Music

ODE DE TOILETTE

The tarmints make gutter music sound oh so sweet

When I raise my hands up in the air, I make it a point to wave them like I really do care. I f I'm not doing this, I feel sick," Kurtis Hayfield said. The 'this' in this case is playing music, and the music in this case is the solid, broken-bottle, piss-in-a-back-alley rock of the Tarmints.

"Eat a lot of green chili."

This is the sage-like advice Hoss Cart Wheel (or A. J.-- drums) gives on how to sustain oneself while touring the United States. This leads right into another good conversation: the beauty of shitting on tour. Often and everywhere is the standard, and talking about it with your companions is the reward.

I've always suspected that musicians--and I guess artists in general-- are anal expulsive people. Making messes, see? In the Tarmints case, a dark and rocking mess that's more fun to sink and slip in than clean up.

I'll let the anal-retentive people of the world keep the books and file my taxes, because nothing beats a conversation with a band that keeps cycling back to the topic of poop. We covered all of the brown bases, even Sasquatch shit. Which brings me back to the music, it's gritty and satisfying, much like a morning-after elimination. It's tough sounding too, which, all shit-talking aside, seems fitting. Hoss Cart Wheel races go-karts (fast ones, 90 m. p. h. plus), and Hayfield rides motorcycles and dirt bikes.

Not to imply the band doesn't have a sentimental softer side too. Gretschen Maeham, bass, loves her band mates. "I'm totally in love with these here people," she said. And Class "A" Bobby J, or Black Hands Bobby as he's fond of calling himself, likes to nap a lot.

This greasy-faced four-year-old comes in part from the ashes of Hayfield's former project, Twice Wilted. A promising Denver band with a large underground following that broke up in the late '90s, Cart Wheel and Black Hands played with the band briefly, too.

Hayfield describes his experiences at an early Black Flag show with an awestruck fondness that you might not expect from a man who is describing a black-Speedo clad, spit-soaked Henry Rollins putting his self-induced hard-on into a young girl's face, but it's inspiring all the same. It's always refreshing to see somebody with real reverence for rock and roll commit to it so endearingly.

"Everybody wants to do something, but not today," Hayfield comments on the difficulties of getting music recorded lately. But the band is working on that problem, too, with their indie label Denver Coffee Achievers. Run from the band's warehouse space on the hem of Five Points, it is a friendly organization dedicated more to the spirit of good old creative collaboration than to pure profit.

Denver should thank the Tarmints because not only do they avidly promote local music, they add a sound with roots not heard much on Denver's often barren and "alternative" frat-rock sodden soundscape.

The band's new album should be out by summer, and while currently without a title, it might include the word 'ham'. The four seem to pass a great deal of free time giving each other silly nicknames, many of them revolving around ham.

The prospect of an actual Tarmint makes me kind of sick. Eating hot freeway doused in schnapps, I'm thinking, but maybe that's what's in a name. Searing pavement and frosty booze are pretty rock and roll and certainly an original combination, just like the Tarmints.

--Josh Tyson

CD Reviews

Face it, more people under 40 will say they love Seal and Sting than the Billboard categorizers would care to admit. There's a tendency to lump both these pleasantly piercing tenors in with other easier listening artists such as Phil Collins and Natalie Cole, but Seal and Sting have that touch of funk in their music that appeals across the board, to anyone who likes a whomping bass line. What they lack-- the reason both artists have been unfairly labeled as unhip-- is punch. They sing lullabies for grown-ups. Nothing wrong with that, but we young 'uns sometimes want to dance, too.

Enter Daryl Kenny, a.k.a. Xiren (pronounced Seerrin). Xiren came to Denver from Detroit, and the effect living in Motown has had on his musical sensibilities hits like a funky brick on the first track, "Get Your Groove On." Immediately his gender-bending tenor and wakka-chikka bass lines inspire a booty-shake. Xiren is one of those musi-cal ball-hogs, playing many of the instru-ments (keyboards, guitars, bass, drums) himself. What's rare is that he plays each with invisible skill--usually musicians like this show a weakness in at least one area (cf. Phil Collins' guitar playing on Both Sides), but Xiren is quietly accom-plished all around, knowing how to use the instruments to support his vocals.

