Hard Rock Cafe’s 40th Anniversary Memorabilia Tour bus will be outside the Denver location at 500 16th Street for one day only on Wednesday, June 29, from noon to 7 p.m. The exhibit includes the top forty most iconic pieces of music memorabilia from Hard Rock’s collection, including Buddy Holly’s…
Elway’s (2500 East First Avenue) just kicked off its seventh annual summer music series, which runs every Wednesday through August 21. The outdoor shows, held in the courtyard behind the restaurant, usually attract some decent-sized crowds. This year, the lineup includes a number of original acts like Bop Skizzum and…
Every year, we enlist our Backbeat writers to host various stages at the Westword Music Showcase, and in addition to their emcee obligations, we ask them to pull double duty and write up the acts that appear on their individual stages. Click through to read travelogues from Thorin Klosowski, Ru…
Norwegian-born singer Sondre Lerche (playing tonight at the Larimer Lounge with Kishi Bashi and Nightlands) knows how to write a catchy melody, but it’s his deep catalog of complex chord structures, bossanova beat references and Tom Jones-ish crooning that set him apart. This diversity has also allowed the musician and…
Outsider musician Larry “Wild Man” Fischer passed away last week at the age of 66 due to heart failure. He wasn’t exactly the most well-known musician in the world, but his blend of crazed outsider songwriting and a knack for attracting some popular friends — including Rosemary Clooney, Frank Zappa…
The last time I got a contact high was in September, when Sleep played the Gothic Theatre. So it was only appropriate that my next contact high came while talking with J.D. Cronise of the Sword, another great metal band, about fifteen minutes after the Austin-based act finished its set…
BASSNECTAR at RED ROCKS | 06.18.11″The visuals for the night set a new standard: Revolutionary in regards to illusional perspective and thought-provoking in regard to the propaganda images of war and op-art icons seared into the retinas of everyone staring at the stage.”…
All right, now that the festival portion of the Westword Music Showcase is on the books, it’s time to hand out the awards. As far as that goes, we’re tallying the votes right now, and the winners in each individual category will be announced at a special ceremony this Thursday,…
Sure, we were all exhausted and hungover from Saturday’s Westword Music Showcase (the biggest one to date, and it felt like it in the most awesome way possible) but Hindershot didn’t care. The band took advantage of yesterday’s gorgeous weather, spending most of the afternoon filming a new video for…
Partially reinventing the old garage rock wheel, Oakland’s Bare Wires (playing tonight at the Larimer Lounge with Winter Legends, Six Eyed Snake, The Conjugal Visits and BleachedBlonde) do a damn fine job of adding a pretty shine to the usually clangy genre. Part Buzzcocks, part Kinks, the trio makes effective…
YO LA TENGO at #WMS11 | 06.18.11″After two or three songs, Ira Kaplan said there were notes all over the stage saying not to use profanity and that if that were the case, they had nothing left to play.”…
Man, what a day we had yesterday at the seventeenth annual Westword Music Showcase! The music was exceptional, the weather was beyond agreeable and everywhere you looked in every direction it was a sea of smiling faces. With over 13,000 people in attendance this year, this was certainly the biggest…
DEL THE FUNKY HOMOSAPIEN @ SHOWCASE | 6/18/11 The fact the Del the Funky Homosapien is still able to get up on stage and command the attention he did ten years ago is a testament to the quality of his music, the production of his beats and the impact of…
Oh no! Those five vodka & Red Bulls gave you the guts to talk to that guy or girl, but not the common sense to actually get their phone number, Facebook, Twitter or even their name. Now here you are in the sobering sun of Sunday morning, wondering how you…
You can’t be everywhere at once, especially during events like Saturday’s Westword Music Showcase, with more than a dozen venues across a few blocks in the Golden Triangle. Thankfully, we’ve got Twitter to read about people complaining and dancing and high-fiving across the festival, which is truly the best use…
CHROMEO at #WMS11 | 06.18.11″Two songs in and it was clear: Dave and P came to party. There wasn’t much in the way of segues or throwaway banter between tunes. Chromeo let the music speak for itself and went straight for the hipbone.”…
All right Showcase is finally here. You excited? We are. If you’re on your way or just getting here, there’s a couple of programming changes we wanted to make you aware of that are different from the printed pocket guides and the downloadable PDFs. Most notably, over at City Hall,…
There’s nothing worse for a pot-smoking music fan than to find your concert joints crumbled into a broken mess at the bottom of your favorite hiding spot. All that work rolling them beforehand, stashing them in your hat and making it through security is gone, and you’ve got to spend…
You can get your chance to be a go-go dancer for Global Dance Festival at the end of June — or, you know, just watch a lot of sexy go-go dancers wile their wares. The Church has Go-Go Auditions tonight, featuring the sounds of Kostas, Trajikk, and Jontron alongside the…
So, the Westword Music Showcase is finally going down tomorrow, and, of course, we’re excited. Along with laundry list of amazing local acts like Kingdom of Magic, Diamond Boiz and Vices I Admire, we’ve got Chromeo, UME and Del the Funky Homosapien rolling through…
The rumors were true: Jens Lekman was in actually in Denver last night. In fact, the Swedish crooner had been in the state for a good 24 hours (and had by all accounts never played here before, as his last show a few years ago was canceled due to inclimate…
Once upon a time, long before Fez Garcia was the drummer for half the bands in Denver (or, at the moment, just Fingers of the Sun, Bury My Bones and Night of Joy), he was a goofy kid with glasses. When we put the call out earlier this week for…
