:: Snow Patrol :: 93.3’s Not So Silent Ball :: Fillmore Auditorium :: December 5 :: 

By Brian Kenney

Timing is everything. Elvis showed up at just the right time. The stars aligned, the world sighed, and we were just waiting for him. He had perfect timing. The Beatles, likewise. America was just waiting for the Liverpool lads to deplane on that fateful February day.

For Snow Patrol, they’ve never really changed their craft, but it seems like their timing wasn’t always aligned with fate. For more than a decade, the States were never really ready for them — until 2006.

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:: ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead :: Fox Theatre :: December 15 :: 

By Tiffany Childs

The members of … And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead are self-proclaimed liars. However, front man Conrad Keely (vocals/guitar/drums) assures people it is simply a form of entertainment. After all, the lies have been for the amusement of their audience, not a deception for personal gain.

The game, however, is about to change with the release of their new album on November 14. So Divided finally allows a glimpse of what is underneath all the smoke and mirrors and The Marquee recently had the pleasure of speaking with Jason Reece (vocals/guitar/drums) about what fans can expect to see.

“Musically, this album has a lot more keys and piano because Conrad has been focusing on learning that stuff,” Reece said from New York, where the band was preparing to play a record store show to celebrate the release. “It is more of Sonic Youth meets early Genesis,” he said. That’s quite a change for a band where four out of five members are drummers and previous albums have reflected that percussive drive. 

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:: Gob Iron :: Fox Theatre :: December 6 :: 

By Timothy Dwenger

It may be British slang for a harmonica, but on this side of the pond Gob Iron is Jay Farrar’s folk infused side project with Varnaline leader Anders Parker. “Anders had been on tour in England and his tour manager kept referring to his harmonica as a ‘Gob Iron,’” said Farrar, the Son Volt front man, from his home in St. Louis in a recent interview with The Marquee. “We decided it was the most ambiguous and most appropriate name for the project.”

The duo’s debut release, Death Songs for the Living, originated as a concept Farrar came up with for a Son Volt album. “This kind of project is something that I had always wanted to revisit, having done March 16-20 with Uncle Tupelo years ago. The initial idea was to have it be a Son Volt side project but that didn’t really work out. Anders and I had the time to do it, so it morphed into our project.”

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:: Thomas Dolby :: Gothic Theatre :: December 3 :: 

By Timothy Dwenger

“I was very frustrated with the music industry at the beginning of the ’90s,” said Thomas Dolby in a recent interview with The Marquee from his home as he prepared for his upcoming tour with fellow electronic music pioneer BT. “I was also conflicted because I never really saw myself as a mainstream artist and yet I’d had breakaway commercial success with ‘She Blinded Me with Science’ and a couple of other songs. However, those albums also contained some very quiet, personal, esoteric songs which were the ones that mattered more to me and I didn’t really know whether people had bought the records and were coming to see me because they had bought into the MTV hype or whether I’d made a connection with them with my more intimate material. What I was finding was that my record company didn’t really care. They just saw the public as units that would come out of the woodwork and buy the record provided they threw money at it in the form of satin tour jackets and the back page of Billboard. I couldn’t really live like that; I needed to know who my audience was.”

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:: Imogen Heap :: Paramount Theater :: December 10 :: 

By Marisa Beahm

Listen to any song by Imogen Heap and you will be immediately ensnared by her sultry, versatile voice. But to truly appreciate her artistry, it is essential to dig deeper than her captivating vocal qualities.

Heap is not only a one-woman band, but is also a songwriter, producer and technocrat. She is equipped with a computer, keyboard and her emotive, mysterious voice, which she layers like an instrument for her electro-alternative music. In the male-dominated industry of music sampling and production, she combines the best of both worlds: musical talent paired with technological prowess.

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:: The Lemonheads :: Bluebird Theatre :: December 2 :: 

By Matt Marty

Ten years after the last Lemonheads album, founding member and guitarist Evan Dando is at it again with a new self-titled album that is backed by a twenty-two date U.S. tour that features the latest line-up of the band, with drummer Bill Stevenson from Black Flag and Karl Alvarez from the Descendents on bass.

Starting back in 1986, The Lemonheads have been seen with more than ten different bass players and at least a dozen drummers, while Dando has remained the front man and brainchild of the band. Starting out on the Boston-based label Taang! Records, The Lemonheads first released the highly regarded EP Laughing All the Way to the Cleaners, which found an audience in college students. With the band gaining notoriety, Atlantic Records decided to sign them. 

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By Tiffany Childs

Christmas may be the biggest holiday of the year for the commerce-minded, suburban, mall going shopping zombies of the country, but true music freaks know that New Year’s Eve is, in fact, the holiest day of the year.

Promoters have always given audiences shows to rave about on Dec. 31, and this year is no exception.

The following are some of the examples of hot shows taking place on New Years Eve around Colorado’s Front Range, in no particular order. Check our full music calendar, which begins on page 32, for a full listing of shows.

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It’s always odd to write a column that recaps a year when that year has yet to end, but this issue is our last one of 2006 and so we must, despite what the calendar says at the time of this writing.

Once again, The Marquee has assembled a list of industry insiders to pick their Shows of the Year for this annual end-of-the-year feature.

The rules are the same as in years past. The show had to have taken place during 2006 (or on the 2005-2006 New Year) and it is required that the show be one which occurred on the Front Range — no votes for Bonnaroo, Vegoose or anything out of our territory allowed.

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By Brian F. Johnson

Every semester, Peter Ore is invited to speak to students in the music and entertainment program at University of Colorado, Denver, and every year he tells them the same thing — quit school and get a job — any job — in the industry immediately.

It’s not that Ore is anti-school, or anti-UCD, but Ore, who graduated from college in 1994 with an English literature degree, knows the value of physically working in the industry because, quite simply, he’s done it.

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The Who

Endless Wire

Universal Republic Records

4 stars out of 5

Leave it to The Who to release a totally bewildering album for their first attempt at new material in 24 years. That’s not to say that Endless Wire is a bad album by any means, but it is not a comeback album in the same vein as Aerosmith’s Permanent Vacation or AC/DC’s Back in Black. And it’s largely due to the fact that The Who haven’t written any new material in over a decade and the band has constantly toured on the strength of their hits and have never really faded from the public’s consciousness.

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