Arts & Entertainment

Barry, Barry, Barry: How can we miss you if you won’t go away? Last summer, in a battle plan that rivaled the Invasion of Normandy for buildup and strategizing — although the plans for D-Day were kept secret — longtime concert promoter Barry Fe re-entered the fray, joining up with House of Blues (the outfit he sold his concert-promotions company to four years ago) to take on Clear Channel for Colorado’s concert business.

Both the business world and the music industry offered a slack-jawed response to the news that Nobody in Particular Presents, the tiny local promotional firm, had filed an anti-trust lawsuit against promotional behemoth Clear Channel Entertainment in federal district court last August. Full of nasty allegations of illegal power-mongering and plain old bad behavior in the Clear Channel camp, the suit made it clear that the Denver concert battles were now an all-out war. The story appeared in media outlets around the country, from Spin to Fortune to salon.com, with most pieces suggesting that NIPP was a little bit crazy to take on the most powerful promotional force on the planet — but honoring the company with the sort of respect accorded underdogs the world over.

When Ralph Stanley invited the sold-out crowd at the Paramount Theatre to hold hands and join him in a call-and-response version of “Amazing Grace,” few in the audience declined the offer. When else does the average country-music lover have a chance to join in a chorus with Emmylou Harris, Allison Krauss and Union Station, Norman Blake and Patty Loveless, not to mention the stately Stanley? That closing moment was one of many highlights of the Down from the Mountain concert, which brought to life music from the amazingly successful, Grammy-winning O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack. It was an evening of stellar performances from artists both legendary and lesser known. How sweet the sound.

“Headbanger and Zombie Fag Extraordinaire” Maris the Great is up to his neck disemboweling Denver’s heavy-metal finest — a fiendish plot that the little ghoul expects will launch his own band to the forefront of the underground scene. As a contributing critic to Throat Culture Magazine (and the now-defunct Soundboard), His Greatness has already offed the likes of Drudgery, Black Lamb, 4 Head Scream, Rubber Planet, Rachel’s Playpen and Malignari, among others. An endless splatterfest, this amusing, one-stop guide through the Queen City’s willfully dark side also provides plenty of information about nu metal, old metal, death metal, grindcore, sludgecore, goth, punk and wee-wees.

Founded in 1972, Music Disc has exchanged its storefront on Hampden Avenue for a warehouse space at 3895A Newport Street in Denver; 45s are available for browsing by appointment, but the rest of the stock isn’t. Fortunately, though, the entire library is accessible on the Web — and what a library it is. The site has a huge collection of rare and hard-to-find albums, singles and so on. The prices ain’t always cheap, but if the one thing that would make your life complete would be finding a copy of Captain Beefheart’s “Ice Cream for Crow” on 45, it’s worth it.

Artist/illustrator Lucas Richards’s work may be familiar to buyers of local recordings: He’s done covers for the Volts, the Dinnermints and the Pindowns, among others. But it’s within the pages of Starving Magpie, a quarterly comic-book-style publication, that his vision is most fully realized. Richards and collaborator Soapy Argyle — an area guitarist who crafts Starving’s stories — have compiled a year’s worth of issues in a volume titled Captain Mis-

siletoe: The First Collection 2000-2001. Named for the tragicomic superhero who stars in most of the pen-drawn capers, the low-budget but creatively rendered collection is available at such cultural outposts as Wax Trax, WaterCourse Foods and the Buffalo Exchange.

As long as it pertains to getting ripped to the tits, local filmmaker/writer/boozebag Frank Rich prints all the news that’s fit to drink. Whether it’s the wisdom of forty-ounce philosophers, true stories from the sozzled

side or the savvy drunk’s guide to low-cost quaffs, Modern Drunkard — which took a hiatus in 1998 after a dozen issues — covers the town like a cheap suit. Consistently funny, the monthly publication celebrates the passionate affair between language and liquor with regular columns from Giles Humbert III and the Concerned Cad. A filmic extension of the Drunkard campaign is currently in production under Rich’s guidance; his prior credits include the noir-caper Nixing the Twist. The paper version includes cocktail recipes, obscure trivia and the occasional drunken doggerel from Joe or Jane Barfly. Li’l stories ’bout drinky an’ hap — hic! — pee hour. Whudderya lookinat? Hahhgh? Gizadringk!

Every few months for three years running, writer/editor/publisher Rod Brown has unleashed a new edition of Throat Culture Magazine, boosting its distribution and circulation with each press run. Brown’s passion for “abrasive music” fuels this beast, a dense glossy loaded with articles, reviews and interviews regarding all things headbanging. In the case of this Throat Culture, the results usually come back positive.

The concert that singer-songwriter Rickie Lee Jones gave at Red Rocks on July 5, 1990, is brand-new all over again, thanks to Live at Red Rocks, Artemis Records’ recent release. Although On Hold at Red Rocks might be a more accurate title, the CD is authentically enjoyable, a quick trip back to the late ’80s, when Jones released her classic Flying Cowboys. Chuck E.’s in Love — and so are a lot of other people who listen to this.

During Five Iron Frenzy’s years of existence, ska has gone in and out of style (and given the success of the No Doubt single “Hey Baby,” it may be on the rise again). But the band has stayed steadily on course, developing a tight, exciting variation on the style. The membership’s Christian beliefs sometimes surface overtly, as on “Far, Far Away,” but tunes like “Pre-Ex-Girlfriend” (“She said she hated Kenny G/That girl is way too good for me”) will hit the pleasure spot for listeners of every stripe.

Drag the River’s Chad Price is the lead vocalist of All, and colleague Jon Snodgrass hails from Armchair Martian — so d must be high-energy punk, right? Not even close. The album is filled with hard-drinking tales of life and loss accompanied by plenty of cohort Zach Boddicker’s pedal-steel. It’s not country, it’s not rock, and it’s not a combination of these genres that any of the Eagles could relate to. Instead, it’s gutsy, sincere music straight from the heart — and the bottom of a bottle.

When the members of All relocated to Fort Collins, many observers of the scene didn’t expect them to stay there for long — but seven years later, they’re still in place, and they’ve created quite a scene around their studio, the accurately named Blasting Room. Live Plus One, their latest effort, definitely provides bang for the buck. Its first disc is a relentless rendering of 22 songs recorded at Fort Collins’s Starlight Lounge last year; its second finds punk demigods the Descendents (three current members of All plus original vocalist Milo Aukerman), blitzing through another 21, including classics such as “My Dad Sucks,” during a gig at L.A.’s Whiskey A Go-Go in 1996. Punk rock lives!

Singer-songwriter/guitarist Marc Benning understands that power pop only succeeds when its two primary components are kept in perfect balance — and on Stop, he achieves his aim more often than not. “Get Out Alive,” “Caroline,” “Smoke From a Funeral” and many other tracks here are compulsively hummable without seeming wimpy, and they rock with conviction that never degenerates into mere dopiness. This Satellite is flying high.

Those who’ve resisted the charms of Dressy Bessy in the past complained that the four-piece’s music was too cute, too sweet, too cuddly. But on Sound Go Round, too much feels just right. Each ditty here is an irresistible hook-o-rama whose allure is magnified by lead singer Tammy Ealom’s winsome crooning and guitarist John Hill’s unfussy production. Anyone who can listen to this disc without smiling has some issues in need of resolving.

Former Jux County frontman and current Czar Andy Monley released Denver, his first solo CD, in January. A collection of songs Monley wrote in his downtime over a couple of years, the album features guest cameos from a fine group of local players, including guitarist Janet Feder, Mike Serviolo, Monkey Siren’s Glenn Taylor and Mark Harris and the Czars’ John Grant and Chris Pearson. Denver is melodic, moody and nearly perfect. We wish the whole city sounded this good.

