There’s no shortage of comedians who make a significant portion of their living by poking fun at people more famous than they are. Still, the roundtable on E!’s Chelsea Lately is a cut-up above. On her weeknight show, host Chelsea Handler brings together a regular cast of comics, sticks them…
“Several criteria guided my selection of photographs for Exposure,” says Eric Paddock, curator of the Denver Art Museum’s Exposure: Photos From the Vault exhibit, which features prints from the likes of Ansel Adams, Diane Arbus, Chuck Close and Garry Winogrand. “Mainly I kept my eyes peeled for photographs of exceptional…
“Why did we pick Romancing the Stone?” asks Matt Vogl, one of the comics behind Denver’s long-running, film-plus-comedy series known as Mile High Sci-Fi. “Two reasons. One, Kathleen Turner’s thighs. Two, Danny DeVito’s thighs.” It looks like Vogl will be bringing a little bromance to Romancing the Stone, the 1984…
First known as Oblio Duo and then Oblio Duo + the Archers, the newly christened Oblio’s Arrow makes music as mercurial as its name. Over the past few years, the ever-shifting outfit — which revolves around singer-songwriters William Duncan and Steven Lee Lawson — has crafted a body of work…
Fucked Up seems to have a little crush on Denver. Besides playing a now-legendary show inside the cramped confines of Wax Trax Records last February, the Canadian punk outfit even chose a photograph submitted by Wax Trax co-owner Duane David to grace one of the alternative covers of the band’s…
First known as Oblio Duo and then Oblio Duo + the Archers, the newly christened Oblio’s Arrow makes music as mercurial as its name. Over the past few years, the ever-shifting outfit — which revolves around singer-songwriters William Duncan and Steven Lee Lawson — has crafted a body of work…
Electro-pop has been zombified so badly over the past few years, it’s no wonder that futurism now sounds totally quaint. The Denver trio Take the Mickey doesn’t try to reinvent the CPU with its new full-length, Dinosaurs Now and Machines Later — but the band does make a valiant attempt…
Justin Pearson has made a career out of being annoying — but it’s a brutal, funny, sublime, uncompromising and at times even groundbreaking kind of annoying. With his main band of the past fifteen years, the mighty cyber-grind outfit the Locust, on an apparently indefinite hiatus, Pearson has poured his…
Duane Davis, co-owner of Denver’s legendary Wax Trax Records, has more than one reason to be happy about this year’s Record Store Day. True, the store is sure to receive an influx of music fans flocking toward exclusive Record Store Day releases from artists like Muse, Wilco and Built to…
Comic-book conventions bank on the superstar writers and artists who attend. Local creators, if featured at all, are usually afterthoughts. But Jason Page, one of the organizers of this weekend’s ComicFest — which runs across the street from, and in conjunction with, Denver’s long-running sci-fi convention, StarFest — decided to…
From romance and politics to UFOs and God, songwriters cite all kinds of inspiration for their music. Hunter Dragon, though, brings a far more fundamental influence to bear on his quirky, head-scrambling new album, Weight & Measure. “I was settling down for the first time in a long while,” he…
Holley 750 has played South by Southwest, toured with the Supersuckers and released a split CD with punk legend Antiseen. So why don’t they get more props in the local scene? For starters, they’re not exactly trying to spoon-feed their music to the masses. The band’s latest full-length, Prison Rules,…
With Sigur Rós taking a break while some of its members start families, frontman Jón Thor “Jónsi” Birgisson decided to use the downtime to release an up album. Aptly titled Go, the disc is a delicate, earthy, orchestral marriage of spring-like warmth and Birgisson’s fluttering voice; as such, it’s a…
In the summer of 2000, Seattle photographer Casey Kelbaugh threw an impromptu party for local artists to get together and share their work. Over the years, his Slideluck Potshow has grown to epic proportions. Now represented on various continents across the globe, the grassroots, non-profit movement seeks to provide a…
One of the country’s biggest literary conventions is the Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference, which takes place April 7-10 at the Colorado Convention Center. But according to Duncan Barlow, founder of Astrophil Press and leader of Denver indie-rock band d.biddle, there’s a more rocking side to the lit…
Boulder’s 3rd Law is renowned for its full-length theatrical dance productions. So what made the troupe veer in the other direction — that is, a patchwork of shorter, unrelated performances, including excerpts from old and upcoming shows — for its new In Pieces? According to artistic co-director Jim LaVita, it’s…
It’s Tuesday night, and Lonnie Allen is sweating. The unshaven, young-looking thirty-something is bopping from table to table around Leela European Cafe, downtown Denver’s bohemian-bar-meets-coffee-shop. Accordingly, there are equal measures of Pabst and java seeping into the two dozen or so patrons crowded together toward the back of the steamy…
Adam Green started his career with singer-songwriter Kimya Dawson in the quirky folk duo the Moldy Peaches — but those who got to know him through the Peaches’ posthumous success on the Juno soundtrack may have had to do a double take the first time they heard Green’s solo work…
When the Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope was serviced by spacewalking NASA astronauts in May of 2009, the Space Shuttle had a stowaway: a camera. The repair mission was being filmed for a new IMAX feature titled Hubble, a stunning documentary narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio that peeks into the inner workings…
Zombie Hate Brigade’s self-titled debut from 2008 wallowed in a massive, sludge-choked groove that owed as much to (surprise, surprise) Rob Zombie as it did to grindcore pioneers like Carcass and current grind champs Pig Destroyer. But the band’s sophomore release, Hideous Beyond Belief With a Craving for Human Flesh,…
Alaska-bred Portugal. The Man may be the weirdest band to spring from last decade’s post-hardcore scene. Formed by singer/guitarist John Gourley and bassist Zack Carothers after the demise of Anatomy of a Ghost, Portugal quickly became the oddest band on the screamo package tours — thanks to Gourley’s slinky vocals…
Luke Schmaltz is standing in the middle of Bender’s Tavern at 2 p.m., a shot of Jägermeister in his fist and his T-shirt hitched up around his armpits. A jagged, eleven-year-old scar snakes across the left side of his back. As Schmaltz moves around to give a better view, the…
