It’s been fairly quiet on the all-ages front since April 15, when the City of Denver began enforcing an ordinance that prohibits persons under 21 from sharing the same air with those of legal drinking age in small and midsized music venues. So far, there have been no implosions, lawsuits…

The members of The Emmas (pictured), Orbit Service, Double-Barrelled Slingshots and The Barrys must have heard the new-age theory that when you die, your time on earth is judged by how well you treated the furry creatures you shared it with. On Saturday, May 26, at 7 p.m., they’ll all…

A very small child might well have been swept away by the wind that blew through downtown Denver around 4 p.m. Sunday. About an hour before the Westword Music Showcase was scheduled to begin (with an outdoor performance, no less), the city experienced a meteorological shift that bordered on biblical…

Courtney Love spent the better part of last week testifying on behalf of her band, Hole, arguing that bands that sign with major labels are often held captive by creatively stifling contracts. Love’s own deal with Warner Bros., the one she’s currently angling to exit, requires Hole to produce five…

The members of Phantom Trigger, Thursday, May 10, at the 15th Street Tavern, with Regular and Mercy Ride, don’t mince words: The majority of the tunes on the band’s self-titled CD are instrumentals; when words do percolate to the top of the dense sound mix, they are usually little more…

Jay Bianchi sits on a thrift-store couch inside Sancho’s Broken Arrow, the Colfax bar he built from the rubble of the Golden Nugget Country Disco in February 2000. The place is bedecked with tie-dyes, a huge mosaic of the Grateful Dead’s Steal Your Face logo, and a wall of signed…

Spring is upon us, as we can tell from the allergy-induced sneezes of our friends and loved ones. But no matter what the time of year, local artists never stop cranking out recordings. A recent round of releases brings a bouquet of sounds and styles; some will delight the senses,…

Most punks have probably always wanted a good excuse to bust out their leathers, their opaque sunglasses and their favorite three-minute anthems for an unabashed bout of over-amplified Ramones worship. While last month’s premature passing of punk icon Joey Ramone was no doubt a little more extreme than what they…

Before Calypso music was hijacked by CapriSun commercials and weddings planned by Pier 1 sales reps, it was a fine, spontaneous song form that centered, to a large extent, on the art of the insult. On the West Indian island of Trinidad, where the rhumba-heavy style flourished before moving to…

Last Sunday night, the weather outside was frightful — but so was much of the discourse inside the Soiled Dove, at a Colorado Music Association meeting where more than 150 people had shown up to discuss the City of Denver’s recently implemented ban on under-21 music fans at small- and…

John Schmersal is one week out of the studio, on the road again with his newish project, Enon; this time, the mostly Brooklyn-based foursome is touring with friends, the Toadies, Texan arbiters of amplified goodness who are on a well-funded mission to reclaim some of the commercial success they nabbed…

Jive, Friday, April 20, and Saturday, April 21, at the Fox Theatre, with DJ Ivy and the All Mighty Senators, has had a hell of a run since founding members Dave Henry and Lance Smith first started getting together for guitar jams two years ago. Later this month, the band…

And so it was written, and so it came to pass. Last Sunday night marked the official start of the city’s policy change regarding mixed-age crowds at area clubs and music halls that serve alcohol and that boast a capacity rating of 2,000 persons or fewer. And although a spirit…

MindGOflip, Thursday, April 12, at Trilogy, probably could not have found a more appropriate name for its second CD: bounce bounce sound, which celebrates its release at this Boulder show, is a digital document of the band’s boisterous, bop-along pop music. In two years, MindGOflip has found an audience that…

Abstract Tribe Unique, Friday, April 12, at the Boulder Theater, slowly crept into the public’s awareness in 1995, when it joined the select roster of Grand Royal Records, the Beastie Boys’ nearly mythic imprint. Since then, the crew has dropped three albums on Battle Axe Records and continues to hone…

In the two weeks since Denver announced that it was revoking its split-premises permit for local cabarets — a ten-year-old policy that allowed patrons under 21 years of age to be in the same building as those of legal drinking age while alcohol was served — small modules of music…

Many members of the local music community regard Dick Weissman, Friday, April 7, in the King Center Recital Hall on the Auraria Campus, as a wise man: A professor at the University of Colorado at Denver and author of the indispensable text, How To Make a Living in Your Local…

Readers unfortunate enough to be born after April 15, 1980, take heed: You have about ten days to soak up as many punk shows, club nights, karaoke contests and rock concerts as you can possibly cram into your soon-to-be depleted social dance cards. Come Easter Sunday, youngish individuals who like…

On its debut recording, Memoirs From…, the Sad Star Café suggested that it had the chops to become a good guitar-rock band; the talent was there — it was obvious in singer Mark Sundermeier’s vocals and the dexterous playing of guitarist Kirk Schneider. The songs just hadn’t quite come together…

No one’s totally sure about the origins of Mullethead, who perform Friday, March 30, with Cabaret Diosa, Burlesque As It Was and Liza Band at the Fox Theatre. Some people say the rocking bi-levelers were discovered while playing Motörhead tunes on the amateur stage at the Colorado State Fair some…