We all know the altitude is to blame for everything, from a cheap pop-up at Coors Field turning into a tape-measure home run to the somewhat sorry state of sushi. But since when did it cause locals to become hard of hearing? What else could explain the release of a disc as engaging as the Czars’ The Ugly People vs. The Beautiful People receiving less local coverage than John Elway’s latest post-retirement hobby? Much of Europe is already wise to this release, which has landed the Czars in the pages of cross-Atlantic publications from Time Out to Mojo. On the disc, lush, melancholy vocals beautifully color such stellar tracks as the lilting “Lullaby 6000” and the hypnotic “Drug.” Hometown crowds should join the Beautiful People.

Dotsero bassist Michael Friedman reaches beyond his usual smooth-jazz audience with Swingset Jazz, an album of adaptations of children’s standards like “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.” Though the album is meant to be educational as well as fun, Friedman may be able to trick kids into thinking it’s just the latter. Whimsical and high-spirited, Swingset Jazz adds another volume to the relatively small body of jazz works for children.

Exposed is about as pure a jazz CD as you’re apt to find: Like all Creative Improvised Music Projects offerings, it was recorded directly onto a computer without compression, echo or any post-production tampering. As a result, listeners can hear every nuance in regularly enthralling performances by saxophonist Fred Hess and his worthy associates: trumpeter Paul Smoker, bassist Ken Filiano and drummer Damon Short.

Otis Taylor is among the most ambitious blues performers on the planet, as Respect the Dead demonstrates. Rather than churning out good-timey blues for tourists or mimicking the styles of yesteryear, he uses his compositions to explore issues of love, history, race and justice. Songs like “Ten Million Slaves,” “32nd Time” and “Jump Jelly Belly” may seem to be heavy sledding on the surface, but thanks to the conviction and talents of Taylor and collaborators Kenny Passarelli and Eddie Turner, they emerge as inspirational, educational and mysterious.

The Corvairs never made much of an impact nationwide, but the band was among Colorado’s hottest new-wave acts in the late ’70s and early ’80s, and Denver Sessions ’79 perfectly captures the era. The music can be goofy at times — “T.V.” interpolates the theme to The Munsters — and the recording quality is rather primitive (for information, visit www.newwave.50megs.com). Still, songs like “Hands of Time” and “Surf Noir” perfectly capture the spirit of the times.

Cut live at the Boulder Theater in 1996, So Long of a Journey captures one of the finest acts to emerge from the contemporary bluegrass scene in all its glory: From the traditional favorite “Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning” to the joyous “Won’t You Come and Sing for Me,” the playing and singing of Pete Wernick, Tim O’Brien, Nick Forster and Charles Sawtelle is as skilled as it is spontaneous. With the passing of Sawtelle, future Hot Rize reunions will necessarily have something missing, which only makes this CD all the more valuable.

Run by Andrew Murphy, a spry and indefatigable supporter of homegrown music, Boulder-based Smooch Records has done more than just put out records: The label has helped cultivate an identity for the grassroots network of independent artists who make and record music in the Front Range. The sporadic Smooch live showcases are sampler-platter style concerts that give listeners a chance to taste a little of what’s going on underground. Recently, the Smooch logo has appeared alongside some of the area’s finest musical exports, from Maraca 5-0 to Jay Munly. Pucker up.

For almost ten years, Les Cooper and his Dalharts have carried the torch for honest-to-gawd country. Good thing they had the patience to stick it out, because the Dalharts have matured into one heck of a fine band. Thanks to Les’s rich bray, Tim Cooper’s sugarcane steel-guitar playing and the seasoned craftsmanship of the rest of the Imperial cast, locals have a homegrown cure for Nashville’s illnesses.

As a member of Open Road, Brad Folk handles himself as a country gentleman, a stately vocalist in a traditional bluegrass band. When fronting his trio, however, he turns into something else entirely — a restrained, yowling wildcat. His act is real gone, all right, dishing out the meanest early-’50s rockabilly around. Is it fair that one guy gets to front two of the state’s best roots acts? His fans think so.

Open Road has undergone a few changes in personnel since its acclaimed debut, Open Road, but that hasn’t slowed the band. The acoustic combo from Lyons continues to serve up pure, traditionally spirited music of the finest kind — an approach that’s drawing attention from around the nation. If the players can hang on to the good mojo and chemistry, folks outside the state might think of Colorado as a place where jammy grass and the authentic stuff share the same soil.

For a city of its size, Denver comes up short on compelling, cliche-free blues acts. But David Booker sings a different song. He’s moved crowds here for decades, thanks to an eye for great material and supporting players — not to mention a voice that wraps around standards like a sharkskin scarf. Add in his car-salesman/street-huckster persona, and you’ve got the finest bluesman about town.

Too many of the area’s soundmen think a successful night on the job means causing tinnitus in the clientele. Shane Hotle knows better. He keeps the wattage in check and fills the Merc’s glorious upstairs room with a smartly mixed, just-below-capacity sound. The result allows auditory indulgence up front and conversation in the back bar — which is just as it should be.

Move over Hazel, Nina and Lannie. Though she’s not exactly glamorous and hardly a diva, Madame Andrews is in possession of the city’s most divine set of pipes. When the Heavenly Echoes vocalist and host of KGNU-FM’s Gospel Chime sings her joyous, old-school testimonials to faith, she sends skin crawling and Satan heading for parts farther south. Andrews’s current CD, (I’ve Got To) Make Up for the Time I Lost, is worth thanking heaven for.

Classically trained and jazzically inclined, Teresa Carroll knows her way around a song — almost any song — because she’s lived a few lyrics herself. A graduate of Thomas Jefferson High School, she studied opera in New York in the 1970s and early ’80s, but she was always drawn to the Holy Trinity — Billie, Sarah and Ella — as well as Nancy Wilson and other jazz icons. You can hear the scatting, octave-leaping, brooding echoes of these immortals in Carroll’s vivid mezzo-soprano voice, but her style’s all her own now, and that’s the essential thing. Every fourth Sunday, she sings at Shakespeare’s; every other Tuesday, she’s at the Manhattan Grill in Cherry Creek; and periodic gigs take her to the Sambuca Jazz Café, Enoteca, and Trios in Boulder. When she gets inside a ballad like “Love for Sale,” she can break your heart.

Moving from singer-songwriter-style pop to intricate noise rock, Worm Trouble bridges the chasm between wispy melodies and blistering riffs with ease. A typical set weaves dozens of radically different sonic threads into a slew of textures that range from delicate to explosive, melancholy to sarcastic. Despite its name, there’s no trouble in this trio — at least as far as the eclectically minded listener can tell.

If Bio-Bitch doesn’t pique your interest — or at least elicit a chuckle — then the terrorists really have won.

Skulls, devils and pentagrams are not involved, but the Bobby Collins Death Metal Armada’s fashion sense perfectly complements its spacey, nitrous pop. The Armada’s revolving wardrobe includes jumpsuits, milkman duds, cardigans, cheesy Christmas sweaters, space-age fabrics, 3-D glasses and beanies. Rumor has it that bubble-wrap coveralls might be in the works. Fortunately this atmospheric pop combo puts equal emphasis on its music as well as its wardrobe. Death was never so much fun.

