Photo: Allison Smith The New Year, Houses, Fell Monday, September 29, 2008 Larimer Lounge Better than: Most bands playing today. Playing together since before who knows when, the Brothers Kadane (Matt & Bubba) have made music that is both intelligent and intensely moving. Whether it was in mid-‘90s slow-core band…

Summit Jazz Weekend Friday, September 22 – Sunday, September. 24 Four Points Sheraton Hotel Better than: Crashing a smooth jazz party. Walking into the ballroom at the Four Points Sheraton on the first night of this year’s Summit Jazz Foundation festival, I felt a bit like an interloper at some…

Photo: Tom Murphy Final Frontier Smaug, the Final Formula, Devil Got Five and Black Maria Friday, September 26, 2008 PT’s Club Inferno, Denver Better Than: Being an indie rock snob. PT’s Club Inferno is not my first choice of venues to attend for a show because strip clubs give me…

Photo: Jon Solomon Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds Friday, September 26, 2008 Ogden Theatre Better than: Anything that has ever come out of Australia. Nick Cave handily disproved the notion that rock and roll is a young man’s game this past Friday night at the Ogden Theatre. Taking the…

Looks like big ups are due Breathe Carolina, whose debut disc, It’s Classy, Not Classic, released in mid-September on the Rise Records imprint, claimed the sixth spot on Billboard’s Heat Seeker chart and #186 on the magazine’s Top 200 chart. Not a bad first outing for a band that many…

LOCALS ONLY Scribble Jam is an annual hip-hop festival hosted in Cincinnati, Ohio. So why are so many Colorado hip-hop artists excited about it? Well, on October 1 at the Fox Theatre in Boulder, a Scribble Jam preliminary event is being held to determine the best rapper and best producer…

Photo: David Barber Update: Sharon Rawles has passed away. Click here for details of her memorial service or to share your thoughts on Sharon’s defacto memorial page, where we’ve centralized all the comments. ———-Original Post———- Man, this has been an absolutely brutal year for the local music community. Just received…

Dave Bartz and I are best friends. We grew up in the same ‘hood, went to the same high school (Bartz a few years behind me), share the same values. In the mid-’90s, we even played together in a band. We spent six months in a drafty Eastlake garage —…

Common, N.E.R.D. and Chester French Tuesday, September 23, 2008 Fillmore Auditorium Better Than: Most hip-hop/soul shows you’ll see this year. The Roots included. At about 7:30pm, with the Fillmore not even half full, retro pop/rock/soul act Chester French took the stage. The band, who recently inked to Pharrell Williams Star…

Obi Best Capades Social Science 02:00-02:45 of “Nothing Can Come Between Us”: When I first saw this cover and name, I was really, really hoping that it was going to be a sort of Star Wars meets Feist sort of thing. Unfortunately, it’s just a Feist meets Feist kind of…

When Fight Like Hell called it a day this past spring, Denver lost one of its finest and most vital hardcore bands. After the band broke up, the members moved forward, with Memphis going on to play drums in Death Before Dishonor, Jake joining Know the Score, and Matt playing…

Photo: Kat We know, Chuck. We’re a little stunned, too. Not even remotely sure how this happened, as Git Some is one of the last bands you’d expect to be mentioned in the same breath as the off-the-rack, ready-made, vapid, culture-vulture emporium known as Hot Topic. But, yeah, you read…

Looking for new ways to make those that love you cringe in public? Look no further. A group of local punks calling themselves the Asbestos Tampons evidently just received a fresh shipment of stickers that they’re just dying to lay on you. While we don’t know how eyebrow raising the…

Looks like Michael Roberts wasn’t the only one impressed with the Pirate Signal’s furiously energetic performance at the Fox last month opening for 3OH!3. Sean Foreman and Nathaniel Motte must’ve been pretty wowed, too, as the pair just tapped Yonnas Abraham and DJ Awhat to reprise that role alongside the…

So I’m a third of the way through my first listen of Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s new record Animal! — well, the first of their two simultaneous releases, I should say, the other being Not Animals — and good grief, man, they did it. Transcended my expectations,…

Photo: Tom Murphy Git Some The Frantix, Git Some, the Omens and the Purple Fluid Saturday, September 20, 2008 Wax Trax Better Than: Most so-called “punk rock” shows. Wax Trax, long a stalwart of underground music in Denver, celebrated its 30th year anniversary this past Saturday with a full day…

LOCALS ONLY DJ Vajra isn’t just one of the best turntablists in Colorado — he’s one of the best in the nation. Vajra was recently tapped to do a showcase at this year’s DMC World Finals at London’s indigO2 on Saturday, September 27. And even though Vajra himself is a…

Slide show John Digweed September 18, 2008 Beta Better than: The sounds his old partner Sasha is spinning these days. I’ve seen John Digweed at raves, I’ve seen him at clubs and I’ve spun his discs until I could hear them in my head. He rarely disappoints and tonight was…