A person could get worked into a state trying to find something new on the commercial radio dial in this town. After all, how many times a day does a person really need to hear the Joy Drop’s “Beautiful”? (Many local programmers place the number at about thirty.) And while…
A lone orange wristband lies in the gutter outside of Dick’s Last Resort. On an eerily quiet Monday morning in LoDo, with a blanket of fog hanging over the mountains, and in the heads of the previous night’s revelers, the plastic strip is the only hint of what took place…
Okay, let’s get the self-promotion out of the way: The fifth annual Westword Music Awards Showcase is just a running jump away. In case you somehow missed the huge supplement at the center of this paper, on Sunday, September 19, the showcase will seize control of five LoDo venues, and…
Those who regularly attend Denver Joe’s Monday-night shows at Cricket on the Hill usually know what they’re in for, and the stragglers and neighborhood folks who happen by quickly find out. Amid a gloriously gritty country-music backdrop, the well-seasoned — and typically well-sauced — guitarist launches insults and zingers at…
Folk singers can get away with taking their craft into unconventional places: On downtown sidewalks, in subway stations and in restaurants at lunchtime, they open their guitar cases and unleash their voices, good or bad. So many people associate folk music with the mellow, sensitive fare of street buskers or…
The place was crawling with chicks. Short, fat, tall, thin — they came in droves, making their way from the farthest reaches of distant suburbs and cities, traversing vast parking lots on foot. They came en masse like pilgrims, toting Indian blankets and sealed bottles of Evian. Some brought daughters,…
Just us folks: Chances are good that those who’ve frequented downtown and Capitol Hill coffeehouses during the past eight years have, at some point, been privy to the quiet stylings of singer/ songwriter Micah Ciampa. After a prolonged stint as a member of the local folkie roster, however, Ciampa has…
Michael Roberts didn’t do me any favors as my predecessor in this position. For one, he promised, though not in print, that he would review every single local release to pass through the Westword office, no matter how fleeting the mention. And so he did. Whether or not they liked…
You cannot pick your parents. This is one of life’s few truths, and it propels us all into a biological crapshoot wherein some are truly born lucky — and others just seem like they are. Julian Lennon didn’t ask to be born the son of Cynthia Powell and John Lennon…
When Doug Bohm migrated from Chicago to Denver in 1994, he quickly found a niche as a gothic industrial concert promoter, a gig that afforded him time to pursue an interest in electronic music with the bands Post-Mortem Stress Disorder and Fish Music. Today, as a director of Bands for…
If you were to encounter Tim Sweet at a cocktail party and casually ask him what he does for a living, he probably wouldn’t provide a tidy answer. After a moment of furious internal deliberation, he would offer a combination of the following: He’s a sculptor, a DJ, a music…
If you listen closely, you can probably still hear the distant sound of champagne corks popping over in the Denver offices of Universal Concerts. After six months on the auction block, employees are breathing a bit more easily following an announcement that the company has been sold to House of…
Coming to a strange town and trying to get at least a superficial handle on its music scene in a very short time is not quite as complicated as it may initially appear. In much the same way that you expect to see the same fast-food restaurants line the roads…
Tom Waits Mule Variations (Epitaph) Old Tom’s career has followed the rarest of trajectories: He started out pretty good, only to get better. But how is Mule Variations? Unfortunately, it’s pretty good. To understand why what would be a fine achievement for most artists is actually a mild disappointment for…