Take an oversized Ronald McDonald, Tron-inspired costume design, giant plastic lobster claws, low-budget martial arts and moon boots. Throw in some warped synthetic ditties dedicated to the Atari classic from which it derives its name, and you’re just scratching the surface of the city’s strangest multimedia phenomenon, Mr. Pacman. The ranting “No Ghosts” alone is worth the cover charge when the band appears in venues ranging from the Lion’s Lair to artsy upper-Larimer Street warehouses. (Just beware of allowing this band around fire: The members of the cartoonish construct set their instruments alight during last year’s Grim Productions Halloween party and nearly burned the ceiling as well.) This game is far from over.

The Nashville Songwriters Association International’s Denver chapter meets the first Monday of every month at the Academy of the Arts. There, good ol’ boys and girls explore the intricacies of songwriting in a friendly setting. Group members come to have their work critiqued by peers, a process that can generate heated line-by-line discussions but never loses the spirit of camaraderie. It’s a great place for people to hang out and find out who’s doing what in the music biz.

Getting more than 100 people into the Soiled Dove to discuss Denver’s music scene with Monday morning looming is no small feat. However, the 1,000-member Colorado Music Association routinely does so on the third Sunday of each month. Popular features include member introductions and a free spread, courtesy of the Dove. Networking, panel discussions and industry news and advice make up most of the content. The programs are typically followed by Q&A sessions and the Dove’s “Locals Launch” live-performance series. The organization has inspired a range of specialized, genre-specific subcommittees that regularly meet to hone in on specific musical and career goals. For musicians, COMA meetings are an inspiring and informative way to ease into a week of day-job grind.

Scott Campbell and Jason Cotter, booking managers for the 15th Street Tavern, must have a psychic grasp of which artists are about to break out: Many of the bands that play their club wind up on the cover of the College Music Journal or headlining a showcase at the South by Southwest music conference soon after stopping in Denver. Fortunately for those who like to see bands before they get big, the Tavern’s reputation as the local place to play guarantees there’s almost always something worthwhile going on in the deliciously divey space. The sound isn’t always great, and the room can get over-packed and thoroughly smelly, but, hey, if you like your rock and roll squeaky-clean, try VH1. For riotous live shows and an incomparable calendar, the Tavern is the down-and-dirty destination.

When the owners of Quixote’s True Blue moved into the old 7 South space on Broadway, they began redecorating with a vengeance — and a vision. Colorful and kaleidoscopic, the entire room is a museum of musical memorabilia and art (including plenty of original posters and photographs)

that also serves as a venue for local and national jam-based, bluegrass and Grateful Dead-inspired acts. The bar’s wide selection of kindly priced microbrews and spirits has made it a favorite among earthy brothers and sisters around town. Beyond the music and the drink menu, however, it’s in the bathrooms that your senses can become the most pleasantly overwhelmed. Full murals depicting scenes from Alice in Wonderland and The Cat in the Hat are adorned with literary quotes and song lyrics. While there’s plenty going on in the club itself, thanks in large part to the Deadicated efforts of true-blue owner Jay Bianchi, Quixote’s bathrooms are so well done, you may never want to come out.

Technically, Tulagi is not a punk club. About half the time, the smallish space — which celebrated its 25th anniversary last year — is booked by the staff that operates the Fox Theatre next door. But a couple nights a week, the calendar belongs to indie promoter Mike Barsch, who draws on his years of running Denver punk staple the Raven to enlist an impressive revolving roster of up-and-coming indie-rock and punk artists. Death Cab for Cutie, Mars Volta, the Icarus Line and the Alkaline Trio are among the underworld heavyweights who’ve come to town at Barsch’s invitation, much to the delight of the all-ages crowds who regularly pack the place. Local punk bands get their fair share of stage time as well; as the operator of Soda Jerk Records, Barsch has long been a supporter of area acts. In some circles, he’s the reigning king of the hill.

You don’t have to be terribly accomplished to secure some stage time during the New Talent Showcase at Herman’s Hideaway. In fact, the whole point of the Wednesday-night series is to give fledgling acts a chance to test the waters of the live-music experience, even if they only play to an audience of friends and sympathetic strangers. Often the shows are kicked off by a presentation from an industry insider who can offer career advice as well as an ear. Because of the huge level of interest among aspiring stagehounds, owner Allan Roth has begun hosting a similar event on sporadic Tuesdays, as well. We hope that becomes permanent: The Showcase is a great way to sample the city’s raw talent in a supportive and fun environment. On to the next.

Whether they are truly talented or simply interested in using music as a bludgeon, untested Denver bands have long had a wide-open outlet for their art at Cricket on the Hill. Sure, the place is far from cuddly, but management understands the bar’s symbiosis with local rock. The standard deal is straightforward: Three bands split a third of the bar after they pay off the sound guy. No bullshit. No one gets ripped off. No drunken riots…well, not very often. Hey, two out of three ain’t bad.

Bands wade into the deep each night at Golden’s legendary Buffalo Rose: The bar’s music room is built on top of what used to be the City of Golden’s municipal pool. The stage itself sits right over the pool’s now-empty deep end, adding an extra measure of bottom boom to the sound and giving new meaning to the term “sink or swim.”

With above-average bar grub and a stage that plays host to the area’s heaviest bands, Sports Field Roxxx offers patrons the chance to fill up their stomachs and blow out their eardrums in one sitting. Sports Field has recently expanded its entertainment menu to include punk and rock acts in addition to its trademark heavy metal, industrial and hardcore. The only downside is that you have to scream at the top of your lungs to get someone to pass the ketchup.

When he bought the Gothic in 1999, owner Steve Schalk, a former Hollywood set designer, poured his vision (and his bank account) into salvaging the south Broadway space from its formerly sorry existence. The result was a magnificent house with old-world charm, great sound and a progressive booking policy. Beyond its aesthetic qualities — and there are many — the theater wins us over by taking chances on lesser known national acts, including jazz artists, and providing a home for creative local projects that might not otherwise have a home. The Gothic brings heart, art, and plain old beauty to the otherwise messy business of concert promotions.

Earlier this year, the Fox Theatre notched its tenth anniversary — but it also celebrated its tenth year as the best-sounding room of its type in the area. Since its 1992 birth on the Hill in Boulder, the space has become a favorite of both artists and fans. Simply put, the Fox provides the finest acoustics imaginable, whether the star attraction is a singer-songwriter playing unplugged or a twelve-piece funk band dedicated to blowing the roof off the sucker.

Though Sevilla recently relocated from its cavernous corner on Wynkoop Street to new digs in the Denver Pavilions, nothing was lost in the move. It still provides the most appealing environment for south-of-the-border musical expeditions, with a huge dance floor, exotic decor and a stimulating menu of live and DJ music. For those who like to move to merengue, tear up a tango and sizzle to salsa, Sevilla is a internationally flavored delight.

Held the first Friday of every month, the Barn Dance has quickly become an event worth looking forward to — a family-oriented, music-heavy and just plain fun community happening. Because its organizers know grownups sometimes have a hard time rocking into the late-night hours, the Barn Dance starts and ends early and is designed to offer a little something for all, from traditional stylings to more alternative variations on the C&W canon. An extension of www.DenverBarnDance.com, the series was initially designed as a showcase for artists who make up Denver’s thriving country scene. Since then, Marilyn Megenity’s open-minded and versatile Mercury Cafe has proved the perfect venue for listeners to kick up their heels while discovering new talent. Can we get a yee-haw?

