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Decoding Adrian Belew by Dave Kirby
Give the Gift of a Great Night Out! Nissi’s Gift Cards available @ nissis.com Upcoming Events & Entertainment
From Bowie to Zappa, from Byrne to Reznor, Adrian Belew has played with everyone, because he’s the most awesome musician in the world.
Thursday March 9th Ladies Night with
THE RETROSONICS “80s Pop”
Friday/Saturday March 10th/11th
THE JERSEYS “Good Time Oldies”
Sunday March 12th
MUSIC & MAGIC SHOWCASE Tuesday March 14th
FACE
“All Vocal Rock”
Wednesday March 15th
BLUES & BOURBON WITH BLUE LIMOUSINE FREE ADMISSION
Thursday March 16th
BARBARA JO AND THE HIPPEE BUCKAROOS FREE ADMISSION
Friday March 17th
THE LONG RUN SOLD OUT
Saturday March 18th
LAST MEN ON EARTH “Arena Rock”
Wednesday March 22nd
BLUES & BOURBON WITH MOJO MAMA FREE ADMISSION
Friday March 31st
PARADISE THEATER “A Tribute to Styx”
& PROJECT FOREIGNER “A Tribute to Foreigner”
Friday March 24th
MY BLUE SKY SPECIAL GUEST
MIKE MASSE “A Tribute to The Allman Brothers”
Saturday March 25th
HOMESLICE BAND “Variety Dance”
Sunday March 26th
NEIL BRIDGE TRIO AND KAREN LEE “Classic Jazz”
BOOK YOUR NEXT PRIVATE EVENT AT NISSI’S Have your next business meeting, celebration, Benefit, or wedding at Nissis. Award winning Cuisine & service and world class sound in a beautiful and artistic setting
www.nissis.com/events
2675 NORTH PARK DRIVE (SE Corner of 95th & Arapahoe)
LAFAYETTE, CO 303.665.2757 30 March 9, 2017
Courtesy of Boulder Theater
T
here is some glory, although than 150 albums and bearing the not much, in being informally enduring reverence of many of the regarded as the greatest sidemusicians he’s played with (Reznor man guitarist of the last 40 once called him “the most awesome years. musician in the world”), Belew found But in the case of Adrian Belew, himself without steady big-stage work who could at the very least be nominat- in 2013, having (more or less) amicably ed in that glory-impoverished category, walked away from a Nine Inch Nails even that wouldn’t be a slam dunk. Not reunion project and being politely uninthat the Twang Bar King himself hasn’t vited from Fripp’s resurrection of the the chops or seismic fury to qualify — current incarnation of King Crimson. few guitarists have danced on the elecSo the Twang Bar King returned to his tric guitar’s sonic event horizon as Power Trio, the group he founded with feverishly as Belew — but the guy just Eric and Julie Slick (Tobias Ralph sits doesn’t dress the part. behind the drum kit Sonic foil to Zappa’s these days), a sibling gnarled machinations, rhythm section he met ON THE BILL: Adrian right-brained anarchy in 2006 at Paul Green’s Belew Power Trio with Saul Zonana. Tuesday, March 14. to Robert Fripp’s leftSchool of Rock, and 7 p.m. Boulder Theater, 2032 brain fretboard calculus, immersed himself in 14th St., Boulder, 303-786summoner of dystopian Flux, his mobile app 7030. Tickets: $25-32.50. grey-tone flourishes containing songs, halfbeside Trent Reznor, songs, bits of sonic incising scar tissue noise and other audible across the Talking Heads in the heat of morsels that were either too incomplete their proto-tribal Eno days, Belew has for stage/album material, or simply costumed some of the most challenging experimental fragments better left unand cortex-gripping recorded music of contextualized. The companion app, the last few decades in fearless and sub- Flux:FX, is a mobile audio manipulalime alien-landscape chroma. tion application for iOS, and both have At heart, of course, Belew is a pop been warmly received in the mobile app star, or at least bears the soul of a pop space. star, a tuneful abstractionist who strays For longtime fans, the unvarnished Belew is both an epiphany and curiosifrom his Beatles-roots instincts far ty, the guitarist being a virtuoso musienough to plant his flag of discovery cian in dimensions typically not before returning to terra firma. Those embraced in that prehistoric guitarwho had followed his career up to that driven trio setting, yet possessing both point grinned at the inside-joke irony the presence and catalog to fill a setlist of his fluke semi-hit “Oh Daddy,” from with plenty left over. Nods to the past 1989’s Mr. Music Head, which featured are not entirely excluded from his sets, the frustrated lamentations of his of course; he played in a series of Bowie daughter that Dad was a touring pop tribute shows this past winter, and he musician that hadn’t yet scored a seldom gets off a PT stage without an George-Michael-sized chart smash. affirming rendition of “Elephant Talk,” And despite having played on more
usually delivered in a manner that coaxes one to wonder if the thing ever really needed Fripp in the first place. Part cranium-cracking fury, part damaged pop, part modal prog, the PT gig is and will probably remain Belew’s nutritional mainstay, and that’s just fine. It’s all the noise and thunder that a club stage can handle. And it’s also worth mentioning that Belew returned to his curious animal-trib roots recently, having scored the Pixar short Piper, the tender, animated short film used as a lead-in to Finding Dory, a kind of circle-closing project for a guy who has celebrated rhinos, elephants and big electric cats in his earlier years. Piper won an Oscar just a few weeks ago. See it; it’s wonderful. There, daughter. A hit. For our money, though, we miss The Bears, his between-Crimson episodes side project that he started in the late ’80s with some old friends from Cincinnati. In some respects, this was the heart of Belew’s tuneful giddiness, the lead singer in a two-guitar rock band, gentle on the guitar effects and largely bereft of pyrotechnics or doomsday sonic overtones. “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” went one line from their debut album, “he knows what’s best for you…” How would that sound these days? Hands raised at the mike, Belew would greet the audience on that tour with a friendly “grrrr...,” which was promptly returned in kind. In some ways, it was the only way we could reply to Belew; the rest of the time, the Twang Bar King speaks in foreign tongues, and all we can do is listen, and absorb, and gape a little bit at the most awesome musician in the world. Boulder Weekly