Never mind that old saw about setting something free if you love it, but in the world of music, it’s amazing how much you can hang on to by just letting go. Yesterday, I was marveling over the Presidents of the United States of America and the killer deal they’re…
Last month, B-Boy crew Lordz of Finesse and Paul Skeee announced that the Mighty 4 Colorado hip-hop event the blew up LoDo last year would be returning this year on Saturday, May 16. But with anticipation for the event simmering, LoF co-founder Fienz has announced that he will be hosting…
Even though Dent officially dropped his debut album last year, he’s been putting in work in the local hip-hop scene for more than a decade. In that time, he’s won a solid amount of MC battles, performed at dozens of shows and has been nominated numerous times for best MC…
It’s been said that the mark of a truly great band is the ability to deliver the same caliber performance in front of virtually nobody as you would for a crowd of thousands. Gared O’Donnell from Planes Mistaken for Stars didn’t just subscribe to this notion, he lived it. Emily…
Love ’em or hate ’em, you’ve got to admire those 3OH!3 cats. In just a few years, the act has gone from being a word-of-mouth, regional phenomenon to turning heads across the country with a breakout single, “Don’t Trust Me,” frenetic stage presence and an absolutely devoted and maniacal fan…
There’s a million reasons that guys play music. Some are in it for the money (heh-heh…yeah, right!), or the pursuit of fame (key word here is “pursuit,” because hardly anyone every actually becomes famous), or in the case of some guys, it’s for the chicks (er, yeah, this seems even…
Once upon a time not all that long ago, Denver seemed like it was isolated from the rest of the world, with musicians making great music that, with a few notable exceptions, the rest of the world just wasn’t privy to. (Granted, some of the more cynical among us still…
Told ya’ Thursday is the new Friday. As proof, there’s no shortage of killer local shows tonight around town: U.S. Pipe is celebrating the release of its new platter at the Bluebird, as is Chuck Potashner (teamAWESOME!) at the Oriental Theater, where he’ll also be playing his last show in…
Bands in Denver are lucky. Getting gigs and building a fanbase locally are actually pretty easy. There’s no shortage of small and midsized venues where a nascent group can cut its teeth, build the buzz and start to plot its graduation to theaters. But how do you get your music into the hands…
At the excellent suggestion of an esteemed reader named Mike — in a why didn’t we think of this before moment — starting today and every week from now on, we’ll be posting the playlists of the other local-centric speciality shows including, Radio 1190’s long running Local Shakedown, KTCL’s Local’s…
We had too much fun on the show last night. Gave away a bunch of cool stuff — tickets to the Bands You Need to Know 2 show tonight at the Marquis and CDs from Lion Sized and A Shoreline Dream — and had a couple of great guests on…
A Shoreline Dream frontman Ryan Policky lives in a modest two-story house near Barnum Park in west Denver. The do-it-yourself ethos gets plenty of lip service these days, but Policky and his bandmates — guitarist Erik Jeffries, bassist Enoc Torraca and drummer Sean Merrell — live it fully, and the…
A guy doing a karaoke version of the Violent Femmes’ “Add It Up” was about the last thing I would’ve expected to find at Smokin’ Joe’s Bar & Grill (4700 Kipling Boulevard, Wheat Ridge), which until recently was Jammin’ Joe’s. But the guy nailed the ’80s alt-pop tune, from the…
TeamAWESOME! probably wasn’t for everyone, but if there was one thing that was undeniable about the group, it was the sheer catchiness of Chuck Potashner’s songs. It was obvious to anyone willing to go along with the Team spirit that Chuck wanted no more than to write great pop songs…
If you need to get a party started, you could do a lot worse than DJ Dan. Since the early years of the L.A. rave scene, almost two decades ago, Dan has been a force behind the decks and in the studio. He’s remixed everyone from crossover acts like Depeche…
In “Bounce,” one of many standout tracks from the recently released platter Tronic, Detroit’s Curtis “Black Milk” Cross declares, “Even old-school artists feel like the game’s fucked” — an expression of empathy that indicates how much ground he’s covered during his relatively brief career. At age 25, he’s already earned…
With a name like Two Cow Garage, you’d be excused for thinking this band was yet another Americana or neo-Southern rock band beating that horse to death. Instead, what this Columbus, Ohio, quintet does is continue with the punk-roughened rock and roll championed by acts such as the late I…
With the surviving members of the Grateful Dead touring this summer for the first time since 2005, it’s surprising that 62-year-old drummer Bill Kreutzmann (the notoriously “obscured” member of the Dead, who has been a virtual hermit in Hawaii since the death of Jerry Garcia in 1995) is also touring…
The Morning Benders arrived on the indie pop-rock scene in 2006, when singer/guitarist Chris Chu released Loose Change, a solo collection of low-fi, high-spirited recordings made with one microphone and a laptop. By the time 2007’s Boarded Doors EP was released, Chu had recruited three UC-Berkeley classmates and created a…
This Lawrence, Kansas-based indie-rock group doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be. Originally a clone of every late-’90s guitar-heavy, angst-driven emo outfit, the Appleseed Cast has seen more stylistic changes than it has drummers (three or four at last count, depending on whom you talk to). After seven…
Ash Ganley’s music sports virtually every element associated with the triple-A radio format: quietly gruff vocals, refined playing, arrangements that find common denominators in sturdy American genres (country, folk rock, et al.), and songs whose version of rocking out tends toward middle tempos. The production, by Don Debey and Ed…
From the colorful insert, splendidly illustrated by frontman Jeff Kahn, to the lyrics, which fall eloquently between proverb and poetry, Skeleton of God’s latest effort — the followup to Urine Garden, its masterful mid-’90s debut EP — is clearly not just another mindless foray into extreme metal. While the reconvened…
