Oh, hell yeah! Mark your calendars. It’s really happening. Van Halen is coming to Denver. It’s confirmed, and we finally have a date. Thursday, May 24, at the Pepsi Center, Van Halen will be here with Kool and the Gang. So stoked! Almost as stoked as we are to hear…
Some sad news to report today: We’ve received word that bluesman Creighton Holley passed away yesterday. The news is devastating to the scene, in general, but particularly for the blues community, which is still grieving the loss of John-Alex Mason, who passed away this past fall at the tragically young…
Three of the city’s hottest R&B singers, Amanda Hawkins, Devan Blake Jones and American Idol alumnus Julie Zorilla, are performing together on one bill this Friday night at the Walnut Room. The trio of Mercury Sauce artists will be showing off their singing and songwriting chops with one of the…
While the term “surf rock” could be applied to the music of Moon Tides (due at the hi-dive this Saturday, January 7), “dream pop” would probably come closer to describing the sound of this Fort Collins-based band: hazy, breathy vocals underneath delicate, shimmery guitar melodies. And although Moon Tides is…
In his six years on the job, Herman’s Hideaway security manager David Barber has seen mike stands get broken, equipment get mashed, sets lit on fire, bands fall off the stage and, at least once, a bandmember threaten to stab the staff. This, he admits nonchalantly, did not increase that…
This Saturday night, inside of Club Glo (in the space formerly occupied by the Heartthrob and Catamaran Liquor Stand), a brand-new club night will make its debut. Four area promoters (Parlay Productions, Dream Entertainment Group, Take Off Ent and Still Livin Entertainment) are coming together like Voltron to present Limelight…
Oh, man! Maybe the Mayans are right after all, and we really are doomed. Here we are, a mere four days into the New Year, and already we have the first sign of the pending apocalypse: We’ve just learned that on Saturday, May 19, Creed is coming to the Paramount…
Have an old guitar lying around collecting dust that you’ve been meaning to play but somehow just never got around to actually playing? Yeah? How about putting it to use? Flobots.org is seeking donated instruments for its Art 2 Action and Youth on Record programs. As you’re probably aware, the…
The name of the young man from Highlands Ranch who died as a result of the injuries sustained from a fall at 1STBANK Center after Pretty Lights’ New Year’s Eve show has been released: Twenty-year-old Chris Engel was a graduate of Thunder Ridge High School and a junior at Colorado…
Here’s what’s hot this week in music on the Front Range: On the concert front, shows from the Ting Tings and Wale were announced; Dressy Bessy, Oh Starling and John Common got spins on local radio; and new releases from the Black Keys, Young Jeezy and Sunn 0))) were among…
In early November 2011, Colorado Springs Air Force Academy cadets jumped on the LMFAO-spirited Party Rock wagon for a tribute to the band’s song, “Sexy and I Know It.” In a lip-dub-style video honoring RedFoo and SkyBlu’s comedic clip, the cadets face the Army soldiers in a dance-off full of…
ITCHY-O @ 3 KINGS TAVERN | 12/31/11 A number of people at this show had no idea what Itchy-O was about. So when one of the uniformed cadre of musicians, his arms lit up with a short row of lights, went running through 3 Kings just prior to the performance,…
It’s tough to single out a distinct voice when speaking to the men of Places. There are seven guys in the band, and they frequently talk over one another. But it’s not the sheer numbers that make isolating a single member a chore. It’s the fact that they each offer…
Someone should really make a movie about the saga of the Wailers. Founded by reggae legends Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer in 1963, the seminal reggae band and its various members have influenced every style of reggae imaginable, from roots and rocksteady to dancehall and ska. It has…
Noise punk — or whatever all-encompassing term you prefer — is nothing new. That said, any band that sounds like it’s bursting with a desperate energy and has the inspiration and drive to engage inner turmoil head-on is always going to be relevant. Shoppers, from Syracuse, New York, embodies that…
There is some irony in the fact that three of the four current members of a band named Cattle Decapitation are staunch vegetarians — but there is also awesomeness here. The same goes for the longtime death-metal act’s songs, a rowdy and riveting back catalogue that decries animal abuse, genocide…
Although Mark Arm is sometimes credited with coining the term “grunge,” all of his bands have been informed by a keen sense of humor as well as the great raw sound of the garage-rock bands of the Pacific Northwest. Forming Green River in 1984 with friend and guitarist Steve Turner…
When crazy people do crazy things — especially if those crazy things are violent or harmful — there is an unfortunate tendency to look for some external impetus for the craziness. Like when Drowning Pool got scapegoated for the Tucson killings last year, or when the Colorado Springs police openly…
Wandering Monks is a duo whose lyrics embody the rebellion present in so much of early hip-hop. The two tackle difficult subjects like war and peace over strong production, making their anti-big-money lyrics shine. While the content is serious, it gets a bit redundant over the course of the record’s…
On Chimney Choir’s debut EP — titled (feather) and graced with a block-print feather graphic on the cover — the trio offered five songs that were all keepers. At the same time, those tunes left the listener wanting more. It didn’t take long for the act to deliver, following that…
It’s likely that Madeline Johnston didn’t actually hole herself up for the winter with only her private thoughts and the company of a crate of records and books while writing this album. Just the same, these eight tracks have that sort of feel — a kind of lonely, minimalist, contemplative…
Judging from the extremely dense, seemingly arbitrary and slightly pretentious narrative spun on the band’s bio, including the overwrought descriptors they’ve attached to themselves individually as players (bassist Shawn Briardy, for instance, is responsible for “thickening undertones” and “low end theorems”), the men of Genre Theory have clearly put a…