Most of the time, the Skylark Lounge is just a bar — albeit a great one, with an old-fashioned atmosphere (checkered floor, vinyl booths and soda-fountain-style bar stools) that draws the hipsterati from the Baker neighborhood and beyond. But on Thursday and Saturday nights, the staff clears a few tables and sets up a makeshift stage for some of the finest rockabilly, country and blues artists around. Halden Wofford, the Dalhart Imperials, David Booker and the Lee Bradford Trio are among the regulars who incite all manner of swing, Lindy Hop — and just plain drunken — dancing. Live music makes this gem of a room sparkle that much more.

For players who are accustomed to competing with the bar-room din at many music venues, Daniels Hall can be a tough room to tackle. The loyal legions who attend concerts in the small, intimate space inside Swallow Hill hang on every lyric and lick and honor performers by giving them their full attention. A sort of sanctuary of pure sound, the place is, note for note, an ideal environment for the serious musician and listener alike. Looking to spend time with a listening audience that’s hungry for music, not phone numbers? Try heading to the Hill.

When jazz saxophonist Laura Newman took over Herb’s Hideout at the beginning of the year, she created a welcome den for live music on the fringes of LoDo. Though Herb’s has always opened its stages to area players, it’s now a bona fide venue nearly every night of the week, with emphasis on R&B, funk, jazz and even big band (the Denver Jazz Orchestra performs at Herb’s every Monday night). Grab a booth beneath the Matisse-style mural that runs along the wall, and you can still hear and see the show while maintaining normal conversation. If you prefer to get closer, there’s plenty of room in front of the stage. Just take care not to take up too much room on the dance floor; it’s bound to get packed at the night goes on. Herb’s is the perfect little hideout in a hectic part of town.

Not much has changed at El Chapultepec over the past couple of decades — not the interior, not the food menu (the beef-and-bean burritos go surprisingly well with bebop), not the fact that the place is packed like a submarine on Saturday nights. Owner Jerry Krantz knows there’s simply no need to try to improve things. The teeny club is perfect as it is: a vibey, swingin’, smoky little joint where the stage is almost always occupied by the best players in town. For an authentic jazz experience, head to Market Street.

B.J.’s Port, a cozy neighborhood bar in Five Points, features jazz only on Sundays, from 4 to 8 p.m. But what music! Pat Bianchi, a hard-driving young jazz organist, leads a smokin’ trio composed of the fine Boulder guitarist Bill Kopper and drummer Tony Black, a whirling dervish with the quickest sticks in the business. On vocals you’ve got singer/actor Ed Battle, who’s a Denver institution and a blues master. Saxophonist Billy Tolles may fall by to sit in, along with other Denver jazz players with time on their hands. Hungry? How about some barbecue, with a mess of collard greens and crowder peas? All this, and the sun hasn’t even set.

The Snake Pit is little more than a black box, but the music that fills it on Thursday nights is legendary. Breakdown Thursdays are one of the best and best-known jungle/drum ‘n’ bass club nights on the planet. To be sure, the fluttering drum beats and cortex-rattling bass lines are an acquired taste, but there’s no better serving of the stuff to be found than the Pit, where the biggest names in the genre drop records weekly. The fact that Diesel Boy, the reigning monarch of the style, played for free there earlier this year is a testament to the obvious: Breakdown has blown up.

On Mondays, 1515 hosts Textiles, a weekly beat happening that fuses the prolific talents of local jazz saxophonist Pete Wall with those of Denver trip-hoppers Equulei, various live percussionists, and turntablists from the Mile High House crew, including Ivy, Todd Colletti, and Tom Hoch. Together these players cut a deep, chilly, down-tempo groove that makes for exceptionally easy yet edgy listening, dancing and socializing. The crowd usually peaks a little after midnight. Until then you can always get a table, though this new night should start to pack out before long. For now, there’s no cover charge.

Devotees of house music are advised to start the week off right by checking into Skunk Motel, the wildly popular theme night at the Snake Pit hosted by Denver’s DJ Skunk every Monday. Those with fun-forbidding Tuesday-morning commitments, or those who merely wish a bigger chunk of dance floor for themselves, will find an attractive alternative on Phrunky Fridays, where the Pit’s resident house guru, DJ Little Mike, consistently rocks the house. Red Bull and Stolichnaya “legal speedball” specials are guaranteed to have you singing “Who wants the Phrunk?” in two rounds or less.

Every Friday night, the glam, the gay and the gorgeous converge on the newly renovated 60 South on Broadway for Lipgloss, a welcome new addition to the face of Denver club life. Friendly, funny bartenders (who just might ask you to sample new drinks they’ve concocted on the spot), an energetic but open vibe, and a daring crew of revolving DJs who don’t follow any single sound or style combine to make Lipgloss shimmer. Regular DJs Tim Cook, Tyler Jacobson and Michael Trundle play everything from Blondie and Bauhaus to exotica and Euro-pop, occasionally clearing the booth to allow guest spinners to step up to the tables. Revolving exhibits from area visual artists add an aesthetic element to an event that will already stimulate — and titillate — you.

There’s got to be a morning after — sooner or later, you’re going to have to open your eyes, listen to that hammer hitting your head and remember every stupid thing you did last night. Well, almost everything. Pure, the nightclub that occupies the old Casino Cabaret, makes a good argument for facing the music sooner: the Recovery Room. This semi-regular Sunday bash starts early in the morning, ends by noon, and in between pours out the bloodys and pours on the soothing, “morning progressive trance” music, with Pure owner Kostas Kouremenos acting as DJ.

The price for a table inside Club Sanctuary’s luxuriously appointed and well-guarded room for special people is $200 for the night, which is right in the range of the club’s competition and still includes your first bottle of premium liquor free. Split between four people at a table, that’s not bad, especially since it also buys the doting attention of a scorching-hot cocktail server who will find something to compliment you on within three minutes of your meeting (go ahead, time her). Recently renovated under the direction of Kaylene Martinez — a former Denver nurse turned professional V.I.P.-room designer and manager — this room-behind-the-rope is superbly lighted (the fire wall/water wall effect is gorgeous) and smoothly run. Martinez treats pro athletes and big-spending suburbanites with the same well-oiled courtesy.

New clubs come and go, but there’s really no challenging the staying power or superiority of Boulder’s Soma. Less a traditional venue than a full dance-music environment, Soma maintains its status by constantly revamping its future-tech vibe and opening its spinning space to talent from all record crates and corners of the world. The club’s excellent local residents spin hard house, techno and trance, and they hold their own against out-of-town guests. Local clubheads, along with the international media, have recognized that this little spot is Soma-thing special.

Every DJ in the Casa Del Soul crew excels at his craft. They all know how to read, and lead, a crowd. They all religiously mine the record bins at Casa Del Soul Records (owned by the collective’s founder, Nate Uhlir). And they all play out regularly at the biggest dance clubs in Denver. But if you favor a hybrid style that seamlessly splices house with techno, East Coast with West Coast, then Ty Tek must top your list. Groove to it.

If you’ve got cat class and you’ve got cat style — or just a Ben Franklin for you and a friend burning a hole in your velvet pants — this quasi-underground club is the hottest spot in Denver to strut your stuff. Entered via an alley behind the Diamond Cabaret strip club, Alley Cat features house music spun by the hottest DJs in Denver and around the world in the club’s main dance chamber, and progressive trance in the smaller “red room” lounge. Fire twirlers and cage dancers (many of them Diamond girls partying after work) are standard on weekends. The Cat is open Thursday through Saturday; the cover charge is steep ($15, somewhat negotiable after 1 a.m.), but the sultry, supercharged atmosphere within is worth the scratch.

