Music

HALF A MOUSTACHE

Emilio Dominguez explains his musical background and the force behind his band, Emilio Emilio

I have long hair and half a mustache," is how he described himself over the phone. I don't think this actually sank in because, as I sat in the coffee shop waiting for Emilio Dominguez, I was trying to remember what he had told me. Did he really have only half a mustache, did I hear that right, and was that really what he said?

It wasn't too long when someone darted across the street with long dark unruly hair, wearing faded jeans and a tie-died Jimi Hendrix shirt, yellow-tinted glasses and sporting only half a mustache. I was paying attention after all.

"I guess it is an outward expression of who I am," Dominguez said. "It's a tribute to my mestizo heritage-- the Indians didn't have hair on their faces, but the Spanish did."

"Besides everyone looks the same these days and people seem to remember it," he continued, smiling and playing with the half of his face with hair.

Dominguez uses his appearance to express himself, but you can hear it in his music, too. His band Emilio Emilio has been described as a hybrid of Santana and Jimi Hendrix, with a touch of Stevie Ray Vaughn and some Chicano flair for that added element that sets him apart from other rock bands. Emilio Emilio consists of two other members, Skip Reeves, described as a mix of Buddy Miles and John Bono, and Jeff St. Andrews, who has played with Dominguez for more than eight years, on and off.

"I have had so many different players," Dominguez said about his 11-year run as Emilio Emilio. "But I am back to my original bass player, who's my nephew Jeff, and we have a new drummer who is this powerhouse. He's a little shy of seven feet tall. He's got to be the tallest drummer on the planet and he's a rocker."

Dominguez is no stranger to the Denver music scene. He started playing 12-string guitar when he was 12. Actually, he started playing gigs when he was 12 years old.

"I started hanging out with Tommy Bolin-- he's a guitar player out of Boulder and one of my first influences. At the time I was playing folk music with my parents who were mostly into Chicano movement songs," Dominguez said. "So I would play the 12-string and we would sing all these songs that my mom wrote and my dad would speak. We did the college circuit. My family, my parents, are a big inspiration to me."

So not only was he touring the country with his parents, he also had his own rock band.

"We were really loud," Dominguez admitted. He recalls one of his most discouraging gigs with this band, which made him give up playing the guitar for a long time. "My dad got us this gig at the Glenn Miller Ballroom at CU playing at the MEChA conference," Dominguez said. "I guess we were too much for them."

"They told me I was a disgrace to my people. That's when I put down my guitar and picked up other instruments." Dominguez now plays the conga, timbale, bongo, bass, acoustic and electric guitars, piano and harmonica and incorporates them into his shows. He also liked to play in other people's bands just to play, which is how he met his wife.

"I played with Bobby Hornbuckle at Ziggy's with a guy named Derek Terrible. He and I were jamming more for Bobby than anything, when this woman walked in," Dominguez said with a big grin. "I met her, we hung out, she came to my house and I started playing guitar for her. She thought that I should be in my own band and do my own thing and that's Kelli, my wife. So she's been pushing me for the last ten years."

"I could say persistent, but it's more like motivation and she helps out a lot," he added. "She does a lot of my booking. We have a five-year-old son, Emilio, so she's a full time mother, too."

Which is a tough job considering they took their ten-day-old baby on the road with them down in Texas. Dominguez toured the Texas circuit with Emilio Emilio for three years, which is where he gained some of the more bluesy undertones this band is known for.

Emilio Emilio is planning the release of its seventh album, this one is a live show recorded at its last appearance at the Bluebird Theater. The band will be performing at the Bluebird on April 14 for a CD release party. The night before they will be at the Supreme Court and also at the Hard Rock Café on April 26.

"These guys are really into rock," Dominguez said, referring to himself and the other members of Emilio Emilio. "I think this band, as far as its evolution, is just getting closer and closer to rock."

