While working in an improv group, D.J. Yazzie observed a fellow player making a strange face every time she drew a blank on stage: She looked, he decided, like an undead jugfish. With this image etched in his mind, Yazzie named his new improv group Undead Jugfish, a titular reminder…
These days, Rachael Lampa’s schedule is not typical of that of most fifteen-year-old kids from Monarch High School in Louisville, Colorado. Of course, when a battery of people have you pegged as the next big thing — not just for Colorado, but for the country and possibly beyond — your…
Kim Richey is calling from the road, from somewhere inside the D.C. Beltway, trying her best to escape the confines of her hotel room even while on the phone. “I can’t open my window. I’m going to try to get my Swiss Army knife. I think if I can take…
There is something both chilling and beautiful about chaos and destruction, like watching a 21-story building implode. In a live setting, the Austin, TX-based foursome, …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, live by this notion: The band takes the established order and structure and pulverizes it…
Dolomites provide a curious geographical anomaly, considering they’re Irish by way of Portland and take their name from the soaring limestone spires of the Italian Alps. But as pint-hoistin’ pub bands go, this acoustic quintet conveys as universally Celtic a feeling as getting shit-plastered on St. Paddy’s Day, or nigh…
A trip to your neighborhood CD store can be a disheartening experience, especially when the bestseller racks are filled with imitations (‘N Sync) of imitations (the Backstreet Boys) of imitations (New Kids on the Block) of imitations (the Osmonds) of imitations (I could go on, but is that really necessary?)…
There’s been a lot of talk lately about this little old thing called “online music.” Last week, a court ruling ordered the file-sharing system Napster to close its electronic doors for good (a ruling that was subsequently stayed until Napster’s pending appeal can be heard). In the wake of that…
Houstons Pure Rubbish, Saturday, August 5, at the 15th Street Tavern, with Hemi Cuda and the Volts, is really messing up the notion that punk rock is a bastion of anti-authoritarianism. A few years ago, lead guitarist Derek D and drummer Evan D asked their father, Punk Daddy, to sing…
Soothing vocal cords meet fuzzbox power chords as the melancholy brooding of the Czars collides with the wall-of-noise, guitar-fueled ambience of Space Team Electra (pictured) on Saturday, August 5, at the Gothic Theatre. In an evening dubbed Czars Team Electra, each group will perform one of its counterparts songs during…
Linda Roby was on a six-hour journey through the mountains, daydreaming, when an idea hit her: She envisioned models strutting down a catwalk with dancers gliding around them and a DJ spinning funky beats, all to inspire positive change. Move, Sunday, August 6, at the Roxy, finds Robys dreams becoming…
The members of Dark Star Orchestra might take issue with those who say you cannot bring the Dead back to life. For the past three years, this Chicago-based act has built a national following by resurrecting the music of the late Grateful Dead. Each night, the Orchestra repeats a particular…
With the likes of Korn and Rage Against the Machine demonstrating that those predictions of rock’s commercial demise you heard a year or two back were premature (again!), brainiacs at Madonna’s Maverick imprint decided to promote the Deftones into the next big heavy-music thang — and so far, their strategy…
Before he was an artist who sensed he was just about to hit — and before many people came to consider him Colorado’s greatest hope of penetrating the national hip-hop scene — there was a time when rapper Don Blas felt the allure of street life, when even a brush…
Most observers regard the onslaught of teenage pop sensations like Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys, ‘N SYNC and Christina Aguilera as proof positive of the cyclical nature of rock music. And like the big teen idol boom of the early ’60s, all this smiling and dancing must mean that a…
Mr. Earle had a moment there, back in the ’80s, when he could get the country-music establishment to put out his records and convince commercial country radio to play them. But that was a long time ago, dear hearts. Since then, he’s engaged in more than enough bad behavior (like…
Don’t expect the sons of Kyuss — an underappreciated band that drew comparisons to Nirvana in the early ’90s — to rise up lethargically like Lon Chaney Jr. and embarrass their ancestry. Sure, guitarist Josh Homme packs bowl after bowl of blooze-metal variations from the seedier side — admittedly equal…
Released to counter the popular perception of Woody Guthrie as a blissed-out wastrel whose main contribution to American music was to provide Bruce Springsteen with the acoustic set piece “This Land Is Your Land,” this CD succeeds through both its varied themes and the personal portrait of Guthrie it advances…
British author Jeff Noon would probably take a shine to Denver rapper Mike V. Noon’s novel, Vurt, takes place in a future world populated by all kinds of variations on the human species: human/dog combos, folks whose physiology involves copious amounts of gas and vapors, robotmen and people who live…
The undefinable guitarist Charlie Hunter, Thursday, July 27, at the Gothic Theatre and Friday, July 28, at the Boulder Theater, has become, in the publics mind, inseparable from his instrument. Hunters eight-string Novax guitar, a one-of-a-kind hybrid he designed himself, allows him to play bass and lead lines simultaneously and…
It isnt Farm Aid, but the Denver Rescue Mission Benefit, Thursday, July 27, at the Soiled Dove, aims to raise a lot of dough to buy backpacks and school supplies for kids from low-income families — a cause that even Willie Nelson would probably get behind. The Ryan Tracy Band…
Red Rocks has hosted many memorable concerts, but this summer, the scenic amphitheater is welcoming a different form of entertainment: movies. The Film on the Rocks series is sponsored by the Denver Film Society, Red Rocks and the city of Denver, uniting music and film under a canopy of Colorado…
You have to wonder what caused those early pioneers — bound for the West Coast, motivated by the promise of gold or, more simply, water — to plunk down and set up camp in the Sonoran desert. The Native populations — Navajo, Pima, Apache — who had inhabited the land…
