Pablo Garduno’s favorite memory of his friend Simon Katz was the time Katz showed up at his house, unannounced, with an adventure in mind. “He just showed up at my house and we drove 45 minutes to a skatepark because he wanted to watch people skate,” Garduno says. “Simon doesn’t…
Earlier this week at the Marquis Theater, opening band Spiderbags introduced Titus Andronicus as the “best rock n’ roll band on the planet,” and that just might be true. No band in the last decade has been as ambitious or creative. Between this year’s rock opera The Most Lamentable Tragedy…
It’s been an emotional few days for the Denver Music Community. On Sunday afternoon, Gary Lee Bomar — owner of Gary Lee’s Motor Club and Grub — passed away at a Denver Hospital after sustaining a severe head injury earlier this week. . Bomar was in Mexico on a vacation,…
A curator and lover of Denver music needs help. Gary Lee Bomar, owner of Gary Lee’s Motor Club and Grub — the South Broadway bar that has hosted hundreds of bands and is a staple during the Underground Music Showcase — is in the hospital due to a severe head…
My top five favorite bands are the Strokes, Death Cab For Cutie, Neutral Milk Hotel, Stars and the Clash, in that order. Don’t try to argue with me, it’s a fact — one of the few things in life I know to be true. Purchasing Is This It at the…
“Just scrub the insides of your cheeks like you’re brushing your teeth for a good twenty seconds,” said a smiling volunteer, handing out cotton swabs to attendees of the recent Underground Music Showcase. That volunteer was working for the Love, Hope, Strength Foundation, a nonprofit that works to get people…
Over the next three weeks, the Flobots will visit fifteen towns across Colorado, playing everything from a fundraiser to a street party, hosting workshops at museums and having a powwow and song-sharing session with the Ute tribe. The tour is the first run of a pilot program from state agencies…
“This beer is for chugging or chucking,” shouts In The Whale frontman Nate Valdez, right after a shiny, labeless can is thrown past his head. The punk rock duo is on stage at Black Shirt Brewery. It’s the Saturday night release party for the band’s beer, Whales Suck, and fans…
Miguel, the L.A,-based singer/songwriter, R&B crooner and hip-hop dabbler, has three albums, all of which have received critical acclaim. With his latest effort, Wildheart, it appears the singer is focused on himself as a human, a lover and an artist. It’s about your basest desires, your insecurities, your swagger and…
Unknown Mortal Orchestra is by no means the greatest band touring today. Its music isn’t the most accessible; at times it’s even trying. The group was Ruban Nielson’s basement project and he tours with a new backup band every go-around, so live the act’s stage presence could use a bit…
The first time I saw Florence + The Machine, four or so years ago, I cried. It was at Austin City Limits, the sun was starting to set, and the woman with the most powerful voice on the planet was giving it her all, and then some. I didn’t mean…
Right at the end of Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats’ set, the power went out. But instead of letting out sighs or boos, the hundreds of people in Nate and Patrick Meese’s back yard — packed together, sitting on each other’s shoulders, standing on tree limbs or on the…
Watching Street Fever feels like going to a dance party in the Mad Max universe. The DJ, in a tight leather jacket and a heavy-metal mask with eyes that glow and change colors with the beats, looks like an alien. In front of him, standing on a chair, is a…
The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver has a particularly gorgeous rooftop, one that comprises plants, downtown views and a charming cafe. For the past few summers, the MCA has brought musicians and patrons together in that space for a small concert series. This year’s set of shows, dubbed the B-Side…
The inaugural Bluebird District Music Festival hit East Colfax last weekend, and if you weren’t there, you missed three days of insane local talent. We were there, wandering the wickedest street and taking in all the music. Here’s what we thought of BDMF, volume one: 1. Lost Lake is the…
I think I may be an EDM fan. That’s a hard sentence to write, because for as long as I can remember, it’s a genre that I’ve actively railed against. I’ve ignored it, avoided it, gone so far as to trash talk it and judge its fans. But as I…
Festival Season is in full swing, and with the summer of 2015 comes a new, scrappy, homegrown festival called the Bluebird District Music Festival. If you bought a 3-day wristband, (which you can do here) you’ll be spending this hopefully rain-free weekend traversing the five venues and half mile of…
A fan of both Riot Fest and Denver punk band SPELLS created a petition this week to get his favorite local band to play his favorite punk-themed music festival. Bradley Ambrose, an apprentice at Boulder design studio AngryBovine, made it his personal project of the year to get SPELLS to…
Rubedo means the fourth and final stage of alchemy. It signals alchemical success, creation of the philosopher’s stone or gold or both, even. As a band name, it’s a pretty bold one. And while Denver group Rubedo did not create literal gold with notes and melodies on stage at the…
DC and Hooks (Dylan Mamid and Zach Rapp-Rovan), the duo known as Zed’s Dead, first became friends because DC needed someone to paint a wall in his garage. “He had a garage that people would hang out in and listen to music, and he wanted his wall painted,” says Rapp-Rovan…
Celebrity culture is a bit twisted, so Ed Sheeran is, unfortunately, more famous for being Taylor Swift’s best friend then he is for his impressive singing voice. If you Google him, there will be more videos of him stumbling out of a London club then of him using his looping…
The best concert Diane Rabson ever attended was held in her own living room. A Bosnian opera singer and an accordionist from St. Louis were performing. They took a request from Rabson’s mother, then brought her mother up on stage, singing the song she had requested — one she used…
