Best Progressive/ Trance DJ 2005 | DJ Dragon | Best of Denver® | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Denver | Westword
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Best Progressive/ Trance DJ

DJ Dragon

DJ Dragon and his crew, the Triad Dragons, are key forces keeping the rave scene alive in Colorado. The Triad's Global Dance Festival at Red Rocks and the Caffeine Festival are the two biggest electronic-music events to go down each year. Dragon has also become the face of Denver trance and progressive house, playing events around the country, including this year's Ultra Dance Festival at the Winter Music Conference in Miami. Dragon could emerge as Denver's first bona fide superstar DJ.

Best Down-Tempo DJ

DJ Idiom

DJ Idiom could easily be considered the most creative and eclectic DJ In Denver. Typically sticking to mellower, groovier down-tempo and hip-hop beats, Idiom moves around to incorporate tunes by Bjrk, Sigur Ros, and even Guns N' Roses in a way that actually makes sense. A regular feature at the Sherbert and White Girl Lust parties, Idiom's ability to rock a variety of crowds is as solid as his mixing skills. His first professional mix CD, Nursery Rhymes, features a clever blend of children's music and down-tempo beats.

Best MC

The Black Pegasus

The best MC in Denver isn't really even from here. In fact, if you ask the Black Pegasus, aka Robert Houston II, he'll tell you he's straight outta Colorado Springs. No matter, though. Black P is up here so often warming up stages for everyone from Atmosphere to Tech N9NE, we'll just go ahead and claim him as our own. With a crisp cadence and a laid-back delivery, Black P is the most polished and commercially viable MC in the state. And from the sounds of his latest effort, Knuckle Up, he's poised to break through on a national level.

Best Online Equivalent of Peyton Place

www.denvermessageboard.com

Ever wonder what your favorite local musicians are doing during the week? Presumably, the majority of them are working at jobs, like normal people. At least that's what you'd think until you stopped by the Denver Message Board and sorted through the myriad posts. Musicians and scenesters go to the DMB (whose unofficial motto is "You can't spell dumb without D-M-B and U") to vilify one another for sport -- anonymously, of course -- and respond to such cerebral threads as this one posted by a user named Eww: "Local singer who likes to secretly fart into the mike at shows." Obviously, there's not a lot of actual work getting done.

Best Place to See Live Music From Home

www.rockdenver.com

Too late for the mountains? Too early for the bars? Too drunk to drive? Kick back at home and log on to rockdenver.com, where, for the price of a dumb look, you can enjoy live monthly webcasts from Herman's Hideaway. The shows feature many of Denver's emerging acts: the Fray, the Railbenders, Yo, Flaco!, Aggressive Persuasion, Battery Park, Chronophonic, Ion, King Rat, Rexway, Carolyn's Mother, Drug Under, Orion's Room and the Fong Jones Band, just to name a few. The site also archives more than 300 local music videos. Finally, agoraphobia makes sense.

Best Website for Bands to Find e-Groupies

www.myspace.com

Take the computer flirting scene between Molly Ringwald and Andrew McCarthy in Pretty in Pink, multiply it by a few bazillion gigabytes, and you've got myspace.com. With millions of profiles of computer-addicted geeks around the world, it's basically a glorified, digitized singles bar. But the site is more than Friendster's hipper usurper; it's also the best way for local groups to connect and be heard. While real websites require cash and a modicum of computer savvy to maintain, any idiot can set up a free profile on myspace. Within minutes, bands can upload photos, MP3s and press kits onto a page that's easy to read and, most important, easy to find. It's kind of like purevolume.com -- only with way more hotties.

Best Place to Find Blackmail Pictures of Local Musicians

www.rockoncolorado.com

Founded by longtime local-music champions Tommy Nahulu and David Barber, rockoncolorado.com is more than just a collection of snapshots. The site also contains music-related articles and reviews, as well as a calendar and message board. But the primary attraction is the massive searchable database of live photos. From bigger shows at the Bluebird and Gothic to smaller gigs at places like Cricket on the Hill, Soiled Dove and Herman's, Rock On Colorado is documenting the scene one frame at a time. And it ain't all pretty.

Best Place for Vinyl Junkies to Defect

www.beatport.com

Although some dyed-in-the-wool vinyl-lovers cling to the romance of crate-digging, more and more jocks are embracing digital technology. They're also embracing Beatport. Led by lauded DJ Jonas Tempel, the site is helping to revolutionize the way DJs approach their craft. Tempel and his crew have amassed one of the most comprehensive dance-music repositories on the Web. Last year, when the site launched, it offered roughly 2,000 tracks from 72 labels; by the beginning of this year, there were 20,000 titles from more than 700 labels. From drum-and-bass to trance and everything in between, the hottest dance music is now just a click away.

Best Online Music Store

www.milehighmusicstore.com

Looking for the latest disc from P-Nuckle, GasHead, Lisa Bell or Drag the River -- but don't feel like scouring the bins of your nearest independent retailer? How 'bout a DVD of Xiren's live set at Red Rocks? Billie Tolles's hard-to-find Chapulteset? A hardback copy of G. Brown's Colorado Rocks! or a reissue of Lannie Garrett's Doubleback? On milehighmusicstore.com, Hapi Skratch's latest online venture, hundreds of CD titles from Colorado-based artists are just a click and a credit-card number away. You'll find everything categorized by genre -- whether it's children's music, easy listening, spoken word, self-help, hard rock, metal, punk or pop. What could be easier?

Best Online Music Magazine

Kaffeine Buzz

With all the energy its name implies, Kaffeine Buzz is a scattershot, ADD-fueled cornucopia of music journalism. Covering local as well as national punk, indie and hip-hop, the site features interviews, club listings, weekly show picks and CD and concert reviews. Editor Kim Owens, who also pens an impressive portion of the text, employs a solid, personable writing style that displays a deep knowledge of popular culture without sounding overbearing. Kaffeine Buzz also touches on art, fashion, cinema, even snowboarding -- but it's the great music coverage that keeps it bookmarked.

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