. In recent years, fall has come on with a vengeance: with uncharacteristically heavy rains and early snow, and winter has refused to leave. But this year it has felt more like we’ve been given a reprieve. That climate, that natural ambiance perfectly suited a place like Chautauqua Auditorium and…
Editor: Please see the Author’s note on this new photo-driven series at the end of this article. Ian MacKaye once said that the most relevant bands are those that exist right now, because they exist and you can go see them. I couldn’t agree more. One of the reasons I…
If there’s one band that put Colorado bluegrass on the map, it’s Hot Rize. Longtime members Pete Wernick, Nick Forster, Tim O’Brien and Charles Sawtelle met at the Denver Folklore Center in the late 1970s. They worked there in various capacities — as music instructors, instrument repairmen or at the…
Shabazz Palaces is the adventurous hip-hop outlet of former Digable Planets MC Ishmael Butler and multi-instrumentalist Tendai Mariare. Based in Seattle, the group is signed to the historically rock-centric Sub Pop label. We talked to Butler before Shabazz Palaces’ show tonight at the Fox Theatre about consumerism, the innate power…
Maybe it’s the punk rock origins of Riot Fest that brought out the funny and the ridiculous in various performers and attendees at Riot Fest. It was mostly the usual self-deprecating and/or sarcastic commentary one expects out of musicians but there were a handful of gems both inspired and just…
Failure is slated to perform at Riot Fest this Friday, September 19th. Though the band enjoyed a great deal of popularity during its first run before splitting in 1997, its influence has loomed large on a good deal of guitar rock that has come along since. If someone writes a…
While a lot of the focus during Riot Fest this weekend will be on the headliners playing the May Farms stage and the Byers General Store, the festival includes up and coming bands, local and otherwise, worthy of attention. These are generally not the bands riding in large tour buses…
The winners of the 2014 Unsigned Only Music Competition have been announced, and the Fort Collins band You, Me & Apollo won in the Americana category for its song “I Don’t Want to Be Loved.” The competition received more than eight thousand entries with a finalist group presented to a…
Les Claypool and Larry Lalonde will be signing copies of Primus: Over the Electric Grapevine, an oral history of the band, at Tattered Cover on Thursday, September 18, at 7 p.m.. Primus is also slated to perform at Riot Fest on Friday, September 19. Formed in 1984 in the San…
It is impossible to ignore Itchy-O. At full capacity, the band comprises 32 members, all dressed in matching costumes, all masked, delivering truly alien vocals and playing marching-band instruments along with guitars, basses, taiko drums and electronics attached to portable amplifiers. There is also a Chinese lion named Larry. “I…
Allout Helter began in 2008 as a melodic hardcore band with some metal chops. In 2010, the group put an ad on Craigslist for a lead vocalist and attracted the attention of Ross Hostage. Hostage had spent the previous decade playing in Action Friend and Suburban Hostage. He brought a…
With the legalization of cannabis for recreational use starting January 1, 2014, Colorado has become a destination for touring bands. However, a steady stream of artists have been moving to the state for years. Some seem to use it purely as a base of operations, but some have engaged with…
As usual, the pamphlet for Goldrush was a work of art in itself, printed on quality paper with a thick, textured cover bearing a mountain landscape and a stylized G. The band profiles, written by people who clearly get the music and have a personal connection to it, were laid…
Wolf Eyes is among the most well-known bands to have come out of the world of noise music. But the act was never strictly noise; its music, even early on, included experiments in texture and atmosphere that could terrify and inspire. What started as Nate Young’s solo project now also…
As the daughter of a U.S. Air Force chaplain, Heather Bingham got to see a little bit of the world as a child: she was born in Turkey and spent several years on the island of Crete before her family moved back to Colorado Springs. And it was during her…
At the end of the Swans’ hypnotic set last night at the Bluebird Theater, frontman Michael Gira told the crowd he’d be at the merch table in ten minutes if anyone wanted to talk or have him sign anything. He seems to do that every show. On stage, the guy…
For the last handful of years, some rock bands of an older vintage have been brought in to Lava Room inside the Reserve Hotel and Casino. Over the weekend, it was L.A. Guns, the band that helped spawn Guns N’ Roses. When you’re thinking of going to a rock show,…
Night Job is a collective show featuring artists who represent a young, working-class, art class perspective united by a sensibility that combines urban grit, an ineffable dream-like quality and an almost haunted yearning for connection with the essence of life. The work also embodies a blend of seeming thematic opposites…
When MC Frontalot (born Damien Hess) coined the term “nerdcore,” which inspired his 2000 single “Nerdcore Hiphop,” he wasn’t part of a movement. But around then, when artists like YTCracker and MC Hawking became more visible alongside Frontalot and MC Chris, a phenomenon emerged, inspiring two 2008 documentaries: Nerdcore Rising…
When Black Kids seemed to disappear from the popular music landscape in the .mp3-blog heydey of 2009, it looked like another example of too much hype, too soon. If the pressure of impossible expectations is weighing on the band’s members still, it sure wasn’t present at Larimer Lounge, because everyone…
Spread across two venues two blocks apart, four stages between them, Denver Psych Fest, in its second year, proved a memorable experience. The walk between the Larimer Lounge and the Savoy Events Center — as well as the Big Wonderful Sustainability Park between them — was easy to navigate, and…
MF Ruckus, due at SummerGrind this Saturday, August 16, at the Gothic Theatre and Moe’s Original BBQ & Bowl, has more outrageous and humorous stories than most bands. The band started in 1997 as Forth Yeer Freshman when singer and sole original member Aaron Howell was, indeed, still in high…