--Sarah Carney

CD Review

POOCHIE: THE REBEL WITHOUT A PAUSE

Wasn't Poochie a little pink animated puppy with a TV show? Not anymore. Now it's a punk ass South-African-born 13-year-old white boy living right here in Denver, pumping out baby rhymes about (what else?) himself and how well his first album did. Sounds unbearable, but I bore it, and it's actually a decent effort, one that makes the listener smile, even if it's for all the wrong reasons. You see, this little "ready for combat" kid rhymes at a sixth-grade reading level, and his backbeats have the plodding synthesized squeaks of a slightly updated Kid-N-Play album. He's also got the pre-puberty balls to rip off Eminem's schtick by mocking Vanilla Ice and the Backstreet Boys. Vanilla Ice? Kid, you were two years old when his album came out. The effect of his dissing is also somewhat diminished by the fact that all the curse words are cleverly beeped by scratch breaks. Maybe his parents objected. Poochie keeps some of it au courant (like every modern rap superstar, he wrote a song called "What's My Name?"), but all in all he's just too fucking young to be taken seriously. Bleep that, homey. D+
--Chris J. Magyar

CD Review

ANDY GOLDSTONE: ALL OF HER

It's yet another coffee-shop guitarist in love with the sound of his own pick. Andy Goldstone produced this album in Colorado Springs with a handful of people and three session drummers. Andy played the instruments and sang everything himself, wrote everything himself, even credited himself with percussion on some tracks where someone else laid down the main drumbeat. Aside from a general friends-and-family credit, he only thanked six people-- unbelievable, since most local artists pay for liner notes just to thank five million people by name.

You'd think a do-it-yourself guy like this must really have something to say. He doesn't. His benign and raspy voice fights his own overdone guitar styling to spout such lyrical gems as this verse: "That would be so nice to be so inclined to buy you everything that you have ever desired/However I can see that what you really need is something more than something can possibly ever be/So believe in what I've seen and trust that I can be something more than everything can possibly ever be/Round and round we go but will we ever know what our destiny will ever really be." Using the words 'something' and 'that' and 'be' so many times in one thought is a crime against the English language ... and anyone who can tell me what that verse means has a promising career in studying Egyptian hieroglyphics. His own words don't fit rhythmically with his own guitar playing; Andy Goldstone may be the first solo artist in history to split up with himself over "irreconcilable artistic differences." Blandly pleasant at best, if you have a strong stomach for boredom. D-
--Chris J. Magyar

CD Review

THE SAD STAR CAFE: HAPPY?

Mark Sundermeier, Sad Star's front-man, is one of the most hard working persistant self-promoters on the scene, which probably explains how he's managed to get his band into our magazine twice in three issues now. Happy? is one of the more coherent albums to cross this desk, involving a group of musicians who absolutely agree on direction and sound. The sound itself is wannabe radio-ready, working rock-pop hooks and singable lyrics to a mostly successful effect. There are streaks of amateur showing through-- Mark's tendency to split up words with inflection (wo-horld, see-hee), the unconvincing Green Day impression on "Barfly," the hesitant rhythms in the chorus of "The Ballad of Katie"-- but this group is well on its way to Labelville. My biggest piece of advice to this hard working persistant self-promoting band is to chill a little: the rock-and-roll is solid, but the rock-and-roll posturing undermines some of the music's credibility and sincerity. The zen moment for Sad Star will come soon ... they'll get signed just as soon as they stop trying so hard to get signed. (You know, like that great guy who can't get a date because he's so obviously looking for a girlfriend.) Buy this one for "A Woman Out There" and, my favorite, the funny singalong "This Song." B
--Chris J. Magyar

CD Review

CARL MICHAELS: DISCO DUB HOUSE

Why do people buy those dumb ass MTV party CDs? I fear the answer is laziness; nobody can be bothered to seek out a good dance album ten minutes before the party starts, so it's just easier to grab a compilation at Wal-Mart on the way to picking up the pony keg. Well, lazy bums, here's a tip-- grab the above CD any way you can, and do it now before your stuck with another last-minute TRL set. Michaels brings the club to your two-bedroom in style. A
--Chris J. Magyar