It’s easy to look at what’s become of rock music over the last three and a half decades and find countless traces of the CBGB micro-culture and the fast-and-loud aesthetic it cultivated. During their now-legendary years at CBGB, bands like the Ramones, Talking Heads, Blondie and Patti Smith were disrespected…
Doug Benson’s appearance in Denver this weekend is a welcome addition to a long line of marijuana-themed events that have given Colorado a globally recognized identity as a THC utopia. As the co-star of The Marijuana-Logues and the documentary Super High Me — in which Benson takes on the Morgan…
Just when you think the suck factor has been turned all the way up, here comes another batch of songs to push the needle further in the red. Today as the countdown of total crappiness continues. We’ve got tunes by Kid Rock, Nickleback, Michael Jackson, Sublime and more. Keep reading…
The countdown of total crappiness continues. Yesterday we laid out the first ten of the top fifty worst rock and pop lyrics of all time, and today we present the next ten, which is populated by Poison’s “Unskinny Bop,” the Rolling Stones’ “Cocksucker Blues” and a bunch of other ill-conceived…
Embodying the American archetypes of confidence, show business and law-breaking, the story of con artist Frank Abagnale Jr. has enchanted the world since the publication of his 1980 memoir, Catch Me If You Can. Living dozens of lives in cities around the globe, Abagnale posed as a doctor, a university…
Fresh from filming his half-hour special for Comedy Central, Ben Kronberg returns to Denver this Friday for a show at the Oriental Theater, his first hometown performance in over a year. And that’s generating a lot of excitement in the local comedy community, which has been tickled by Kronberg since…
Sometimes we love a song because it’s stupid. When the Flaming Lips immortalized a girl for not using jelly, for instance, we treasured the witty idiocy of it all. These are not those songs. These are the radio hits that tortured us with their inane babbling, with lyrics that sound…
The best frontmen and -women all have something in common. Whether it’s their ability to connect with a crowd or the swagger with which they carry themselves, their fashion sense, the intrigue that surrounds them or their reckless disregard for their own well-being, they all have that ineffable “it” factor…
Last Saturday night, tucked snugly in the middle of the Paramount Theatre for the Adam Carolla and Dr. Drew Reunion Show, I found myself on the receiving end of some vitriolic crowd-work by Carolla, who called me an “asshole from some crunchy newspaper,” among other things, and berated me for…
March holds a variety of options for comedy fans — from a new night in Boulder to the appearance of such ’90s nostalgia faces as Chris Tucker and the duo from Loveline. Click ahead to see what side-splitting adventures await as we laugh our way out of the winter chill…
More than being one of the best selling albums of all time, more than having the most recognizable album cover the world over, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon was a cross-cultural, trans-generational album that connected with audiences on issues of death, greed, life-purpose and the horrors and triumphs…
Adam Carolla has not had a predictable career arc. After playing the role of the cynical sidekick in both The Man Show and Loveline with Dr. Drew Pinsky, he developed his own ready-made cocktail, Mangria, as well as one of the most popular podcasts on the internet, eventually landing a…
Americans love a good con-man story. They love hearing about attractive criminals — the charmingly deceptive leading man or intoxicatingly distracting female — getting away with it, and the loot that provides them with another kind fantasy in the land of the super-rich. After a brief delay because of weather,…
Celebrity fandom is almost always based on inaccessibility. Whether it’s a rock star, an actor or a politician, desire is created when you reach out for the object of passion and come up a few inches short. So what happens when you have a fanbase that is made up of…
Update: The location of Roy’s upcoming set has been corrected below. If you know Denver comedy, you surely know Chuck Roy. The former anchor of the satirical newscast The Crop Report — an Onion News Network-style series of short sketches on marijuana, Roy is one of the most established names…
Martin Short means different things to different people. Elitist comedy nerds can discuss the merits of Short’s SCTV Ed Grimley versus the Saturday Night Live version, while suburban Rom Com fans recognize the name from blockbuster sweet-tarts like Father of the Bride. And you can always count on beer-pong bros…
Ben Roy, the subject of this week’s cover story, has worked hard to establish himself as a unique voice in the growing Denver comedy scene. We recently spoke with several local comics who have a relationship with Roy both on and off the stage, some of whom were there at…
Comedy roasts are full of cruelty, irreverence and line-crossing, but at their heart, they’re meant to show sincere love for the guest of honor. In the case of POTroast, taking place tonight at Comedy Works South, the object of deep affection is marijuana — which will get a good grilling…
There’s nothing wrong with cover songs. In fact, before Sam Cooke and the Beatles shifted the established paradigms, singer and songwriter were two entirely separate professions. And there’s also nothing wrong with a musician recording a cover album in the twilight of his career (Johnny Cash’s American Recordings attests to…
On an unseasonably warm winter day, Ben Roy is jogging through City Park. Dressed in running sneakers and a black hoodie that covers a galaxy of chest and arm tattoos, he passes a Latino family pushing strollers loaded with children, a yuppie couple walking a Labrador, an elderly loner trying…
John Crist has comfortably rooted himself in the world of Christian comedy, crafting niche-specific jokes that kill with the straight-laced Colorado Springs crowd. Yet somehow — miraculously! — he’s also cultivated a respectable reputation in Denver’s underground community, where the dirtiest of the dirty are constantly in search of socio-political…
Update, 2/22/13: So this story of the Smiths fan who held a station here hostage in the ’80s? It’s true…well, sort of. We caught up with former station employees and found the news coverage. Everyone has a different recollection it seems. “In 1987 a distressed young man in Denver, Colorado,…
