Music

Today started out like any other day: 6 a.m. coffee, a couple of smokes, some news and left overs from the night before. I turned on the TV and flipped to MSNBC, because that was the one big news network that I happened to see setting up Sunday afternoon by…

Cinemocracy Rocks! Monday, August 25, 2008 Red Rocks Amphiteatre Better than: Rocking in the free world. Near the end of Alan Dominguez’s film, Cinema+(Dem)ocracy, a guy said, “Voting is like peeing the ocean. It doesn’t make much difference, but you really feel good having done it.” Of all the people…

Update (8/25): Just got the drop on a late night party hosted by MySpace at Mile High Station featuring Nelly. Hold on. Before you start Googling Mile High Station, you should know that this event, a salute to the screen actor’s guild, is another invite-only shindig. Update (8/22): Welp, looks…

Just received word from the Mad Society Productions folks that the Public Enemy show originally slated for tonight at Boulder’s Theater has been rescheduled for Wednesday. Admission to the show is free and open to folks sixteen and older (with a valid photo ID). You may remember last week the…

Allen Toussaint. The New Orleans All-Star Jam-Balaya Fillmore Auditorium August 24 It was clear that the New Orleans All-Star Jam-Balaya, a fundraiser co-sponsored by the Friends of New Orleans featuring some of the biggest and best names in Louisiana music, differed from the typical live-performance event in Denver even before…

Flobots, Railbenders Saturday, August 23, 2008 Elitch Gardens, DNC Media Party Better than: A vacation at Pleasure Island. It’s a scene that’s disturbing in its darkness, and eerie in its implications. In Walt Disney’s 1940 feature film Pinocchio, the wooden protagonist is lured to a promised utopia for little boys,…

Rock the Bells Tour Saturday, August 23, 2008 Fiddler’s Green The Rock the Bells show was supposed to be a sort of door closing on my adult years, one of those watershed moments replete with voiceover from Richard Dreyfuss that would have gone something like: “As my homies and I…

Photo: Dave Herrera 3OH!3, Chain Gang of 1974 and the Pirate Signal Saturday, August 23, 2008 Fox Theatre, Boulder Having seen 3OH!3 at each of the past two Warped Tours (click here and here for details), I expected more of the same on August 23 at the first of two…

“Where my reality show at, dogs?” DMX gets a reality show Even though DMX is sitting in a Miami jail waiting to answer to a variety of charges including drug possession, weapons possessions and animal cruelty, some television producers think his life would make for some great entertainment. The show…

Received word earlier today from my boy Whip, 101.5 FM’s music director, that KTNI’s new locals show will make its broadcast debut next Thursday night from 10 p.m. to midnight. In a new twist in local programming, the show, set to be hosted by Whip himself, will be broadcast live…

It’s been a busy week around here trying to keep track of everything that’s going on during the DNC. All eyes are understandably on the high profile events, meaning all the other cool local events that have nothing to do with the convention are in danger of being overshadowed. Not…

With enough breakneck shifts in tone, style and pacing to confuse and confound anyone looking for more conventional songwriting, Action Friend’s debut clearly has its roots in the wildly experimental guitar music of John Zorn. This can be disconcerting to anyone not willing to follow the band’s sharp turns through…

One of a band’s biggest challenges is finding its own sound, and the World Romantic has done it. But the players are so locked into this style that their EP gets the redundancy blues by track two. Granted, the first cut, “Pop Culture,” is distinctive: Lead singer James Dzuris caresses…

Inevitably, this band gets lumped into the post-rock category thanks to that whole notion that any epic instrumental music with energy and drive must be post-rock. But San Francisco’s Beaten by Them has more in common with modern classical music and minimalist German bands like Kraftwerk and Neu! than it…