For those who prefer stylish settings to sports bars, Citrus is a juicy addition. This clean, Euro-style eatery boasts one of the city’s finest selections of Champagne and top-shelf vodka. But five nights a week, the LoDo spot opens its floors (and its upstairs V.I.P. room) to the dance-music contingent, with DJs spinning all manner of house music, from Chicago-style soul to deep progressive. Citrus is a mellow, sophisticated, place-to-be-seen destination where the vibes flow along with the spirits. Call it fruity, fun — and good for you.

It started with a bunch of Longmont area high school students who wanted their own dance club. They pulled together the resources, gathered community support and wrote a business plan that sold the Longmont City Council on the idea, to the tune of $91,000 in funding. With student managers, DJs and security — adults are “advisers” only — the Grind, which leased space in Longmont’s Rollerena for six months, was a big hit; $4 and a student ID were all you needed to get in. That lease has expired, though, so the city’s youth-services division is helping the Grind negotiate a new lease for a spot on Main Street. And a city-council-approved budget of $182,000 for this year is sure to get that party started right. Thanks to the efforts of the entrepreneurial group, Longmont club kids can look forward to having a safe and secure place to play and dance. Smells like teen spirit.

Last fall, when the Denver City Council was debating an ordinance allowing mixed-age crowds at cabarets, Rock Island owner David Clammage — or, as his patrons know him, “Uncle Dave” — was a vocal advocate of allowing local venues to provide safe and exciting entertainment options for the under-21 contingent. With his weekly All Agez Ragez, Clammage puts his booking policy where his mouth is. Every Saturday night until 11:30 p.m., the dark and buggy LoDo nightspot opens its doors to patrons ages sixteen and up; those eighteen and older are invited to stay until closing time. The Saturday-night fetes regularly feature revolutionary local spinners, including the Postman, DJ Harlan and Dave Granger. This is no mere kids’ stuff.

What’s the matter with kids today? Not a thing, if you ask the young crowds who populate Club Pulse, a Littleton hot spot that welcomes teenage patrons as well as the over-21 crowd. That’s good news for younger hipsters who prefer to spend their Saturday nights on the dance floor rather than cruising the 16th Street Mall. True to its name, Club Pulse throbs to the sounds of hip-hop, R&B and DJ stylings, with music spinning into the wee hours on Friday and Saturday nights. (Sorry, kiddies, your time to shine ends with the midnight curfew.) Let’s hear it for the boys — and girls.

With the closing of a couple of clubland staples over the past year, the nocturnal socialite has fewer options from which to choose. Fortunately, Enigma Afterhours — which began as Rezodanc in the spring of 2001 — has swiftly filled the late-night void by opening its doors at the unsaintly hour of 1 a.m., Thursday through Saturday nights. With a mostly local and progressive roster of talent, including Friday-night sets from members of the prominent Casa Del Soul crew, the stylish Larimer Street locale has upped Denver’s cosmo quotient considerably. A dedicated dancehound knows sleep is for wimps. So unplug your alarm clock, slam some Starbucks (or whatever elixir you fancy) and make a move for the dance floor. At Enigma, the beats go on.

New York’s got a bunch of songs; Chicago’s got a few. Hell, even St. Louis has been the subject of a couple of ditties. So why not Broomfield? That’s what Phil Long, who grew up in once-sleepy Broomfield, thought when he returned to his now-overgrown hometown after many years on the road as a singer and musician and found it to be almost unrecognizable. So Long, who is 37, wrote down his thoughts for “The Broomfield Song,” which he performed in November at a ceremony marking the official beginning of Broomfield County, Colorado’s 64th such municipality. “I should have stood the ground, I should have put up a fight,” the lyrics read. “But when you’ve been away so long that you lose your way, I guess you’ve got nothing to say.”

It’s possible that you have to live in Aurora to truly appreciate it, and sometimes even that doesn’t work. But how many citizens of Denver’s much-maligned suburb to the east actually know anything about the place where they wake up every day and go to sleep every night? Here’s a way to learn. Staff members at the Aurora History Museum mined the museum’s historical archives to develop a matching game pairing facts on flashcards to photos on a Bingo-style game board. Available for $13.95 at the museum’s gift shop, the game might just be the next hot thing for proud Aurorans everywhere. Is it worth it? Bingo!

The big wheels at Denver International Airport have done plenty wrong over the last year, but here’s something they did right: They allowed the International Performance Series to continue inside the airport over the Christmas holidays, despite the post-September 11 security concerns that forced them to cancel it during the Thanksgiving rush. For more than a decade, musicians have roamed the concourses at DIA (and Stapleton Airport before it) during the hectic times of the year, entertaining travelers and easing the minds of anxious or delayed passengers. The variety of performers has been wide, with acts including Banda Felicidada, Camacho-Ransoli, Bill Barwick and Sons of Tumbleweed, and Boxty, a Celtic quartet, as well as city auditor and presumed mayoral candidate Don Mares, who performed as part of a folk duo. The series is managed by Meredith Gabow, who also runs a companion Web site at www.calmthebeast.com. For her dedication, and for DIA’s decision to resume the series, we offer a joyful noise.

Although it takes place early this year — the first three weekends in April — Silver Plume’s annual community melodrama, performed by the Plume Players, should be filled with just as much tiny-town drama as ever. Don’t Shoot the Piano Player, a nod to the old mining town’s Wild West history, has a cast of ten (approximately 5 percent of the town’s population); proceeds go to benefit historic preservation efforts.

Twelve-year-old Akil LuQman promises to be a roaring success as an actor. On April 17, the Denver sixth-grader makes his debut as Young Simba in the road show of The Lion King. Catch him while you can.

Many tried, but after several area runs of The Vagina Monologues, it was local chanteuse Hazel Miller who really shone among the guest actors participating in touring versions of the acclaimed show. Monologues typically pairs local female celebrities — swimmer Amy Van Dyken and radio DJ Nina Blackwood are examples — with professional actors to perform the various readings, which range from moving to funny to serious. Miller’s eight standing-room-only performances at the Boulder Theater raised the roof, though, so much so that she was asked to return to the role when the show comes back in August 2002. And that’s something we can all shout about.

Dianne Reeves has definitely found her calling. The jazz diva, who was raised in Denver, won a Grammy Award this year for The Calling — Celebrating Sarah Vaughn. It was her second consecutive win in the category of Best Jazz Vocal Album; Reeves won the same award the year before for In the Moment — Live in Concert. Both albums were released on the Blue Note label, and both show off the former University of Colorado student’s astonishing vocal range. For fans in Denver and around the world, the Grammy wins strike the right chord.

As a youngster, Denise Nickerson participated in projects that have garnered her eternal fame among members of two separate cults: She was in the cast of the 1960s gothic soap opera Dark Shadows, and she co-starred as Violet Beauregarde, the obsessive gum-chewer who turned into a giant blueberry, in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. Nickerson subsequently left show business, and in April 2001, she and her son moved to Denver, where she works for an accounting firm. For the most part, she leads a low-key life, but she happily participated in promoting the thirtieth-anniversary DVD of Wonka. Given how star-starved Denver is (why did Gary Coleman ever move away?), it’s nice to have her here.

Most of the humor on Denver’s Channel 8 is inadvertent: It’s tough to take those endless city council committee hearings seriously. And while the people featured in @altitude: Life in the Mile High City aren’t putting on an act, either, the production team definitely takes an entertainingly skewed view of life in Denver. This is altitude with an attitude. “Our purpose is to make each @altitude show reflect all the diverse energies that make this a great city,” says producer Jen Caltrider. “The people, ideas and activities you won’t find anywhere else.” The monthly show (which is repeated, and repeated, and repeated — this is Channel 8, after all) is hosted by familiar voices (if not faces) Paula Purifoy and Marcos Fernandez; it’s featured a varied lineup in its first few editions, including an homage to Denver’s romantic side, a whirlwind tour of the city’s museums, and even some talking back to the mayor. Don’t touch that dial!

