Here’s an interesting tidbit about Donna Summer, who passed away today at the age of 63, vaguely related to our fair city: Did you know that she once sang a song called “Denver Dream”? The storyline for the lesser know cut from 1974, written by British songwriter Pete Belotte, centers…
Donna Summer died this morning in Florida after succumbing to lung and breast cancer. Born on New Year’s Eve 1948, LaDonna Adrian Gaines was a trained traditional gospel singer who grew up in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston. As Donna Summer, she went on to change the landscape of dance…
So thanks to our pal Skrillex and his utterly inescapable ubiquitousness since the Grammys, dubstep has steadily made its way into the mainstream to the chagrin of true aficionados and the delight of unsuspecting casual music fans. But for as many newbies that have embraced the low-end sound, there’s been…
Today only, in the Voice Daily Deals, you can get a ticket to this year’s Westword Music Showcase with Girl Talk, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe’s tribute to the Beastie Boys, Battles, Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears, Baywood and 150 of the hottest local acts, PLUS…
After many years in Chicago, saxophonist Josh Quinlan moved to Colorado to work on his doctorate of music arts in jazz studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. While here, in addition to teaching at Denver School of the Arts, he’s also taken over the helm of Dazzle Recordings…
Update (4 p.m., 5/16/12): OneRepublic drummer Eddie Fisher appeared in court this afternoon and reportedly pleaded not guilty to the charges that have been filed against him, including two additional counts proposed by the district attorney today of disturbing the peace and wrongs to a minor, presumably spurred by the…
The story of Creed (due this Saturday, May 19, at the Paramount Theatre) begins in the mid-’90s, when the band changed its name to Creed from Naked Toddler and embarked on a career marked by hard riffs, mainstream metaphors and Vedder vocals. Not too long after winning a Grammy in…
Montbello High School’s drum line marched down the 16th Street Mall yesterday in preparation for the inaugural Make Music Denver event on June 21. Hosted by the Downtown Denver Partnership, Make Music Denver will be a day-long festival that celebrates World Music Day, simultaneously in more than 450 cities around…
ManCub’s noisy, distortion-washed dance punk seems like it could have been born of some combination of wide-eyed innocence and reckless abandon. Truth is, it’s a labor of spite. “I had a girlfriend at the time, and she broke up with me and broke my heart,” explains ManCub’s mastermind, Alex Anderson…
Anyone who stuck around for the final act of the second night of 2011’s Titwrench Festival got to see something very different when Tulip Wars took the stage. At times the music felt like straight-ahead pop with a lot more depth; at others the band sounded like mid-’90s alternative-rockers who…
Lupe Fiasco knows just how to incite the masses, whether it be through his politically charged lyrics or the convincing execution of his rhymes: When this man speaks, everyone listens up. Such is the case with his record Lasers, the culmination of a standoff between the MC and Atlantic Records,…
Nashville eats mavericks for breakfast, spitting them out compromised or undigested. Eric Church has never played by Nashville’s rules, yet he appears poised on the brink of country mega-stardom. The clever iconoclast’s edgy debut single, “Two Pink Lines” (off his 2006 debut, Sinners Like Me), waited out a teen pregnancy…
After a handful of years spent experimenting with a broad spectrum of psychedelic music while based in Newark, Delaware, two of this band’s founding members relocated to Los Angeles. There they found like-minded musicians, and for a while, Spindrift included members of Psychic TV, Brian Jonestown Massacre and Warlocks. The…
If the country charts were a battle royal with the only weapons being raw honesty and authenticity, Jamey Johnson would have Kenny Chesney and Brad Paisley pretty anxious. The former marine isn’t joking when he claims a home “between Jennings and Jones,” though he spends more time on Waylon’s side…
Comes a time in every man’s life when he must reckon with the fact that he’s become old and crotchety. For me, that day actually came at about age 22 — and while I’ve not been averse to shaking my fist at many a nonsensical aspect of our dumb culture…
The crew from Ugly Azz Ent, which includes Julox, Lil Rip and Double O Purv, among others, has churned out a posse record in every sense of the word with Da Good Da Bad and Ugly. While the rhyme schemes and flows of these MCs aren’t necessarily impeccable, the simple…
There is so much about this album that shouldn’t work. For one thing, Ben Knighten’s voice is the soft, Disney-caliber croon of road-trip montages and your grandmother’s car stereo. For another, his backing instrumentation is sparse, less simple than it is frankly easy — or easy listening. And his lyrics…
Starting things off with two pop-punk anthems, “Where Hope Lives” and “Rooftops,” the Hate strikes a triumphant note on Authors, like a statement of purpose from a group of vital, snarling hellraisers, simultaneously channeling bits of the Sweet and Bad Religion and mixing them with a touch of Hot Rod…
Reinvention has come relatively quickly for the members of Calling Out West. In 2009, the trio of guitarist Max Comer, bassist Cody Vinton and vocalist/drummer Jake Vinton expanded the band then known as the Side Project, adding guitarist Mike Anderson and drummer Zach Armijo. Starting with 2010’s eleven-song release Short…
It might seem that Subb-an has appeared on the scene overnight, but give him some credit: The guy’s 24 years old, and considering that he started mixing tracks at the tender age of fourteen, he got here as fast as he could. He earned a prestigious degree in sound design…
Every week, just when we think we’ve seen the best of the upcoming concert season and that things couldn’t possibly get any more compelling, there’s a whole new batch of new shows to make us flip our lids. This week: Skrillex at Red Rocks in August, preceded a few days…
Plants and Animals (due tonight at the hi-dive) began life as an all-instrumental band in Montreal that made sprawling rock epics informed by an improvisational sensibility. But by the time the band was ready for its 2008 debut full-length, Parc Avenue, it no longer seemed to feel the need to…
