Glenn Frey passed away on Monday, January 17, 2016, at the age of 67. As a member of the Eagles he helped to pen and perform several staples of what is now the American classic-rock canon. All humorous references to The Dude’s assessment of the Eagles in The Big Lebowski…
Filmmaker Shannon Kelly was getting his commission to make a film for display at Denver International Airport around the time he first and last saw a band whose music seemed to fit his cinematic vision: Pteranodon. Kelly had been a film student at CU and rubbed shoulders with the likes of…
When you think about Boulder, do you think about modern post-punk? Probably not. But in 2013, the four members of Male Blonding got together in drummer Andrew Bair’s house bedroom—with no specific agenda in mind—and that’s what they made. That day they wrote “Still Parts,” a song that appeared on the…
Although its name is menacing, the Ominous DJ night has become one of the most inclusive musical events in Denver, and may soon loom large beyond the city’s subcultures. The monthly alternative dance party, which rolls out at Tracks nightclub, is an extravaganza of music and visual elements, as well…
Before the Kevin Costner Suicide Pact, there was Fellow Citizens. Fellow Citizens was far better than your average indie rock band in the early 2000s. Initially based in Boulder, it somehow combined Americana, shoegaze and pop into consistently compelling songs. But its members graduating and otherwise moving on with other…
This Thursday, January 7, marks the launch of a new weekly event at the Meadowlark called Thursday Kicks. The first Thursday of the month will be called “Teenage Kicks,” which will feature all-vinyl punk and garage rock music. The second Thursday in the series is calld “Nightshift,” an all-vinyl night…
To celebrate its ten years of existence, 3 Kings Tavern is throwing a free show featuring the musical projects of the club’s staff. This event will also mark the last day at the club for Jim Norris, who opened 3 Kings with Jeff Campbell and Martin Killorin in January 2006…
Afrika Bambaataa is one of the architects of hip-hop culture as we know it. He was there when DJ Kool Herc and Kool DJ Dee were throwing the parties that were the foundation stone of hip-hop in New York City in the 1970s. The term hip-hop was coined by Cowboy…
DENVER DIY NEVER DIESAs the city’s older, less attractive face crumbled under the facade of a new, youthful and pricey cardboard cut-out of what is now being sold to the world as “neo-Denver,” our DIY music scene scurried under the rubble like a cockroach. But like that sturdy cockroach, it…
Isaiah “Ikey” Owens was more than merely the genius keyboard player of the Mars Volta. He was more than a key figure in the Long Beach music scene of the ’90s and the 2000s. He was more than a mentor/producer to underground bands like Rubedo, Holophrase and True Aristocrats from…
Psychodelic Zombiez were one of the most popular and beloved bands in Denver in the 1990s. Its blend of funk, punk and Danny Elfman-esque strangeness early on set it apart from many other bands of its day. Its rowdy antics on- and off-stage garnered the band a bit of a…
Arrested Development, which performs on Saturday, December 19, at Ophelia’s Electric Soapbox, was one of the earliest incarnations of alternative hip-hop, as it would come to be called by critics. That designation is, of course, problematic when part of the reason the group wasn’t immediately embraced by hip-hop culture was…
Since its 2009 debut album, Recordings Made in Public Spaces, Volume 1, Wrekmeister Harmonies, the musical collective headed by J.R. Robinson, has produced increasingly powerful albums that serve as a kind of manifestation of the horror and beauty of human existence. Robinson borrowed more than his project’s name from Werckmeister…
Agnostic Front was one of the earliest of the New York hardcore bands having formed in 1980 before that term was widely used to describe the faster and more aggressive music that characterized that movement. Toward the middle of the decade, Agnostic Front was an early adopter of the crossover…
!!! (aka ChkChkChk, if one is trying to do an Internet search) performs today, Monday, December 14, at Larimer Lounge with DJ Trundle and a Stereolab cover band called Stereolad composed entirely of members of !!!. !!! came together in 1996 in Sacramento, California, after two earlier bands, the noisy,…
Psychic TV performed for the first time in 25 years in the city where the North American branch of Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth was spawned and centered; this fact made Friday’s show at Summit Music Hall historically important. But nothing about the show proper seemed to rest on such…
Psychic TV is making its first Denver appearance since 1990, but the one-of-a-kind music project has long maintained special connections to Denver. Formed in the wake of the 1981 break-up of foundational industrial band Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV continued to foster a community of like-minded individuals aimed not just at…
In the mid-2000s, during the height of Denver’s indie-rock era, the members of Somerset Catalog were in some of the city’s more prominent bands. Bryce Merrill, John Kuker and Trevor Trumble were part of Everything Absent or Distorted, whose raucous live shows displayed the influence of Guided by Voices and…
Legendary grindcore band Pig Destroyer is co-headlining the Denver Black Sky festival with Skinless at the Gothic Theatre on Saturday, December 5. Based out of Alexandria, Virginia, Pig Destroyer began in 1997 when vocalist J.R. Hayes, formerly of Enemy Soil, and guitarist Scott Hull, formerly of Anal Cunt and Agoraphobic…
The third and final installment of High Plains Underground Archives’ series on Denver music reunion shows, features Warlock Pinchers. These days it is very easy to find out about local bands if you make even a small amount of effort. But back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, this was…
Slow Magic makes another appearance in Colorado at the Gothic Theatre on Thursday, December 3, with like-minded electronic pop artists Giraffage, Lindsay Lowend and Bollywood Life. Performing in a costume and striking mask, Slow Magic aims to direct the audience’s attention to the music and the show’s visual art. The mask…
Tacocat’s web address is tacocatdotcom.com. Tacocat’s name is a lighthearted palindrome. While these initial details might seem silly, they reveal much about the irreverent humor and lateral thinking that underpin the band’s creative work. “Everybody that uses Tacocat on the Internet uses it for [something fairly silly], so we had…