Not content with winning hearts and saving pooches with his appearances on cable TV’s Emergency Vets (on Animal Planet), funnyman/animal doc Kevin Fitzgerald stages an irregular (very) variety show that seems to have found a home on major holidays at the Comedy Works in Larimer Square. What’s not to love about the Love Show? An evening’s lineup always includes a sampling of Fitzgerald’s comic antics — on a recent outing, he sang Doris Day’s “Que Sera Sera” backed by the Well Hungarians, and then offered a Michael Flatley tap dancing imitation (wearing see-through tights). After that, he transformed himself into the emcee to introduce a cavalcade of Denver’s most unusual performers, including a gaggle of jugglers, a roller-skating bird, a smoking pig and Shelvis, the fabulous female Elvis impersonator. “Denver has a lot of talent out there,” Fitzgerald insists. And he’s bringing that talent to you, one wacky act after another. Take this doctor’s advice: Variety is the spice of life.

Bud Bradshaw makes an imposing woman. He, er, she, is 300 pounds and nearly seven feet tall in custom-made platform heels and towering wig. But the most unusual thing about Bradshaw is the fact that she, er, he, has a degree in quantum physics. He doesn’t much like to talk about that part of his life, though. It was only in the last eight years, he says, since he developed Anita Cocktail, that his life has had purpose. After all, he notes, “A little makeup and paint turns a boy into something he ain’t.” Bradshaw produces Live, Lip-Sync, & Laffs, a variety/cabaret show at 60 South that includes Ms. Cocktail, Barbie Blake (who can do cartwheels in five-inch stilettos), Starr Masters, Erica Benson, Tatyana Romanov and Ms. Tina Le Grande. He’ll introduce a second show, Hell on Heels, at the Denver Buffalo Company soon. Come on out: This show is anything but a drag.

Songbird Lannie Garrett is the ultimate survivor, and her recent incarnation as Gloria Half Gaynor displays her savvy show-biz instincts. Not content with having created a Patsy Decline alter ego, Garrett now transforms herself into a disco diva one night a week, backed by a seven-piece band and singing all those songs you prayed you’d forget. For several frightening hours, the remodeled lounge at the Denver Buffalo Company becomes a ’70s dance club, as audience members jump up and get down with their bad selves. (Very bad, in some cases.) For a hot case of Wednesday-night fever, dive into Garrett’s Gloria Half Gaynor show. She will survive!

Heritage Square offers fun in down-home style – first with food in a large, friendly dining room, followed by an outrageously hammy melodrama acted by seasoned and talented performers who are clearly enjoying themselves. These productions aren’t weighted down with either concepts of high art or the huge costumes, multimillion-dollar sets or over-miked sound of the commercial, Disneyesque variety. They’re funny and funky and unpretentious. Take the family, order a drink, sing along or heckle if you want, and be prepared to find yourself on stage or with a cast member perched on your lap if you sit too close to the front.

The Everyman Theatre Company has done wonders with the bland, inhospitable 1950s-style office building it calls home, making one room into a snack area, another into a focused and inviting theater through the use of platforms and artfully placed lights. As for the sets, they reveal the same vision and attention to detail. Using a few props and a stack of suitcases, artistic director Richard H. Pegg managed to suggest a rich fictive world for The Baltimore Waltz. For Five Women Wearing the Same Dress, he designed a young girl’s bedroom that was beautifully detailed, convincing, solid and multi-dimensional as a house.

Playwright Martin McDonagh has a wicked way with words, but he also understands that they’re only one of the ways theater communicates. Mick Dowd, the protagonist of A Skull in Connemara, is a handyman who has to dig up old skeletons in the village cemetery every year to make room for more. In the particular year in which the play is set, he’s forced to exhume the body of his wife — whom he may have murdered. Eventually, Dowd’s kitchen table is covered with skulls, femurs and pelvises, and he and his teenage assistant, falling-down drunk, are pulverizing the bones with hammers. The dialogue remains uproariously funny, but under the skilled direction of the Denver Center’s Anthony Powell, it was the action that riveted and illumined. The splintering bones in this play told a story. It was about the protagonist’s mental state, certainly. But it also suggested that on some level, all of us are flailing around in a charnel house.

Normally, when you find yourself paying attention to technical details in the theater, it means you’re bored and the production’s a flop. Not so with The Immigrant. Lighting designer Don Darnutzer’s effects were both lovely in themselves and integral to the musical’s theme: transparent skies with clouds flowing across them, the amber light of Sabbath candles. Ralph Funicello managed the same with his set, using pure, clean lines, muted colors, the shape of a lone house on endless plain and dry grasses rustling in clumps at the front of the stage.

Donald Margulies’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Dinner With Friends, muses on marriage and the substitute families that married people form with other couples. Two people, immersed in their own misery, separate. Their close friends — a pair of trendy and dedicated foodies — immediately sense the cracks in their own relationship. The original two move on, but the second two continue to struggle. That’s about it for plot, but there’s all kinds of resonance here having to do with affection, commitment and the changes brought about by time. The dialogue is evocative and clever, and, under Bruce Sevy’s engaging direction, this cast was strong.

There’s a reason that I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change! has been running forever: In it, four attractive, talented and energetic young people whip through the joys and traumas of dating and coupling (and re-coupling) in scene and song. There are a couple of insightful comments and touching moments, but for the most part, the evening is pure peach soufflé. It gets audience members wincing or nodding in recognition, touching fingers under the table or just laughing themselves breathless.

“Over the top” doesn’t begin to cover Marc G. Dalio’s performance as Belle’s oafish and ultimately rejected suitor, Gaston, in Beauty and the Beast. He came across like a huge, muscled and inexplicably animated cardboard cutout, prancing and preening, utterly in love with himself, his grin revealing teeth as large and white as pillowcases. Dalio has a big supple voice and oodles of stage presence, and his song and dance with his mates in the tavern brought down the house.

Rachel York is a spectacular performer, larger than life and meriting a boxload of descriptors: beautiful, passionate, volcanic (yet subtle), able to rage or weep on the instant, mesmerizing. The finest element in a very fine production of Kiss Me, Kate, York gave Cole Porter’s brilliant score everything it required, singing “So in love…” with profound warmth and emotion, finding a ferocious chest-deep growl for “I Hate Men.” Next time, we’d like to see her given a romantic partner who’s her match for energy and charisma. A young Kevin Kline would do…

Director Ed Baierlein knows his onions. For his production of the Edgar Lee Masters classic Spoon River Anthology at the Germinal Stage, he kept the production values low-key and snared the services of six fine and very different actors. The script is less a play than a collection of monologues, spoken by the imagined dead of a small town; some are humorous and a couple affectionate, but most are filled with bitterness and regret, and the actors are called on to play many roles. Under Baierlein’s direction, they gave themselves fully to the text, becoming vessels for Masters’s words and for his ghosts. In the process, they created a changing and absorbing tapestry of sound and meaning.

There’s a lot of acting talent in Denver, so best actor is a hard call to make. How do you compare a larger-than-life performance like Bill Christ’s Cyrano with Gene Gillette’s affecting portrayal of a skinhead in Coyote on a Fence? Or to Brett Aune’s squawks and flutters in The Swan? What about Nicholas Sugar as the leering emcee of Cabaret? Or David C. Riley, with his manic energy in Brother Mine? But in the end, we went with Christ by a nose, because his performance in the title role of Cyrano de Bergerac deserves the recognition. It’s a huge, challenging role, and Christ had the chops, the presence, the physical endurance and the sheer heart to fill it magnificently. In the Denver Center Theatre Company’s production, his performance was pure poetry.

