Don’t ever call the Blue Knights a marching band. Averaging about 126 members, give or take one or two, the Knights are a drum and bugle corps, the cream of the field-performance genre, and nothing but. To call them anything else would border on insult. What’s the difference, exactly? A…

Artist, radio personality and professional speed-talker Bill Amundson has built a career out of just being Bill, which in his case means being a self-deprecating, compulsive, middle-aged Midwesterner of Norwegian descent with a distinct inability to either shut up or stop drawing. What comes out–and out and out and out–is…

Not everyone gets famous playing with model dinosaurs in their garage. Special-effects godfather Ray Harryhausen may be the exception: Not only did he begin his career that way while still a teen in his hometown of Hollywood, but in the process he managed to change the face of the FX…

Thursday July 9 Ben Sidran–the same Ben Sidran who played alongside Steve Miller and Boz Scaggs in an early rendition of the Steve Miller Band, the same Ben Sidran who holds a doctorate in American studies, and the same Ben Sidran who’s written definitive books about jazz musicians and documentary…

When artistic director and choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar of Urban Bush Women launched the troupe in 1984, her vision was for an all-woman dance company that not only performed for but also educated its audience. The members would work together to affect social change while reflecting the culture of…

The Cherry Creek Arts Festival tops almost everyone’s list of things to do in Denver over the Fourth of July weekend. The award-winning fest, taking place this weekend on the streets of Cherry Creek North, has been hailed nationwide by artists and buyers alike, and it adds a luster to…

Thursday July 2 Fans of Boogie Nights already know that the porn business is both an ugly business and a funny business. In that spirit, Ronnie Larsen’s off-Broadway success story, Making Porn, takes on the phenomenon as it occurs in the gay world, with strong shots of street wit, raunch…

They have no visible tattoos or notable piercings, and their clothes are just clothes, unrent by strategic rips or tears. But looks aren’t everything: The members of the Carbon Dioxide Orchestra just like to make noise–actually, a kind of sculptural, engineered noise–and that’s how they distinguish themselves in Denver’s more-avant-garde-than-thou…

Thursday June 25 A full head of hair and a softer image seem to be doing Sinead O’Connor a world of good. After a few strident public acts derailed her rising career, she’s back to making music again, using only her beautiful Celtic voice. The audience should be dancing on…

Karen Quest does tricks with ropes and whips, wears leather and, yeah, lives in San Francisco, but what she ultimately does is really a family act. Quest, a kind of career graduate student of circus arts, is concentrating these days on Wild West rope tricks and cowgirl humor. She’ll be…

Thursday June 18 Denver’s notable Greek population loves to share its culture, something it does with more than the average gusto at the annual Greek Festival, this year celebrating its 33rd anniversary. One of the town’s best-planned ethnic fests, this one features a craft marketplace, costumed folk dancers and musicians…

Federico Garcia Lorca, an Andalusian poet and playwright of the early 1920s and 1930s, would have been 100 this month. Students of world literature know, however, that the liberal Garcia Lorca–brilliantly creative, openly homosexual and a champion of Gypsies and other downtrodden peoples–was executed by Fascists during the Spanish Civil…

donnie l. betts has a dream. Actually, betts, a longtime figure on Denver’s theater scene, has several. He’s setting his sights on future stage productions–such as one jazz-lover’s fantasy about Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Duke Ellington meeting in heaven–and hopes to make inroads on television with a proposed local…

Thursday June 11 Comparisons to Terry McMillan are inevitable, but novelist Lolita Files says she’s her own woman and her characters–sassy, sexy, professional buppies looking for love (and other stuff)–an extension of her own life. McMillan simply opened the door for talented women authors with a knack for turning out…

At a time when the buzz in LoDo is about how all the galleries are fleeing, here’s one making a solid commitment to staying put: Under the innovative leadership of director Sally Perisho, Metropolitan State College of Denver’s Center for the Visual Arts crosses Wazee Street this month to relocate…

This is for those of you who simply zoom past Limon on Interstate 70: Whoa! Pull into the little town on the eastern plains, and you’ll find a modest but intriguing place called the Limon Heritage Museum and Railroad Park. Housed in the town’s old Rock Island-Union Pacific depot, the…

What do visitors remember most about a trek through Denver International Airport? The terminal’s tented peaks and monumental marble expanses? Well, maybe. But for many, it’s Gary Sweeney’s “America–Why I Love Her,” a wall-sized, puzzle-like map of the United States studded with flags that mark vanishing tourist traps, such as…

William Corey is a bit baffled. The Boulder photographer, who’s spent the last twenty years snapping placid images in Japanese gardens, is surprised that anyone in this country–other than a few wealthy collectors–would be interested in what he does. “Nobody’s interested in slowing down,” Corey says of his fellow Americans…

Thursday June 4 It’s not often you’ll find a singing voice this strong and clean in your own backyard. Local country/folk diva Celeste Krenz, who captured time on the Gavin Americana charts in 1995 with her second album Slow Burning Flame, has just released a new CD, Wishin’, and it’s…

Kathryn Bernheimer knows movies. The Boulder film critic’s name has been seen regularly in print for nearly twenty years in such places as the Boulder Daily Camera, and that’s been more than enough time to develop her expertise. But Bernheimer also knows a thing or two about what it means…

Thursday May 28 For Pavel Dobrusky, staging a new interpretation of Cervantes’s Don Quixote was a completely possible dream. The inventive Czech writer/director, who’s already left his mark on the Denver Center Theatre Company with the fantastic and surreal Beethoven ‘N’ Pierrot, is a natural for the material, able to…

It’s time to get on the bus. Not just any bus, however. This one is Barry Fey’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Tour of Denver bus, sponsored by the Colorado Historical Society in conjunction with its current picture-perfect ’60s-’70s exhibit. In a way, the tour of former venues where Fey played out…