With so many great shows happening on Saturday night, it was virtually impossible to stay in one place. Luckily, Denver’s geography makes it fairly easy to maneuver between venues in a short amount of time, so we attempted to catch various bands and performances throughout out the evening, making stops…
As a longtime live concert photographer, Lucia De Giovanni’s work is entrenched in the local music scene. For her book, The Love Project, Giovanni decided to step away from the stage to capture something a bit more simple: The idea of love. This isn’t her first foray into portraiture–De Giovanni…
Built solely on the intricacies of a well-trained string section, Punch Brothers are equal parts bluegrass and modern classical music. Chris Thile — known also as a member of acoustic band Nickel Creek — leads the quintet with his gentle and powerful voice. But it’s his expert mandolin playing that…
Guess what? Ronnie and Sammi are fighting. Again. Still. At this point, anyone who stomachs this show has to hate her, because she’s turned Jersey Shore house into a petri dish of bizarre mind games, fighting and girlfriend doublespeak. The Situation has been sharing a room with the world’s most…
On this eve of the release of Justin Bieber’s movie, Never Say Never, I felt it would be an appropriate time to discuss how I feel about him. Simply put, Justin Bieber makes me uncomfortable. This is not a dislike of him as a person or a hatefulness toward his…
Oh, Bobby Long, how hard we swoon for you. If it wasn’t for the first Twilight soundtrack, we might have never discovered your gruff, Southern-by-way-of-London voice, perfect for carrying songs of heartbreak and seasonal love…
In 2009, photographer Lucia De Giovanni decided to find out what love looked like. So she set about gathering a collection of candid images of couples — from her own parents to local musicians and their significant others — in every stage of love. To keep her subjects from posing…
There are many ways to die, and there were even more in previous centuries. The Four Mile House Historic Park invites you to celebrate them with its sixth annual In the Dead of Winter: Victorian Mourning, an interactive look at death and dying in the nineteenth-century West. Taking place in…
Started in 1958 as a little parking-lot tent sale on the University of Denver campus, the Colorado Garden and Home Show has grown to become a massive expo showcasing 650 vendors and home-improvement experts throughout a maze of over 45,000 square feet of live plants and flowers. “It’s a show…
Joke rap hinges upon one thing: Whether an artist is laughing at themselves, or if the rest of the world is just laughing at them. Das Racist are clearly laughing at themselves — best evidenced in the track “Hahahaha JK” where they explain they’re not joking, just joking, they are…
Not too long ago, National Public Radio ran a piece on the art of “Human Videos” — a phenomenon that entails Christian teenagers competing in groups to do their best physical translations of contemporary religious music. “It’s like a music video with only people as a set,” explains the only…
Last week, NYC-by-way-of-Denver duo Jonathan and BPro whispered in our virtual ears that they had something to share — three remix tracks from 2010’s Turn It Up, to be exact. Two of the three jams we’re stoked to bring you are first-listens, one re-work coming from local DJ Craig C…
Do the Dead Kenny Gs exist as the antithesis of Kenny G’s existence? Absolutely. This is what makes them awesome, of course, beyond the simple fact that a band name like that sums up how the general listening public in 2011 probably feels about Kenny G — if they feel…
Sometimes, a songwriter’s first acknowledged endeavor is just the primer for better work to come. Moving from the more folk and pop-oriented quartet Page France to gospel-inspired melancholy of Cotton Jones — who plays tonight at the Hi-Dive with Jay J Matott and Sunshine House — it seems Michael Nau…
In 1998, cable television Entrepreneur Bill Daniels bequeathed his behemoth mansion on Shangri-La Drive (across from the Target in Glendale) to the city of Denver, to be used as the official residence for the Mayor. Though no Mayor has ever actually lived in this mauve monstrosity since its donation, Mayor…
Since taking office last month, there has been some talk about Mayor Guillermo Vidal officially running for the position when his term ends in July. Though this is apparently hearsay and Vidal has no immediate plans to run, last night’s inaugural Cableland Cultural Jam had us wishing he was. Hardly…
Woodsman offered up a new video for “Serfer” today, a song from the latest album, Rare Forms, released last month on it’s own label, Fire Talk. The almost four-minute clip feels kind of like a interstellar trip to the optometrist — glowing lights sharpen and blur as they travel through…
Making music since the mid-1950s, George Clinton — in town tonight at the Fillmore towing the Parliament-Funkaledic line — is an enduring musical force that extends far beyond sound. Clinton is a movement in himself, a colorful cultural noisemaker who has, over the last five decades, taken funk from the…
Last week, Sammi and JWoww made amends, everyone got drunk, and Deena’s taste in men’s backsides was the rumor around the barbershop. Basically, business as usual. This week, we join up with the Jersey Shore crew as they’re doing the usual group drunk walk home from the club. Actually, drunk…
Okay, we all have some skeletons in our closet, shit we dig — be it music, movies or television shows — that we’d just as soon nobody else knew about. “Guilty pleasures” is what most people term these sort of inclinations. Well, here at Backbeat, there’s no shame in our…
When a band covers a song, it should go one of two ways: Either the remake should be a virtually flawless representation, or come out as a startling contrast from the original. Cover bands, on the other hand, are a different story altogether; fans go to see them because they…
The Academy Awards are a spectator sport for fans of film, and the Denver Film Society’s Reel Social Club is tapping in. Celebrating with some good old-fashioned pre-show wagering, the inaugural Oscar Nomination Liquid Brunch goes down at 10 a.m. at the Denver FilmCenter, giving movie buffs a chance to…