It’s impossible to imagine anyone matching Nancy Cranbourne’s lunatic genius in Two Women Avoiding Involuntary Hospitalization: A Hormonal Cabaret. Since she’s also a dancer, her comic bits — most of them created through improvisation — involve her head, her heart, her soul, her mind, and every nerve and muscle of her body. That’s why she can have you howling with laughter one moment and genuinely moved (usually by something utterly nonsensical) the next. Watch her as a full-out diesel dyke trying to bring the requisite seductive charm to “Hey, Big Spender” and getting looser and goonier as she goes along, though never an iota more feminine. Note how she whispers “Ssshhh” to the crinkling bag while trying to hide from her roommate the fact that she’s sneaking chips. Cranbourne loves these characters, and she makes the audience love them too. Could this woman succeed in a serious role? Could she play one of Shakespeare’s women? Who cares?

This is a play about the sole survivor of a nuclear holocaust. Or about a man playing that survivor on a stage. Then again, the man may be Adam, tending the Garden of Eden. There’s a woman directing the play. Sometimes she’s helpful, sometimes mocking, sometimes downright capricious. Maybe she’s God. Israeli director Ami Dayan’s The End, created in collaboration with Open Theatre alumna Lee Worley, is an exploration of human nature and the consolations of art. It pays homage to Shakespeare, Chekhov and Beckett and is particularly relevant now, as the Middle East threatens to burst into flames. In production at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, the play packed the kind of wallop that sent you out of the theater thoughtful, dazed and oddly elated.

Around Christmastime, the Hunger Artists brought James Joyce’s The Dead to lyrical life amid the gleaming lamps and dark wood of the Byers-Evans House Museum in Denver. The reading was adapted and directed by Jeremy Cole, and it was a jewel, glowing and multi-faceted, communicating all the wistful power of Joyce’s short story as well as the expressiveness of his language. The performers seemed to genuinely love the text, and they gave themselves to it with humility and quiet passion. Among the standout performances were those of warm-throated Nancy Solomon as Aunt Julia and Diane Wziontka as the grief-driven Gretta.

We don’t quite know what to make of Thaddeus Phillips, who managed — all by himself — to perform two full-length Shakespeare plays, King Lear and the Tempest, during one strange and coldly electrifying evening at Denver’s Buntport Theater and who later amazed a sparse crowd at the historic Rossonian Hotel with a loose narrative about how he learned to tap dance. The latter also involved a tribute to his teachers and a trip to Cuba, along with some dazzlingly fast tap displays. Phillips creates a world on stage the way a kid makes a city out of blocks. He uses objects — a high-heeled shoe, a cigarette, a grinning Javanese puppet — as stand-ins for other characters. Though we have no way of defining him, we plan to be there for whatever he comes up with next.

Coyote on a Fence opened soon after the September 11 terrorist attacks, and it says much for the production that it retained its strength and seemed both true and important in the face of those terrible events. Bruce Graham’s play examines the death penalty in America and concerns two men on death row. One is a psychologist convicted of murdering a drug dealer, the other a skinhead who blocked the door of a black church with his truck and set fire to the building, killing 37 people. The play asks serious questions about the value of lives such as this and, by extrapolation, all human life. Chip Walton directed his first-rate cast at the Acoma Center with a sure hand, and Gene Gillette turned in a riveting performance as the childish and terribly damaged skinhead.

Denver should be grateful for the foresight and dedication that originally gave birth to the Denver Center Theatre Company, which has assembled a talented group of artists and every year offers an eclectic and intelligent mix of plays — classic and contemporary, angry and light, humorous and tragic. The production values are almost always impeccable. This year’s standouts were a newly translated Cyrano de Bergerac, Dinner With Friends and A Skull in Connemara. Though there’s the occasional misfire, you always feel in safe hands here.

Hard to say if it was dance, theater, circus or dressage, but whatever it was, Cheval Théâtre provided an astonishing evening of entertainment during its extended Denver run last fall. Sitting in the audience, you sensed some mysterious, Cirque du Soleil-influenced story must be responsible for the goings-on in the sawdust ring under a tent in the parking lot of the Pepsi Center — there were evocative costumes, golden coins, a fallen horse and rider amid swirls of smoke — but the plot didn’t really matter. What mattered was the magnificence of the horses, beautiful animals that represented some seventeen breeds and had names like Gadjal, Chabo, Dansk and Hercule; the grace and skill of the riders; and the extraordinary, almost mythic relationship between the animals and their humans.

This program for young dancers places an elite crew of twinkletoes in the spotlight for the annual Colorado Ballet staging of The Nutcracker. It’s a wonderful experience, of course, for any second-grader keen on turning pro, but the fast-track connections that come out of the mingling of so many upper-suburban stage mothers at related social events may be an even more compelling reason that the Sugar Plums have attracted so many applicants. Proceeds benefit the ballet, and various spinoff programs for alumni and older children have made the entire affair accessible to a wide range of youngsters — whether their parents are Denver bluebloods or not. On your toes, kids!

Who can argue with a tradition that’s been handed down for centuries, has its origins in a mystical fertility ritual, and involves grown people dressed in white holding antlers on their heads? That’s the core of the solemn annual rite known as Abbott’s Bromley Horn Dance, which leapt across the Atlantic decades ago and embedded itself in Denver’s folk-dancing community. The Maroon Bells Morris Dancers perform the rite as part of the annual Winter Solabration at the Temple Events Center, and they’re faithful to the ritual. Done in good fun, participants say, the ceremony gives new meaning to the phrase “horny dancers.”

They used Colorado Yule Marble for the Lincoln Memorial and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. In fact, anytime someone wants to make something look grand, they call for the sleek stone that’s quarried in the town of Marble, near Aspen. At the Marble Institute of Colorado’s MARBLE/marble XIV classes this summer, sculptors of various levels of experience and expertise can learn to shape marble. After a group of internationally known instructors offers the basics on carving stone, each student will receive three cubic feet at which they can chip away. That rocks!

You have to hand it to the folks who strive to try something different, and the Other Side is just such an effort. Rather than being just another artist cooperative, it’s more of a true collective, where artists not only share studio and gallery space (and daycare), but attempt to give back to the community by offering classes and workshops, as well as art for sale at reasonable prices. Located in the former Platte Anchor Bolt warehouse space and created out of the visionary dreamworks of grassroots art entrepreneurs Chris Minter and Jeff Ball, the Other Side is a place where artful things and concepts can grow unfettered. Check it out.

In 1980, a group of friends opened an alternative art space in a then-rough part of town and gave it the difficult and unconventional name of Pirate: a contemporary art oasis. But the co-op’s name perfectly reflected the difficult and unconventional work that has so often found a home in the space at 3659 Navajo Street. Now, more than twenty years later, the original members have mostly scattered to the four winds. The exception is Phil Bender, who has not only remained as an active Pirate member, but has also run the place and kept it going during many dry spells. In addition, Bender has presented a solo exhibit of his own work at least once a year since Pirate’s founding. For last summer’s Bender bender, Paris, Paris Architecture, Etc., Etc., he covered the walls with hubcaps, postcards, coasters and other found items — playing off his longtime penchant for using objects collected in multiples and putting them together in unlikely combinations to create pieces that are greater than the sum of their parts. Truly, Bender’s unwavering dedication through the years has set a fine example for other artists.

