Since I’m a music critic, all anyone ever wants to talk to me about is music. Which is usually fine: As luck would have it, music happens to be my favorite subject. But every now and then, someone insists on pushing my buttons, extolling the virtues of the Grateful Dead…

DJ Josh Ivy must feel like walking into traffic right about now. Less than a month after his insanely popular GROWednesdays was handed its walking papers by Harry’s (The Beatdown, September 25), his reign at Rise ended. When GROWednesdays went dark, Ivy was bummed but optimistic, confident that he’d find…

I’m all about the music; I have no time for the bullshit that often goes along with it. I learned early on to just listen and to disregard everything else. So when someone tries to sell me on a band’s look, angle or image, he might as well be speaking…

Most stoner-rock bands draw from the same template: Black Sabbath. Kyuss. The Melvins. But when Puny Human constructs its songs, instead of consulting the gospels of St. Iommi and First Josh, the band’s members summon divine inspiration from an entirely different book: St. Mark. Farner, that is. “The thing about…

It’s an age-old proverb: A prophet is never revered in his home town. That is, not until he moves to Los Angeles, signs a record deal, makes a brilliant debut album and becomes the hottest brand going. That the story of Patrick Park, Morrison native and Columbine High School graduate…

At times, the proliferation of talented collectives in the underground is overwhelming, even for the hip-hop cognoscenti who devote the majority of their time to manning the radar stations. In the last few years, a staggering number of artists have dropped albums with depth, texture and clarity the mainstream acts…

Grinding, pulsating sounds from inside the club at 1037 Broadway spill out onto the sidewalk, competing with chirping cell phones, loud conversations and a constant barrage of bodies coming in and going out. But despite all the heated activity, there’s no line to get in — at least not yet…

Shortly after releasing a critically acclaimed debut album — 1998’s 2000 Fold, on the Dust Brothers’ imprint, Ideal — a couple of left-coast emcees, Ryu and Tak, and their turntablist/producer, DJ Cheapshot, single-handedly created a deafening buzz in the underground, only to quietly disband early last year. After a brief…

The economy is in the crapper right now. And it’s had a trickle-down effect on the music industry, but not in the way that analysts would have you believe. For years I’ve been hearing that the music world, as we know it, is on the verge of taking a dirt…

Bob Rupp can’t stop smiling. Behind his drum kit, flailing his arms wildly, he looks like he’s either parking planes or simultaneously channeling the spirits of Keith Moon and Rikki Rockett. He’s having the time of his life, and who can blame him? This is the second-to-last time he’ll ever…

“The reason I agreed to do this tonight was because there are a lot of people that are pissed off because this band is doing so well,”said Maris the Great, host of D.O.R.K. ‘s CD-release party at the Soiled Dove. “If someone has a problem because a local band is…

Baggs Patrick, longtime host of the Sunday-night open stage at Cricket on the Hill, is calling it a day. “After twelve years, it was getting past my bedtime,” he says. “I quit a little sooner than I thought I would, but basically the stage had slowed down, and the fact…

Pueblo native Jim Chandler has been on a serious winning streak for the past six months. A couple of years before that, he was living in Denver and was just another frustrated musician on the verge of calling it quits. After spending ten years playing in bands like Social Joke…

These days, singer/songwriter types are a dime a dozen. There’s no shortage of one-dimensional, heartbreak-soaked troubadours saturating the sonic landscape — they’re as interchangeable as the multicolored faceplates made for cell phones. This is precisely why it’s refreshing to discover an anomaly like Las Vegas native Franky Perez. Discovered by…

It’s after 10 p.m. on a Thursday — a school night for most folks — and Herman’s Hideaway is packed with nearly 500 people being worked into a frenzy by a brand-new act. Near the end of the set, the tattooed freak show behind the mike says, “Let me clear…

Several weeks ago, I received a panicked message from a frustrated musician looking to tell his story. “This producer we’ve been working with has gone insane and is holding our record hostage,” an incredulous voice reported. Sadly, the caller’s saga is far from unique. He and his bandmates had forged…

Lloyd Dobler, the protagonist of the film Say Anything, was a prophet of biblical proportions. “I don’t want to buy anything sold, bought or processed,” he pronounced. “I don’t want to sell anything bought, sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought or processed, as a career.” Dobler was onto…

Paul Trinidad says he’s been acting as if nothing is going on; it’s business as usual. But the staccato bursts of caged enthusiasm in his voice tell me something entirely different. I get the sense that for the past few months, he and the other members of Love .45 have…

Natalie Beal, the petite, soft-spoken program manager at the Spot, is not a fan of the misogynistic overtones prevalent in modern hip-hop. A few of her boys have spent the entire afternoon recording a tune at the center. They are eager to share it with anyone in earshot — especially…

Every new disc I come across is like a blind date. I never know what to expect. Sometimes I’m taken by surprise and become excited by the chase — and sometimes I just want to run like hell. Music is the other woman, a mistress that takes on many forms…

Al Kraizer thinks he’s misunderstood. The common misconception, he tells me, is that Performance International, the non-profit that puts on the LoDo Music Festival every year, is loaded. And while it’s true that the festival can generate a healthy amount of revenue, Kraizer hasn’t personally reaped the benefits — at…

The cautiously optimistic look on Kevin Geraghty’s face as he surveyed the sparse but bedazzled crowd last Saturday night was telling: Over the past year, he’d poured his heart and soul into his new club, and now he hoped that folks hadn’t forgotten him. But consumers — especially bar-hop-ping consumers…