Stand aside, New York; step off, L.A.; Denver has arrived. DeVotchKa has been nominated for Grammies, scored an Academy Award nominated film, and toured with burlesque superstar Dita von Teese. The Flobots' major label debut, Fight with Tools, peaked at 15 on The Billboard 200. 3OH!3 had a top 40 hit with "Don't Trust Me." Tickle Me Pink's "The Time is Wrong" is available as a downloadable track for RockBand 2. Oh yeah, and The Fray's self-titled second album debuted at number one on the Billboard 100 charts, beating out Bruce Springsteen.
Yeah, it's safe to say that Denver, Colorado, has finally become a presence on the American music scene.
And about fucking time too, because believe it or not, Denver music did not start with the Fray and the Flobots. Boulder-based hard rock outfit Big Head Todd and the Monsters went platinum with the release its third album, Sister Sweetly, in 1993. The first non-Seattle based band to sign to Sub Pop Records (the Postal Service, Flight of the Conchords, Nirvana) was a Denver band called The Fluid. The history goes on and on.
Denver has had a thriving music scene, especially a punk scene, for ages. And every scene needs a headquarters, a physical cultural center. The renaissance had the cathedrals of Florence, Parisian bohemians had the cafes of Montmartre, New York rockers had CBGB's, and for 30 years, Denver has had Wax Trax Records.
The original Wax Trax Record store was opened in the late seventies by Jim Nash and Dannie Flesher. At the time, the music scene was dominated by disco dance acts, folk music, and gloriously overblown arena rock, but Nash and Flesher were fans of a raw, aggressive new style of rock that was coming out of New York and later the U.K. called punk. In addition to rock and pop staples, Wax Trax carried albums by bands like the Velvet Underground, the New York Dolls, the Dead Boys, the Ramones, and the Sex Pistols way before it was cool to do so. Wax Trax became the center of the burgeoning Denver punk scene, and Nash began hosting parties for the wild kids who religiously visited his store.
After a couple of years of being the center of Denver's underground music scene, Nash and Flesher set out to conquer Chicago in 1978, and soon established the Wax Trax! record label, which became one of the biggest indie music labels for decades, signing such acts as KMFDM and My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult. The Denver-based Wax Trax store was purchased by Dave and Duane, two kindred spirits who wanted to see Nash and Flesher's Denver legacy continue on.
After drifting around the Capitol Hill area for years, Wax Trax finally settled at 638 East 13th Avenue, where it still resides today. Wax Trax has expanded into two stores. Wax Trax I, which houses the store's vast collection of CDs and tapes, and Wax Trax II, the vinyl store, which is just one door down, next to Kilgore Books. The store is easily recognized by the large picture of the Ramones plastered on the outside, which is especially fitting. Along with its across-the-street neighbor FashioNation, Wax Trax is about as close to punk-rock New York or new-wave Britain as you can get in Denver. It's been over thirty years now, and Wax Trax Records has survived changing styles and turbulent times to achieve full-on status as a Denver icon.
As a celebration of the spirit of great rock music that Wax Trax was founded upon, the Advocate dropped in to ask Mike of Wax Trax for his list of top five great rock albums.
1. Unwound: Leaves Turning Inside You (2001) "I was DJing at my local college radio station at the time this record came out. I was listening to hardcore and punk rock…and it was really eye opening. It was the first punk album that was sprawling and epic but still really cohesive, and all the songs are great."
2. Squeeze: Singles-45's and Under (1982) "This is kind of cheesy, but I really like this record. I think it's because I heard it a lot as a kid because my sister was really into it. It has a lot of positive associations attached to it for me."
3. Earth: Extra-Capsular Extraction (1991) "This record is kind of overlooked because the things they did after that were more well received, and Kurt Cobain played with them briefly, so people started paying attention to them after that. I like that one a lot because it has a great use of electric drum beats, and it's one of the only Earth albums to have vocals. The music has like a cool traditional eastern music feel to it."
4. Godflesh: Street Cleaner (1989) "This was unlike any kind of heavy music I had ever heard at the time. I'd heard heavy metal and I'd heard industrial but I'd never heard anything that combined the two so seamlessly. The songs are just incredibly powerful."
5. Swans: Filth (1983) "I like this one for kinda the same reasons as Godflesh; the music is really heavy but not macho. Like heavy and kind of personal instead of being just tuff."
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