Critic's Notebook

The memorial event for musician Tyler Marchant Despres, who died on November 1, 2016, was held Saturday afternoon at Larimer Lounge. It began with speakers who talked about Despres’s life and his impact on them and the world around him. Speakers included relatives and friends like Jonathan Bitz, who booked the Meadowlark during Despres’s tenure co-running the open-mic night with Maria Kohler and others. That open-mic night fostered a section of Denver’s underground music scene that allowed for a wide spectrum of musicians to have an accepting place to try out new material and develop their art.

As music journalists, we often turn to songs for catharsis and for direction, so we compiled a list of songs that we hope readers might find useful in these times. You’ll find punk, hip-hop, soul, pop and more represented in these songs. Some of them are overtly political, some are not. The music itself can cause discomfort, but if speaking truth to power requires driving bass lines and the itch to get out of our seats, and if urgent lyrics and catchy melodies can push us forward into progress and peace…well, then crank it up.

Bob Dylan said of Leonard Cohen, who passed away yesterday, November 10, 2016, at the age of 82, is “very much a descendant of Irving Berlin,” in that both are “incredibly crafty. Leonard particularly uses chord progressions that seem classical in shape. He is a much more savvy musician than you’d think.” The many, many covers of Cohen songs, by artists both expected and unorthodox, prove his latter observations to be true. But like Dylan’s body of work, Cohen’s compositions have been transformed in the hands of other people, and functioned as malleable source material ripe for interpretation and illumination.

The masterful jazz guitarist Joshua Breakstone thinks the ultimate thing in jazz isn’t how fast you play or how great a guitar player you are. Rather, it’s how well know your instrument.

Denver is brimming with bands taking it to the next level, and November 2016 is particularly bountiful with new album releases. Here are fifteen of the noteworthy albums and EPs being released by Colorado artists this month. Let us know what else should be on our radar.

This week’s Denver Bootleg gives you the history of RiNo bar, the Matchbox.

Editor’s Note: The Denver Bootleg is a series chronicling the history of local music venues by longtime Denver cartoonist Karl Christian Krumpholz.Visit Krumpholz’s website to see more of his work.

In a post announcing the closing of Quixote’s True Blue at the end of October, owner Jay Bianchi described the venue “as sort of a refuge for Deadheads…” It’s a sad day for the loners of Shakedown Street. But what was once a refuge for Deadheads will now be the refuge for bassheads: Nicole Cacciavillano and her Sub.mission Dubstep brand have purchased the venue. Starting on Tuesday, November 1, the iconic 13th Street venue will be called the Black Box, a venue devoted to Sub.mission’s aim of moving people through sound, not hype.

On Friday night, Wu-Tang Clan rappers Ghostface Killah and Raekwon headlined the Budweiser Fear Fest pop-up Halloween party. Ghostface, however, kept spreading the Halloween cheer after the show had ended. He was riding in a car with Jonny Shuman aka Jonny Denver, the talent buyer who had booked the show with Danny Sax, when the artist asked Shuman to pull over. “It was spur of the moment when he saw some guys sleeping on the street when we were coming down Arapahoe approaching 18th Street,” Shuman says. “He told me to pull over and started handing out twenty-dollar bills.”

Post-punk since the ’90s has been largely shaped by the music of two bands: Joy Division and Gang of Four. The furious energy, disciplined songwriting and angular guitar work of Gang of Four are clear and direct influences on the likes of the Faint, the Rapture and every band that…

Chance the Rapper took the opportunity to shoot a video for the song “How Great” on September 20 while passing through Denver as part of his ongoing tour. The hip-hop star used a choir of local singers, and the video was shot using nine iPhones. One of the singers involved…

Editor’s note: The Denver Bootleg is a series chronicling the history of local music venues by longtime Denver cartoonist Karl Christian Krumpholz. Visit Krumpholz’s website to see more of his work…

Cold Crush will reopen at 7 p.m. tonight, Thursday, October 20. As Westword reported, the RiNo music venue and restaurant was shut down last week, labelled as a public nuisance for the unlawful discharge of a firearm. The incident referenced was a shooting on the morning of Monday, October 10,…

Editor’s note: The Denver Bootleg is a series chronicling the history of local music venues by longtime Denver cartoonist Karl Christian Krumpholz. Visit Krumpholz’s website to see more of his work…

Hundreds of people turned out for a rally on Monday, October 17, to show support for Cold Crush, the music venue and restaurant which was the site of a fatal shooting last week. The hip-hop-focused club was shut down on Wednesday, October 12, cited as a public nuisance for the…

Khemmis vocalist and guitarist Phil Pendergast remembers the moment he realized his new band might actually amount to something. The Denver quartet was in the process of recording its debut album — 2015’s Absolution — and Pendergast and bassist Dan Beiers took a quick break for some food. “We were…

Last Sunday night, local rapper BossMan Goodie, AKA 29-year-old Tyrone Adair Jr. of Aurora, was killed in a shooting outside the hip-hop venue and nightclub Cold Crush at 2700 Larimer Street. The nightclub, which opened in May 2013 and was named Westword’s Best New Bar that year, has now been…

Starting at the age of fourteen, pianist Larry Wegner would sometimes play Glenn Miller hits with the Bob Murphy band at dances at American Legion and VFW halls in Yuma, near the eastern border or Colorado. He’d get home around 5 a.m., get some sleep and then play organ at…

Editor’s Note: The Denver Bootleg is a series chronicling the history of local music venues by longtime Denver cartoonist Karl Christian Krumpholz.Visit Krumpholz’s website to see more of his work…

What a long, strange trip it’s been, indeed.  Quixote’s True Blue will close at the end of this month, according to a Facebook announcement that owner Jay Bianchi posted yesterday. The venue, which Bianchi writes, began twenty years ago “as a sort of refuge for Deadheads who needed a place to…

Beer and music — two human necessities made exponentially more enjoyable when paired together. We certainly don’t need an excuse to extol the virtues of booze and beats, but this weekend’s Great American Beer Festival is shining a spotlight on brewers across the country, we want to raise a toast…

Denver Taiko is celebrating its fortieth anniversary with a pair of concerts at the Newman Center for the Performing Arts on the University of Denver campus. The title of the concert is Okage sama de, which translates to “Because of you.” The nonprofit organization’s membership is composed largely of Americans…