The other talent that propels Xiren above his international one-named forefathers is his ability to pen a quirky lyric. Though I'm still scratching my head over what the titular chorus of "Bend Of The Lu" means, there's no doubt what Xiren's say-ing in such fun songs as "Drunk Again," "Love's A Stupid Game," and "Mocking." Since he sings so much like Sting or Peter Gabriel (British prudes, both of them), it's a pleasant surprise to hear the following lyric in the sarcastic "El Boracho Y La Flamenca": "I don't have to know your name / and we'll play hide the snake/until the break of day. / Don't say no. / ... / I am not a savage. / I don't even speak Spanish."

This album is a collection of Xiren's songs written and recorded between 1992 and 1999. A new album is forthcoming soon, but until then, I highly recommend this premature greatest hits. Xiren is a one-man talent to be supported in this blossoming local scene.

A

--Chris J. Magyar

SHARON DOCHERTY:
ONE PROUD STANCE

Like Xiren, Sharon Docherty can be compared to accomplished national artists. Her foremothers include Shawn Colvin, Mary Chapin-Carpenter, and little- known Aussie Julia Darling. What holds Docherty back is she doesn't add a spike to the punch like Xiren. Her lyrics fall short of Colvin's hyper-poetics, but come out more muddled than Chapin-Carpenter's straight-forward tales. One song, "Me And Agamemon," I'm convinced is a cover of a Barenaked Ladies song the Barenaked Ladies simply haven't written yet (a clairvoyant cover, if you will).

But musical innovation is not a fair basis upon which to judge folk music. Docherty might not do anything terribly new, but she does it all terribly well. Hearing a local talent like Docherty spin-ning perfect little Patty Griffin tunes, one has to wonder how no-talent hacks like Jewel ever captured the folkie crown in the '90s.

Docherty's voice is her biggest asset. She employs a pronunciation that's down-home without being twangy, rosebudding and popping over vocal breaks at all the appropriate places. Her voice is almost hypnotic with its sisterly swells and precise consonants. She also has a good little sense of humor, borrowing a page out of Dar Williams' playbook for the semi-spo-ken "Man On The Moon," and letting some city weeds into her folk flowerbed with the untitled hidden track, for my money the best song on the album.

Bottom line: the fact that Docherty's music invites comparison to more famous musicians (and I believe I've name-dropped a mere seven right here) is a boon, not a drawback; it means she's well on her way to stardom in the feathered fields of folk music. B+ --Chris J. Magyar

BEAT DIET

BEAT DIET DanceSafe is a nonprofit, harm reduction organization promoting health and safety within the rave and night-club community. Its national office is in Oakland, California, and currently has local chapters in 13 cities throughout the United States and Canada.

DanceSafe's local chapters consist of young people from within the dance culture itself who have a sincere interest in bettering their community and educating themselves and their peers. DanceSafe trains its volunteers to be health educators and drug abuse prevention counselors with their principles and methods of harm reduction and popular education.

DanceSafe volunteers staff harm reduction booths at raves, nightclubs and other dance events where they provide information on drugs, safer sex and other health and safety issues concerning the electronic dance community (like driving home safely and protecting one's hearing).

DanceSafe also provides adulterant screening or pill testing services for ecstacy users. Pill testing is an important harm reduction service that saves lives and reduces medical emergencies by helping ecstacy users avoid fake and adulterated tablets that often contain substances far more dangerous than real ecstacy. To order an ecstacy testing kit, send a minimum donation of $25 along with your address, telephone, and/ or e-mail to DanceSafe, 1714 Franklin St., #100-333, Oakland, CA, 94612

--orange peel moses

For more information on DanceSafe, visit them in cyberspace at www.dancesafe.org or drop their local chapter (Colorado Harm Reduction) a line in cyberspace at chr@dancesafe.org.