A followup to 1999’s excellent Collecting Empties, Rainville’s second CD is another impressive showcase for songwriter John Common, who’s emerged as Colorado’s most authentic heartland-style rocker. Now playing as a four-piece with the addition of multi-instrumentalist Ian Hlatky, Rainville displays a growth and dexterity on The Longest Street in America,…

On stage, Cephalic Carnage’s Zac spends most of his time swinging his head and his guitar, sweating, screaming and abusing listeners with the brutal bombast that issues from his instrument. But today, sitting in his publicist’s office almost 2,000 miles from his Denver home, there is little evidence of that…

Even though the weather indicates otherwise, the calendar and our post-Labor Day doldrums tell us that the summer of 2002 is fading fast. And while this is always a sad annual development for the sunshine junkies and mountain-ranger types among us, concertgoers might well find reason to celebrate the turning…

To fully prepare for a performance from the Brothers of the Baladi, who appear Friday, September 13, at Swallow Hill, you’d need to study a daunting number of phrase books: The Portland-based quintet performs in Turkish, Persian, Arabic, English and whatever other languages best serve the festive, eclectic feel of…

I sometimes wonder why so many hardworking bands, in Denver and everywhere else in the world, continue to regard the acquisition of a major-label contract as the singular goal of their musical careers. Especially after all we’ve heard: the consequences of a once-sprawling universe of imprints consolidated into only five;…

Otep raised a prosthetic pig’s head high in the air and commanded the crowd to worship her. “Soldiers, you have entered the church of Otep,” she said, flipping her multi-hued hair around and grunting not so girlishly. The solitary female performer on the Ozzfest tour, Otep had exactly twenty minutes…

Not long after midnight on Saturday, August 3, a pair of young men whipped out handguns outside La Rumba, firing bullets into the air as clubgoers spilled out of the venue and into the night. Save for a shot-out car window — and the near-cardiac reaction of some Golden Triangle…

When it came time for 16 Horsepower to release its newest album, Folklore, the band turned first to Europe, where the largely acoustic album has been drawing all kinds of glowing accolades for the past two months. Six weeks later, on August 6, the disc saw stateside release on Jetset…

In Denver, the concert-promotions war continues to play out like a Shakespearean epic. From dead fish dumped at box offices to royal blow-offs for important jobs, the rivalry between Clear Channel Entertainment and its biggest local competitor, House of Blues Concerts, has included bloody intrigue and betrayals aplenty. For spectators,…

Depending on how you look at it, Transhypnotic is Denver’s Devo — or maybe just a bunch of guys who like wearing funny outfits and crafting clever music. Playground Politics, the band’s debut, is a curious, spacey oddity that blends arena-rock riffage with synth pop and new-wave-style angularity. Transhypnotic’s three…

Prior to August 2001, Jesse Morreale’s experience with law-related matters was primarily limited to scanning concert contract riders for gratuitous requests — sussing out, for example, whether or not performers really needed eight pounds of jelly beans delivered to their dressing room before a show. But over the past year,…

There are a number of reasons to marvel over Alisha Sweeney. At 22, she’s just graduated from the journalism department at the University of Colorado at Boulder with her second bachelor’s degree in five years. She’s an artist preparing for her first gallery show: “art Projects” will be on display…

Though Aloke Dutta, the writer, spiritualist and master of classical Indian tabla percussion, claims the headlining space at the Gothic Theatre on Saturday, July 27, opener Katalyst provides a compelling incentive for early arrival. The Denver band, which began as Wicked Groove six years ago, is a testament to the…

David Barber spent his last day as president of the Colorado Music Association in the organization’s Broadway office, doing paperwork and staring at a computer screen. “I’m sitting here entering names into a database, basically, because no one else would,” he says. “But I think this is the last time…

Mosaic’s sound is not for the jamophobic: The band’s overarching embrace of blues, funk and even countrified rock lies squarely on the freewheelin’, groove-happy side of the stylistic divide. But the dueling-frontwoman dynamic that exists between vocalist Jessica Goodkin and guitarist/vocalist Wendy De Rosa works as a grounding agent: Goodkin,…

There’s a handwritten notice taped to the window of the Squire Lounge, a not-necessarily clean, well-lighted (with fluorescent bulbs) place on Colfax at Williams, just across the street from one of the city’s few 24-hour Taco Bells. In a Magic Marker scrawl, the sign advises patrons that, owing to a…

Electronic-music promoters have had a tough go of things in Denver for the last couple of years, ever since a statewide crackdown on clandestine events pushed most parties up from the underground and into more conventional venues. Today’s club events may lack the spontaneous, kitchen-sink-and-disco-ball thrill of the golden age…

For host Sid Pink and his helpers, Portia Needlewax and Professor Snarly, the Westword Music Showcase Awards Ceremony, held Thursday, June 20, at the Bluebird Theater, was fraught with peril: At one point, an unknown artist, frustrated that he wasn’t among the sixty acts nominated on the Westword Music Showcase…

Last year, when Clear Channel vice president Chuck Morris first announced his company’s plans to open the CityLights Pavilion at the Pepsi Center in partnership with Kroenke Sports, newly reinstated House of Blues head Barry Fey vowed to send a private plane over the crowd, streaming a banner that read:…

As members of Boulder’s exploratory outfit United Dope Front, saxophonist Ben Senterfit, guitarist Javier Gonzales, organist Jarad Astin and drummer Damieon Lee Hines mold a groovy, hypnotic and thoroughly modern form of acid jazz. But every now and then even the most future-minded players look to the past for inspiration…

In opening remarks that christened Music Lowdown 2002 last Saturday, Colorado Music Association director Jeff Campbell rested his hands on a lectern, surveyed the crowd and shook his head, a sly smile forming on his lips. “Man, who would’ve imagined this?” he asked. “Musicians up at 9 a.m. — on…

Working musicians might be the only subsection of Denver society that’s actually quite pleased that the Detroit Red Wings scored seven goals against the Colorado Avalanche in game seven last Friday — effectively quelling hometown dreams of hosting that large, silver spitoon-looking Cup thing two years in a row. As…