Yo! We’ve got a hip-hop whodunit on our hands. Well, maybe not a whodunit, but still, there’s a mystery afoot in the world of rap. And if there’s anything we love more than rappers, it’s mystery rappers! Who the hell is this Benjamin Butters cat? Do you know? We need…
The date for this year’s Westword Music Showcase is coming up fast, and while we’re still putting together the all-star local lineup (seriously, this is shaping up to be the best one yet), we have another headliner to announce: Baywood, the funtastical duo featuring former Single File bassist, Joe Ginsberg,…
Santigold is coming to Ogden Theatre on Tuesday, May 29. Touring in support of her forthcoming release, Master of My Make-Believe — her first release since 2008’s Santogold — due out on Tuesday, May 1, the artist otherwise known as Santi White is bound to arrive in the Mile High…
The Fray performed the national anthem at the NCAA championship last night, and like most songs the boys cover, they made it their own. There was nothing inherently wrong with their performance, except that, well, if you’re a purist, there was everything wrong with their performance. Really, is it too…
SP Double just wants to keep it moving. The MC (aka Adrian Perlman) has endured his share of personal travails and had enough beef with other rappers to fill a warehouse. But all of that’s in the rearview now; he’d rather focus on what’s ahead. Just the same, he’s smart…
Before she moved to Denver, Nicole Cacciavillano was planning to be a full-time teacher on the East Coast. But then something tragic happened that altered her course. “The guy that I was with, who I had my whole life planned with,” she says, “got murdered.” When this unexpected event happened…
The Skeleton Show (due at Bender’s Tavern on Saturday, April 7) exemplifies the free-spirited fire of ’60s garage bands who sat on the cusp of psychedelia and waded deep into that dirty musical water more than half the time. With a raw live performance in which some bandmembers come dangerously…
When the Format broke up in 2008, frontman Nate Ruess regrouped and formed Fun. with the help of Andrew Dost and Jack Antonoff, venturing firmly into the realm of pop rock with the act’s debut album, Aim and Ignite. That release garnered acclaim, but the group really hit the big…
The most startling aspect of Gotye’s sound is its sincerity. This is — as others have noted both about him and to him — very Phil Collins of him, quite broodingly Sting and earnestly Peter Gabriel. A fact that fewer tend to point out is that this isn’t Gotye’s first…
Kawabata Makoto, the founder of Acid Mothers Temple, started his career in music in the late 1970s. Whether he experienced Flower Travellin’ Band’s motes of resonating distortion or the dark, haunted droning of Les Rallizes Denudes firsthand is anyone’s guess. But since founding Acid Mothers in 1995, Kawabata has forged…
Richmond, Virginia’s Municipal Waste makes no bones about its influences. It’s easy to hear the frantic pace of D.R.I. from Crossover in the act’s music, not to mention the dynamics and pacing of Anthrax circa Spreading the Disease and some guitar-style nods to early Slayer. Like all of those bands,…
Back in the days when you didn’t even know where the party was until the night of — at which point you had to call an automated recording at a number on the back of your ticket to get directions to some abandoned hangar in western Nebraska and then load…
It’s easy to get lost in hip-hop’s unending torrent of uploaded-one-moment, forgotten-the-next mixtapes and MP3s issued by rappers chasing the dragon of blog buzz, a legacy measured in download counts and dead links. Here-today-gone-tomorrow artists are everywhere. It’s the perfectionists who keep a fickle audience waiting months or sometimes years…
It’ll be ladies’ night at the Funky Buddha on Saturday, April 7 — not in the drink-special sense, but in the lots-of-ladies-playing-funky-tunes-for-your-dancing-pleasure sense. Connie, of Resolute, Halcyon and Cement Recordings fame, is coming in from the Big Apple to rock the house (or tech-house, to be completely accurate). Connie’s streamlined…
Over the last decade, 311 has brought its Unity Tour on the road during the summer with acts like Snoop Dogg, the Offspring, Sublime with Rome, Matisyahu, the Wailers and the Roots. This time around, 311 is teaming up with Slightly Stoopid again for another round of the tour, which…
After a stellar show at Fillmore in January in support of its latest release, The Whole Love, Wilco returns to the area for a two-night stand at Red Rocks on Friday, June 22 (with Punch Brothers) and Saturday, June 23 (with Dr. Dog). On Record Store Day (April 21), Wilco…
LUCERO @ BLUEBIRD THEATER | 3.31.12 Early in Lucero’s set for a sold-out crowd at the Bluebird on Saturday night, frontman Ben Nichols detailed the toll of the band’s latest stint in Colorado. Between the band’s appearance at the Aggie Theatre in Fort Collins on Friday, the pair of shows…
TING TINGS @ OGDEN THEATRE | 3.31.12 If a band’s success were measured exclusively by the strength of their live show, the Ting Tings would be one of the biggest pop bands in this country — and their set at the Ogden Theatre made this point very clear. If you…
CAFFEINE @ 1STBANK CENTER | 3.30.12 Let’s not kid ourselves here: Caffeine Music Festival is a rave of epic proportions. From the first candy-clad fan entering the door at 7 p.m., to the last man standing on the floor of the laser-scaped 1STBANK Center, Caffeine blew up like an explosion…
With another Caffeine Music & Arts Festival on the books for 2012, take a look back at last night’s parking-lot scene outside the 1STBANK Center with the folks who traveled from far (Texas) and near (the Springs) for the all-night annual party put on by Triad Dragons…
Put a few thousand people in a room, put on dance music and loose-fitting — or very little — clothing and you’re bound to drop a few items. Before the ravers who were at Caffeine last night wake up, here are the ten common things you’ll find on the floor…
Eric GruneisenSay Anything last night at the Summit Music Hall. More Say Anything Denver photos. SAY ANYTHING @ SUMMIT MUSIC HALL | 3/30/12Freddie Mercury be damned. Say Anything frontman Max Bemis’s performance last night at the Summit Music Hall resembled more than a tribute to Queen’s lead singer; it was…
