Starlight Mints, Friday, December 22 at Tulagi in Boulder, with DeVotchKa, began its life as a kind of skewed seven-piece orchestra — complete with string section — led by singer/songwriter Allan Vest and drummer Andy Nuñez. Though the band is now condensed to a quintet, its second release, The Dream…

Back in October, Mayor Wellington Webb announced the city’s plans for an exhaustive New Year’s Eve celebration that would center on the 16th Street Mall in downtown Denver. He promised that this year, the city would usher in the new year in style, noting that last year’s rather unimpressive public…

Around this time of year, the recording industry slows down and enters a kind of commercial hibernation. With the exception of a preponderance of seasonally themed recordings (see Michael Roberts’s “Holidaze” wrap-up in the December 14 issue for the best and worst of those), release schedules grow slim as most…

Michelle Shocked, with Sonny Landreth, Sunday, December 17, at the Boulder Theater, has always presented a deft combination of punk philosophy and folk tradition, beginning with the rustic and bluesy Texas Campfire Tapes, a sparely recorded acoustic offering that caught the attention of fans and, later, Mercury Records, in the…

As the Denver area resonates with the sounds of the season, there’s a death knell ringing through Broomfield. Last week, the board of directors of Up With People — the do-gooder performance and service group that calls Colorado home and employs more than 260 people worldwide — suspended operations indefinitely,…

Heard some news this morning that set my wheels a-churnin’: Johnnie Johnson, the guitarist/lyricist who helped design the rock-and-roll-song template by co-penning tunes like “Roll Over Beethoven” and “No Particular Place to Go,” has filed a multimillion-dollar suit against his former songwriting partner, Chuck Berry. The suit alleges that Johnson…

Ah, the holiday season is upon us, a time when even the most hardened individuals feel compelled to give a little something extra of themselves. In the case of the musicians participating in a charity benefit for Children’s Hospital, Saturday, December 2, at the Iliff Park Saloon in Aurora, it…

Rockabilly’s endurance continues to defy those who regard the genre’s resurrection as more of a fashion statement than a musical movement. While you’ll probably see less gingham and grease in local clubs these days, interest in rockabilly’s rabble-rousing sounds remains solid. Big Sandy and His Fly-Rite Boys, Friday, December 1,…

The Internet is a strange thing, indeed. Damien McCarron, lead Celt of the Indulgers, has noticed a significant increase in traffic to the Irish band’s Web site (shamrocker.com) since posting an MP3 of its song “Brave New World” — which first appeared on the band’s debut, In Like Flynn, in…

It’s nearing eleven o’clock on Monday, Open Stage Blues night at the Atrium Bar and Grill. In the corner, five musicians — mostly middle-aged white guys with borderline mullets and let’s-get-down looks on their faces — run through a clumsy reading of “Thunder and Lightning.” After they finish, they pass…

With the release of Sweet Bird of Youth, the Rock*A*Teens, Wednesday, November 29, at the 15th Street Tavern, with Kudzu Towers and Witter Cofield Conspiracy, again demonstrate that strange art sometimes comes from strange places. The bands fifth full-length CD was recorded in its Cabbagetown, Georgia, home, and is a…

Born in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Adrian Romero spent many years in Denver as the frontman of Love Supreme, an enigmatic outfit whose embrace of myriad styles — from introspective and richly textured melodicism to a carnivalesque kind of fusion — earned it a sizable local following, an invitation to…

A friend of mine commented this morning that a George Bush presidency might actually be good for the arts world — not because, as some have suggested, a conservative commander-in-chief would unite the fringe in fighting a common enemy. Rather, my friend would be so wary about catching a glimpse…

Ah, well, another election come and gone. Come January, Mr. What’s-His-Name will start having his L.L. Bean catalogues forwarded to Pennsylvania Avenue and commence boring us on TV. All in all, the campaign was a generally dull affair, but it had its moments. We got to see George W. Bush…

Local guitar auteur Neil Haverstock (pictured) is among the new leaders of the microtonal movement, a compositional philosophy that eschews the traditional 12-tones-per-octave scale. Rather, Haverstock and the six players who will perform as part of the sixth annual Microstock Festival, Friday November 3 at St. Pauls Methodist Church, prefer…

When the Denver-based Modern Drunkard magazine ceased publication in 1998 — after a two-and-a-half-year run that yielded eleven issues focusing on alcohol and local music — it might have been safe to assume that editor Frank Rich had simply tired of hanging out in the dark, dusty taverns where he…

Looking back on it now, the film roles Corey Feldman played in the late ’80s and early ’90s might have been some kind of predictor of the trouble he was to face in the years ahead: He played the attention seeking cutup in The Goonies, the volatile, ear-mangled son of…

For all the differences that seem to exist between their audiences, jam bands and dance artists have more than a few things in common: Both create roving, spacey sounds that give virtue to aimlessness and repetition, and both draw audiences who use the music to channel a certain feeling –…

These days, the bohemian types who live on the Lower East Side of New York are more likely to be addicted to hypertext than to heroin. Savvy bands understand bandwidth, and a “live performance” might mean a real-time broadcast uploaded from a Bowery bunker. At this year’s CMJ Music Marathon…

It seems you cant be a member of Zeüt, Saturday, October 21, at Hermans Hideaway, with Mind Go Flip and the Choir Boys, if you dont play at least two instruments. This requirement might help explain the bands tendency toward busy, harmonic nature-core music. Its a sunny stew thats well…