Dave Mustaine has long been a punchline — if not a punching bag — for Metallica fans. The group’s founding lead guitarist was famously expelled by his bandmates in 1983 for his alcoholic antics, just before Metallica became the biggest metal band in the world. Mustaine had his revenge, though:…
The Broomfield-based post-hardcore quintet Honor the Fallen trekked to Phoenix to record its new, self-titled EP with producer Cory Spotts, who’s worked with Fearless Records acts like the Maine and Blessthefall. It’s clear that Honor would be more than happy to follow the same career path as those two bands…
The Chicago-bred outfit Fruit Bats has been making records for ten years now, most of them for Sub Pop. And yet Eric D. Johnson, who forms the core of Fruit Bats, has evaded the radar of much of the indie-rock world, mostly for being a consummate, unflashy songwriter adrift in…
A lot has been made of the 2009 reunion of pop-punk legend Screeching Weasel — but the fact is, the band has broken up and reformed numerous times since starting in suburban Chicago in 1986. Snotty, catchy and just sloppy enough to keep it real, the group became a beloved…
Who is Philip K. Dick, and why does he have a festival of his own? That question isn’t just rhetorical. Dave Hyde — aka Lord Running Clam, organizer of the first Philip K. Dick Festival — is using that exact talking point to launch the first panel discussion at the…
It’s hard to miss the local arts and music scenes: Both are loud, vibrant, firm fixtures of Denver’s cultural landscape. The local comics scene is a newer and humbler, if no less vibrant, piece of the patchwork. Comic-book creators of all genres and visions — from super-heroes to science fiction…
For one of the most successful bands in history, Rush remains a pretty cryptic bunch. Formed in 1968, the Canadian trio of guitarist Alex Lifeson, drummer/lyricist Neil Peart (who joined in 1974) and singer/bassist/keyboardist Geddy Lee began as a Zeppelin-esque hard-rock combo before mutating into rock’s most progressive, subversive A-lister…
A lot has been made of the 2009 reunion of pop-punk legends Screeching Weasel — but the fact is, the band has broken up and reformed numerous times since starting in suburban Chicago in 1986. Snotty, catchy and just sloppy enough to keep it real, the group became a beloved…
As the bassist of Slim Cessna’s Auto Club, Munly & the Lupercalians, and Tarantella, Daniel Grandbois has played a foundational role in Denver’s music scene–particularly the spookier, twangier end of it. A similar haunting Americana permeates his prose. Grandbois’ 2008 book, Unlucky Lucky Days, is a dizzying pot of surreal,…
Thanks to successes like Glee and the Broadway production of Green Day’s American Idiot, the musical has made a big comeback in the public consciousness over the past year or so. Across the Universe, however, was ever so slightly ahead of its time; after a tumultuous production and release, the…
Any artist would have a hard time interpreting the teeming, surreal, at times shocking prose of Denver author Daniel Grandbois. But the famed Argentine artist Alfredo Benavidez Bedoya entered Grandbois’s new book, The Hermaphrodite (An Hallucinated Memoir), through the side door. Bedoya’s vivid, kinetic, iconographic woodcuts don’t attempt to directly…
Like a thermometer crammed up the rectum of punk rock, the Warped Tour has been taking the temperature of teenage rebellion for fifteen years now. This year’s prognosis: typically cold-blooded. As usual, though, the day-long festival has a couple of hot spots on its gazillion-band bill, and one of them…
Despite the tragic death earlier this year of star Corey Haim — not to mention a regrettable, never-should’ve-been-filmed sequel in 2008 — The Lost Boys remains one of the most enduring, rewatchable vampire movies of all time. The Two Coreys, Haim and Feldman, co-starred in the 1987 blockbuster, the story…
Now that Leonardo DiCaprio has been tapped to play J. Edgar Hoover in an upcoming biopic, America will be hearing a lot more about the controversial FBI director. Before that, though, the Theater Company of Lafayette is staging the satirical G-Men in G-Strings, a show comprising nine one-act plays that…
Woody Guthrie’s impact on American culture hasn’t dimmed over the years – nor has his influence on popular music. In celebration of the legendary singer’s legacy, Swallow Hill Music Association is hosting the Woody Guthrie Festival: Weaving the Threads. In addition to performances by headliners Jay Farrar of Son Volt…
At one point in the not-so-distant past, riding a scooter was as much about tribalism as transportation. Affiliated with the mod and Brit-pop subcultures, Denver’s original scooter rally, Mile High Mayhem, was an annual gathering of that tribe. Resurrected last year, MHM is once again planning to bring together those…
“Weird Al” Yankovic’s zany parodies of hit songs like “Beat It” (“Eat It”) and “Like a Virgin” (“Like a Surgeon”) catapulted him to infamy in the ’80s, back when pop culture was in dire need of some deflation. He never got critical props for his oddball iconoclasm, though, and after…
The Festivus Film Festival has been bringing serious independent cinema to Denver for the past three winters. But Festivus has a silly side, too, one that’s being expanded into a film-plus-standup-comedy showcase called the Laugh Track Comedy Festival. “One of the most popular blocks every year at Festivus is the…
From the Baldwins to the Phoenixes to the Gyllenhaals, the history of cinema is littered with sibling rivalries — even if those rivalries are usually exaggerated or just plain imaginary. But one of the first sets of siblings to grace the silver screen was the Talmadge sisters. The dazzling, glamorous…
Bad Weather California’s three-day residency with Akron/Family at Quixote’s in May is still panning out. Not only is the eminent avant-folk band taking Bad Weather on tour later this month, but its members make a guest appearance on Live Jammers, a new, live Bad Weather EP released just in time…
It only makes sense that Silversun Pickups hit it big at the end of the aughts. The Los Angeles band, after all, is a faceless, hollow rehash of just about every overhyped trend of the past ten years, from garage rock to post-punk to indie rock. Toeing the center line,…
Despite high gas prices, oil spills and politics, America’s love affair with the automobile isn’t going anywhere. And when it comes to preserving and promoting the superhero of all cars, the hot rod, Streamline Hot Rod Car Parts is Denver’s go-to garage. It’s only natural, then, that the shop is…
