For more on the Flobots, check out Adam Cayton-Holland’s cover story in the August 21 issue of Westword. You can also read Dave Herrera’s 2007 profile here. Flobots, Denver’s fast-ascending hip-hop ensemble, caught a rare bit of bad press this week, when a music critic in Cleveland previewed their tour…
Jackson Browne thinks McCain is a dick (ed. note: this is pure conjecture) Here’s a friendly one-stop guide to all the great content you might have missed this week on Backbeat Online while you were wondering how the hell John McCain thought he could get away with using a song…
There will be no shortage of tears shed or beers drank this weekend, as Paul Vee is memorialized. Just over a month ago, the revered former frontman of Angellic Rage was murdered in a bungled robbery attempt in Las Vegas, where he was living most recently. His death sent shock…
LOCALS ONLY Even though hip-hop artist Bionik Brown had only lived in Denver for short time before his passing this week, he became familiar with the local music scene quickly and scored gigs easily thanks to his dope skills on the mike. In honor of Bionik’s memory, after the jump…
Update (i.e., retraction time): We just received a note from the Evolutionary Media Group confirming that this is indeed a private event, as the Good Doctor asserted below. The confusion stems from an ambiguously worded press release we received this morning from EMG that lead us to believe this event…
I almost never go to plays. It’s not that I don’t enjoy a well-written drama or a well-staged theatrical piece, but the artifice of acting is often a bit too – well – artificial for my tastes. This is odd, actually, because when it comes to rock-n-roll, I eat up…
Someone’s rockin’ my dreamboat… The latest edition of Beyond Playlist includes reviews of the Jonas Brothers’ A Little Bit Longer; the original soundtrack to the film Hallam Foe, featuring numerous Domino Records artists; a jazz compilation, Justin Time Records 25th Anniversary Collection; and Bits by Oxford Collapse…
Flobots’ new video rises to the occasion. Just in time for their spate of performances at the DNC in the coming weeks, Flobots have unveiled their new video for “Rise” on MTV’s website. The four-minute clip, which opens with a brief, establishing aerial shot of the Denver skyline, prominently features…
Photo: Jon Solomon Jason Heller is a badass. And I’m not just saying that because he was my amiable sidekick here at the paper for years. Besides being an extremely level-headed, insightful music writer with astounding sensibilities, undeniable depth and gloriously lyrical writing, dude’s also an absolutely wicked guitarist. Not…
Well, the rumors have finally been confirmed: Rage Against the Machine will indeed be in town for the DNC. The incendiary act is slated to perform at the Tent State Music Festival to End the War on Wednesday, August 27 at the Denver Coliseum, where it will be joined by…
A friend gave me a Mr. T talking key chain years ago. At the time, I didn’t realize that it contained a nearly endless source of wisdom, tough love and thoughtful, nuanced advice for one’s life. It just sat in a drawer, waiting. The other day, I pulled it out…
Whenever Jesse Elliott and his sister would begin to bicker in the back seat on family trips, their mother would threaten them with campfire songs and enlist their participation. Though the harmonica-led tunes were intended as a creative form of discipline, Elliott realizes now that the family sing-alongs were a…
Before forming their band Kosmos, brothers Ben and Tim Tonak grew up listening to Pearl Jam and could play nearly every song in the group’s catalogue. Since then, the guys have gravitated to Radiohead and Jimmy Eat World, which instilled the act with “a garage-band sensibility with arena-rock accessibility.” As…
Mike Relm is a pioneer working in the medium of video turntablism. Mashing up snippets of video and music in a live setting and incorporating the scratching and other DJ tricks of traditional turntablism, Relm is helping to create a vibrant new art form. Since adding the video element to…
Death in June, The Rule of Thirds (Soleilmoon). Samples aside, you’d almost think this was a record straight out of the modern psych-folk movement. But Douglas Pearce has been cultivating this sound since Death in June began to evolve from its post-punk/proto-industrial beginnings 25 years ago. Haunting, profane and delicately…
The closest I ever came to doing hard time was half an hour in a holding cell in Denver police headquarters after I was busted for shoplifting rubbers at the age of thirteen. If I hadn’t gotten busted — at Skaggs Drug Store (now Rite-Aid), where they sat me in…
It’s unfortunate that the town that spawned the likes of Cavity and the VSS is now known mostly for jam bands whose hallmark is self-indulgent soloing. It comes as a pleasant surprise, then, that a band as dynamic, rich and concise as Three Cheers Faraday (due at the hi-dive on…
Among all the stars at Skylab, it would be easy to overlook Adultnapper. This would be a mistake. The Brooklyn-based DJ/producer (aka Francis Harris) has been creating quite a splash with his productions, which hark back to the classic techno releases of Richie Hawtin (aka Plastikman) but add tribal percussion,…
The video for this album’s title track — a guided tour of Colfax locales such as Casa Bonita — makes it clear that the members of UmConscious (who open for Pepper at the Fox Theatre on Friday, August 16) would rather grin than grimace. But The Avenue isn’t a straight-up…
With a title like this for an album, you’d be excused for thinking that former Thorazine Frisbee mastermind Dan Kaufman has an absurdist, zen-like sense of humor. At first blush, the arrangement of sounds here bears comparison to the music put out by the Elephant 6 collective. Instead of Brian…
A generation of teenagers is actively pissed off that Sublime’s Brad Nowell overdosed after making only three albums — and for them, Slightly Stoopid, joined here by Sly & Robbie, Pepper and Half Pint, might be the next best thing. During the mid-’90s, Stoopid ones Miles Doughty and Kyle McDonald…
Jazz drummer Jeremy Jones grew up in Denver, but for the past five years he’s lived in Seattle, where he plays in a number of bands, including his trio, the Teaching, and another outfit called the Xtet. On the last group’s latest album, Awakening to Life, Jones shows off his…
