Sunday, June 14th, KOOL 105.1 hosted its annual KOOL Concert. This year, the featured artists were stars of ’80s New Wave pop with Tears For Fears, B-52s and Berlin. Sometimes a line-up with an appeal to nostalgia can have some essentially one-hit wonders but not so for this show, as…
Westword approached the ballot for the 21st Westword Music Awards a little differently this year. In order to help highlight the burgeoning Denver scene, we limited this year’s ballot to bands and artists who have not been repeatedly recognized in the past, and created a new group comprising of bands…
The rain started coming down in sheets right at showtime, so the music had to be delayed for more than an hour. Then, by the time the downpour tempered into a steady pattering, the wind picked up. Sharp gusts snaked their way through Red Rocks Amphitheatre, and the temperature plummeted…
Cheap Trick, performing with Peter Frampton at Red Rocks on Tuesday, June 16th, occupy a unique place in the history of rock music. Its music was almost definitively power pop, while it also often rocked a little harder than its peers stamped with that genre designation. Its raucous live shows…
Have you been to the River North Art District lately? You know, The RiNo? Maybe you’re thinking — what in the hell is River North? Where is it, even? You’ve definitely heard a lot about it — it’s recently been declared one of Denver’s hottest up-and-coming neighborhoods. Even TEDxRino has…
Join us on Saturday, June 20, 2015, for the 21st Westword Music Showcase, featuring over 100 of the best bands and artists from Colorado and beyond on a dozen stages in Denver’s Golden Triangle neighborhood. Tickets start at $30 and are on sale now! This year’s headliners are Flume, the…
This weekend’s concert calendar features a legendary guitarist (Tedeschi Trucks band) a couple legendary rappers (Summer Jam) and a legendary Latin lover (Romeo Santos). The rest of our picks follow.ALL WEEKEND Snowmass Mammoth Fest$55-$225 2:00PM Snowmass Village Palisade Bluegrass and Roots Festival$35-$135 4:00PM Riverbend Park Golden Music Festival$10-$20, 3-DAY PASS $30 6:00PM Clear…
It’s a rarity that any band lasts ten years and remains interesting up to the end, much less a band of people who have played music together since the members were in middle school. Fissure Mystic started in 1998, when Taylor Evans-Rice, Fernando Guzman and Andrew Elkins were in middle…
Darin Bowman worked as a bartender at the Park Tavern for more than a dozen years and sang for local punk band Dr. Neptune in the ‘90s, and he knows that booze and music go hand in hand. He’ll bring the two together under one roof when he opens Bowman’s…
While living in an old mill in Nyack, New York, the skilled jazz drummer Brian Blade, who’s been part of the Wayne Shorter Quartet for the last fifteen years and fronted his Fellowship Band for the past close to two decades, started an audio diary of sorts on a four-track…
It’s been over fifteen years since D’Angelo blessed Denver with his presence. Last time, he was here in support of his critically acclaimed album Voodoo and playing at the Paramount Theatre. Some things have changed since then; D’Angelo has put himself into the small group of legendary bandleaders like the…
The nightly rain of the past month in Denver spared the Violent Femmes at Red Rocks. When Colin Hay opened the show, there was a sprinkling, but it went away quickly and a patchwork of clouds in the sky that promised a potential downpour that never really arrived. As evening…
For more than a century, every generation of American women has had their Latin lover, their tanned man that provoked swooning and screaming and spontaneous chonis melting. Flappers had Rudolph Valentino; the Mad Men generation threw woo at Ricardo Montalbán. Ladies of the 1980s went crazy over Julio Iglesias, while…
Panic! At the Disco headlines JEEP on the Rocks at Red Rocks on Saturday, October 10 with American Authors and X Ambassadors opening the show. Tickets ($39.50-$59.50) go on sale on Friday, June 12 at 10 a.m. Lola Black’s Borracho Bash will be at the Summit Music Hall on Saturday,…
In early April, a group of protesters gathered outside of the Regional Transportation District headquarters in downtown Denver to decry a proposed fare hike, which they believed would have a particularly damaging effect on low-income residents who rely on public transportation. Although RTD’s board of directors ultimately approved the rate…
For its first Denver show since 2004, veteran indie-pop group Belle & Sebastian will collaborate with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra for an expanded presentation of its signature storytelling style. It’s a songwriting method with creative roots in the years that bandleader Stuart Murdoch spent more or less bedridden due to…
Tonight at Red Rocks, Denver avant-garde improv group Animal / object will join Violent Femmes on stage for the improvisational sections of “Black Girls” and “Confessions.” Since the early days of the Femmes there has been a horn section called Horns of Dilemma whose membership has included, at various times,…
Nneka (who will make a stop at Lost Lake Lounge tonight) may be one of the most famous international artists who is mostly unknown in America. But if perseverance and talent are any indicators, that won’t be the case for long. Born Nneka Egbuna in the Niger Delta region and half-German…
On Friday, the summer’s funkiest Red Rocks concert featured an unexpected intermission. After opening sets from DJ Jazzy Jeff and Exmag, the skies opened, the stairwells became waterfalls and the venue advised fans to take cover. Fifteen minutes later, the worst of it had passed and people emerged from their…
The trading post at Red Rocks Amphitheatre just made room for a lot of history, as the new home of the Colorado Music Hall of Fame. In the five years since it’s creation, 7 classes have been inducted into the Hall of Fame, all of which represent a varying yet…
Editor’s note: Each week, illustrator Noah Van Sciver shares his ongoing story of an ’80s rocker on a road trip through his past with the readers of Backbeat. You can see more of Van Sciver’s work in his new book SAINT COLE from Fantagraphics books. Last Week’s Episode Of Rufus…
