple decades as a band, some developments are largely inevitable: You’ll have reached a certain comfort level with your music and your fellow musicians, you’ll have achieved a degree of technical prowess, and you’ll run out of album titles.
30 Jan 2001

The Pimps Are Unsigned (Again)

By Jeff Ignatius
In an irony well-suited to the band's name, The Pimps used Mickey Mouse, then chucked him. The Rockford, Illinois, rock/rap/funk (and sometimes jazz and country) band signed with ABC/Disney subsidiary Hollywood Records ($1 million for two albums), released last year's To a Cool Person, Stay That Way, toured with Insane Clown Posse, nabbed a spot alongside Metallica and Limp Bizkit on the Mission: Impossible 2 soundtrack, and then left the label.
23 Jan 2001

The Band that Would Not Grow Up

By Jeff Ignatius
Jason Anderson likens his band’s drummer situation – looking for number four presently, after three years – to that of the legendary, imaginary Spinal Tap, and the comparison is pretty apt. Skinny Weirdo’s “Fist” is exactly the kind of crude rock-and-roll that Tap specialized in before the guys got old and flabby.
02 Jan 2001

Harmony Riley Pulls Off Nifty Trick

By Jeff Ignatius
If you're a member of a young rock-and-roll band, that first show supporting somebody big can be nerve-wracking. So imagine being Miles and Daxx Nielsen of Harmony Riley on January 12, opening for the first time with Cheap Trick and ... dad? Yes, Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielsen's two sons will be setting the table for him on eight East Coast dates in January.
02 Jan 2001

Schizophrenic Program Fractures Concert

By Zach Carstensen
The first half of December 28’s Chamber Music Quad Cities concert at the Davenport Unitarian Church followed the course of a well-scripted drama: An uneventful setup moved into a desperate middle section, followed by a triumphant conclusion.
26 Dec 2000

Year Yields a Few Breakthroughs, Plenty of Well-Crafted Music

By Jeff Ignatius
Thom Yorke is clearly the king of 2000. Looking over my list of favorite albums of 2000, I notice that the vocalist shows up three times: leading Radiohead through Kid A (obviously) but also doing duets on albums by Björk and PJ Harvey.
19 Dec 2000

Gold Waiting to Be Mined

By Jeff Ignatius
As misnomers go, Wicked Liz & The Bellyswirls is a doozy. First of all, there’s very little wicked about the vocal work of Wicked Liz, who goes by Liz Townsend when not on stage. She can growl in a most unmenacing way, but her voice generally runs from pop sweet to hearty.
05 Dec 2000

A Different Kind of Easy Listening

By Jeff Ignatius
The second album from Shane Johnson’s Blue Train, Big Legged Women, starts off with a song that exists primarily as a framework for hot-licks blues. The words and vocals serve primarily as a break from the fiery work of the guitarist who lends his name to the band.
05 Dec 2000

Soloist and Symphony Triumph in Riveting Concert

By Zach Carstensen
Anton Dvorák and Bedrich Smetana are Czechoslovakia’s most famous composers. Full of folk tendencies and a love of their homeland, they expressed the tapestry of bohemian life in their music. While Smetana helped develop Czech nationalism, Dvorák made it popular.
28 Nov 2000

Stetson-Wearin' Reggae Cowboys Rewrite History

By Jeff Ignatius

Reggae Cowboys have all the trappings of a novelty act: Canadians in cowboy hats doing the reggae thing in songs about the Wild Wild West. It sounds a bit like Dread Zeppelin crossed with the Village People, if a little more original.

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