Music evokes history. Songs remind us of a time, a place, a moment. Songs like Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” can take us back to the dark days of segregation, and “We Shall Overcome” recalls Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream for equality and peace. Tonight at 7 p.m. at the…

What do you do after you lose a child? If you’re like Page and Tess Phillips, you make an attempt to ease the pain of other parents suffering through the illness of a child. When the Phillipses’ son, Cash, was diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) and spent the last…

Recently, my pal Danielle convinced me to take a class called Cardio Tease and Tone at Tease Studio (1111 South Pearl Street), which offers pole classes and Pussycat Dolls-style burlesque workshops. “It’s for toning all the parts you tease with,” Danielle explained. As a burlesque dancer, this appealed to me,…

When Lauri Lynnxe Murphy opened Capsule Gallery and Event Center at 560 Santa Fe Drive in 2004, it was one artist’s gift to the Denver community: a place to show, sell and make art. Unfortunately, the evil forces of real-estate development will soon knock down and pave over Murphy’s beloved…

Magic Cyclops concedes that the main thing that makes tonight’s free Championship Karaoke at the hi-dive (7 South Broadway) the “Holiday Special Edition” is the fact that it occurs during the holiday season — but he does promise the possibility of celebrity appearances. At the very least, the ol’ MC…

As a Denver native, I’ve sometimes taken for granted how awesome it is to live in the shadow of what is essentially a great big playground. The Colorado Mountain Club started celebrating that fact three years ago with its annual Mountain Fest, a full day of everything that makes living…

Gimme Gimme Pillow Toast owner Janene Hurst is fascinated with the way the Japanese can make anything cute, recalling that even “a warning not to put oil down the drain had a cute little cartoon of a drop of oil with a face.” That love (combined with a desire to…

Much like Ol’ Saint Nick, Elvis Presley was a giving man. As well as contributing to a long list of favorite charities, Elvis handed out cash, cars and even houses to friends and to strangers in need. That’s why Christmas was his favorite holiday, according to Chris Barber, aka the…

There’s a natural high associated with both shopping and giving to charity, so when you combine them, the feeling is ecstatic. Mod Livin’ (5327 East Colfax Avenue) hopes to invoke some pocketbook-inspired warm fuzzies with their Mid-centuri(red) campaign. Choose from a long list of red products online at www.modlivin.com or…

If you take a walk around downtown Denver today, you’ll notice that it’s suddenly chock-full of arty delights that have been placed along the wide third-floor walkway at the Denver Pavilions and in once-empty storefronts — in fact, just about anywhere you look. Local artist Rodney Wallace started the Think…

Bats are generally lumped in with nature’s creepy-crawlies; despite a strong cultural tie to vampires, however, the majority of them are merely interested in chomping on bugs and fruit, not flesh and blood. Tonight at 7:30 p.m. at the Aurora Municipal Center (15151 East Alameda Parkway), Rob Mies, director of…

Although it’s not exactly revolutionary to hold a major environmental event in a town already known for its eco-friendly vibe, Boulder’s Eco Arts ’07 is impressive for its length and scope. It brings together artists, scientists and scientific organizations to cover a range of global-warming issues and examine how the…

When Fort Collins’ Solid Art Collective swept into town last spring to produce Femme Fatale 2, they proved they knew how to put on a successful eye-candy-filled event. So executive director dRe Williams and her cohorts immediately started planning their next art-and-performance party: Divine Intervention, happening tonight at the Oriental…

As president and founder of my high school’s Green Club, I was hated. I harassed students who didn’t use our recycling bins, and I ruined assemblies with staged funerals for the earth. We now live in an age that I don’t think my teen self would have ever thought possible:…

Tiny adorable pineapples on knobby twigs pop up out of a vase; above them rise stems covered with thornapples plump, green and spiny. Along the wall, the antique cooler is filled with living treasures: blooming eucalyptus that looks like sea anemones, delicate blackberry stems with clusters of fruit, velvety brown…

If Lakeside Amusement Park was taken over by artists and crafters, it would look something like Monkey See, Monkey Do: A Do-It-Yourself Carnival. Today at Capsule Art & Event Center, 560 Santa Fe Drive, rather than hopping on the Tilt-A-Whirl or the Whip, folks will trade in tickets to try…

At Bras for a Cause, the featured lingerie pieces aren’t boring old underthings. They’ve been transformed into art. “Some of the bras are really beautiful, but most are absolutely outrageous,” says Lucinda Wayland Connelly, president of Soroptimist International of Denver, which is hosting the event to benefit Gilda’s Club Denver,…

It’s easy to watch the Boulder Kinetics videos on the KBCO website and dismiss the event as a bunch of wackos in weird costumes riding around in bizarre boats. But it’s way more fun than that. The “sculptures,” as the boats/land cruisers are known, must be lake-worthy and able to…

There’s something about Benjamin Franklin that never seems to make it into school textbooks. Although there’s extensive coverage of his experiments with electricity and his landmark diplomacy, those accounts always seem to leave out Franklin’s reputation as a bit of a colonial bad boy. In the spirit of full disclosure…

With the rise of doggy day spas and boutiques, spoiling our pets seems to have become a national pastime; however, there are still many folks who have a hard time affording medical care for their furry best friends. That’s where the Harrison Memorial Animal Hospital steps in. Harrison keeps low-income…

Irish culture in Denver seems limited to the long list of Irish-themed bars and our massive St. Patrick’s Day Parade (the largest west of the Mississippi!) — but as attendees to J.K. Mullen’s Irish Denver Tour will discover, there’s much more to our Celtic history than booze and step dancing…

We live in a strange blender of a world, where musical borders are broken and crossed as the cultural pot continues to melt. Although musicians have always borrowed from other genres — from the first explorers to Elvis and Paul Simon — there’s still plenty of room for mixing and…