In 1939, German-Jewish artist Max Lazarus came to the United States from Trier, Germany, where he was that city’s most important expressionist painter. Prominent in the Jewish community, Lazarus was commissioned to paint a mural on the ceiling of Trier’s main synagogue. But the 1930s was not the best time to be a Jewish modernist in Germany, and Lazarus emigrated to the States. He eventually settled in Denver, where, in the 1940s, he got a job teaching arts and crafts and carried on his work as an artist until shortly before his death in 1964. Now the museum in Trier would like to collect his work, and since very few German pieces survived — the Nazis burned down Trier’s synagogue, and most of his other work was destroyed — the institution has come looking in Denver. But nearly forty years after his death, Lazarus has been absolutely forgotten in the Mile High City, and except for a handful of pieces, his work is unknown. So the museum has launched a concerted effort, even hiring a detective to track down the estate. It’s a good mystery, and, hopefully, one that will be solved.

It’s common wisdom that once an artist dies, his or her work should soar in value, but more often, the artist fades from the collective memory. That’s what happened to Edgar Britton, who in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s was Colorado’s most famous sculptor. But last year, nearly twenty years after his death, in 1982, Britton was back in the center ring. Not only was he the subject of a pair of simultaneous shows at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center and the Coburn Gallery on the Colorado College campus, but his life and work were the subject of a cogent if unusual monograph written by CC professor Jane Hilberry. The unconventional nature of the Hilberry book is fully revealed by its somewhat outlandish title, The Erotic Art of Edgar Britton. It was good to see one of the best artists in the state finally being given his due.

Denver’s Museo de las Américas is one of the only institutions anywhere that focuses on the art of the Southwestern United States, along with that of Mexico, Central and South America and the Caribbean, and it programs it all from within the modest facilities on Santa Fe Drive. But Museo director Jose Aguayo has always been a big dreamer. Ten years ago, he brought the Museo from dream to reality, and now he’d like to do the same with a dramatic and architecturally significant planned addition and alteration of the currently non-distinct building. The design — cooked up by RoTo Architects of Los Angeles, a nationally renowned firm headed up by famous architect Michael Rotondi — completely reconfigures the space, adding studios and a row of artists’ lofts. The most exciting feature will be an elaborate facade reminiscent of the fabulous Mayan Theatre’s — a logical choice, since both are meant to recall the architecture of the ancient Mayans.

Last year, the powers that be in Englewood took stock of their town, and they didn’t like what they saw. Possibly for the first time, the complete lack of cultural amenities seemed to matter — so city leaders began casting about for something they could do to change the situation. At the same time, the Museum of Outdoor Arts, facing a substantial rent increase at its Greenwood Village facility, was looking for a new home. It was a match made in heaven. Englewood gave the museum free rent for twenty years in spacious offices on the second floor of its civic building — a rehabbed department store that also houses the library and the municipal courts — along with use of the many public spaces in and around Englewood’s CityCenter, the development that is replacing the old Cinderella City shopping center. The new project has a long way to go, but the MOA’s collection will surely help.

For most of its history, the Denver Art Museum paid little attention to the art of the American West, so vital to our region. But if the museum turned up its nose at Western painting and sculpture, private collectors did not. Among the top rank of these collectors are Bill and Dorothy Harmsen, the couple that started the Jolly Rancher candy company and were thus able to find the money needed to gather thousands of works. The loot ranges from paintings and sculptures to an entire stagecoach. For years, the Harmsens shopped their collection around to institutions in order to find a permanent home for it, and there were even plans a couple of years ago to build a Harmsen Museum in Lakewood, but that never happened. Then, in a surprise move last summer, the DAM announced that the Harmsens were giving their collection to the museum. The huge gift led to a change in programming at the DAM, which will now give additional weight to regional art — and not just old cowboy and Indian paintings, but modern and contemporary art as well. To the DAM, we say: “Welcome home.”

The Gates Family Foundation, in celebration of the millennium, commissioned Barbara Grygutis of Tucson to create “Common Ground,” a mammoth sculpture, for the recently completed Commons Park. Northeast of the intersection of Little Raven and 15th streets, the park is close to where Denver’s first settlers established their camp. The sculpture, completed last fall, is a serpentine stone wall that snakes through the park. Made of Castle Rock rhyolite laid by craftsmen from Brighton’s Rock & Company, the piece is meant to suggest a bend in the river, while the path that runs alongside it evokes the trails of the Indians and the pioneers. In some places, the sculpture’s contours reflect the mountains to the west; in others, the linear profile of the city. Since the park is only a few years old, it has little in the way of trees, flowers or grass. Unquestionably, the coolest thing about it is “Common Ground.”

Simon Zalkind, director of the Singer Gallery of the Mizel Center for Arts and Culture, has long been known for his high-quality exhibitions. The most recent case in point is Revolutions: Generations of Russian Jewish Avant-Garde Artists, which is still on display. It’s a knockout that examines modern and contemporary art by Russian Jewish artists. To produce it, Zalkind teamed up with Mina Litinsky, director of the Sloane Gallery, a nationally known venue for contemporary Russian art and the oldest gallery in LoDo. Together they came up with a show rich in visuals and ideas that included a who’s who of vanguard artists from the early Soviet era, plus a number of postmodern political artists from post-Soviet times. Some of the big names include El Lissitzky, Sonia Delaunay and Marc Chagall, as well as Komar and Melamid, who were given their own gallery at the Mizel, in which a rejected public-art commission for Denver’s new Alfred A. Arraj Federal Courthouse is laid out. Politics and art don’t always go together well, but in this pithy show, they made excellent bedfellows.

Maybe it was the change in the millennium that put everyone in a retrospective mood, but for whatever reason, history has gotten a lot more popular lately. Cable TV and popular magazines are jammed with it. Colorado’s art world has not been left out, with a number of historical exhibits having been presented over the past few years. Colorado Landscapes and the New Age of Discovery was an intelligent and ambitious show of this type. It was organized by guest curator Doug Erion, who also wrote the informative, if idiosyncratic, catalogue. A neophyte when it comes to curatorial practice, Erion is a noted landscape painter and a serious art collector, so he did have a handle on the material. The exhibit consisted entirely of landscape photos and paintings, but they were a varied bunch, running from traditional views to early-modernist ones. The artists ranged from those who just passed through the state to those who call Colorado home. It was a great scene.

Only the stout of heart and the sharp of eye have the courage to historically evaluate the material culture of our own time. But that’s exactly what R. Craig Miller, the Denver Art Museum’s curator of architecture, design and graphics, has done with US Design 1975-2000. Still open, the exhibit includes photos and models of buildings, chairs and teapots, posters and Web sites. Miller lays out his elaborate story in four chapters, beginning with postmodernism and ending with a revived modernism — with retro and expressionism sandwiched in between. Some of the most important old master figures of the period, such as Michael Graves and Robert Venturi, are examined in depth, as are some emerging international design stars — notably, Karim Rashid. Miller’s done such a good job that the show, which is accompanied by a groundbreaking catalogue, has attracted the attention of the international design press, and that puts the DAM’s architecture, design and graphics department on the map.

Although Chain Reaction highlighted six installations by Boulder artist Gail Wagner, all six came together as a single, seamless work. Wagner’s specialty is forms made of crocheted rope that is dyed, painted and accented by tiny, sewn-on charms. Her preferred shape is a circular appendage that sometimes looks like a worm, sometimes like a tentacle, and sometimes like some unknown microscopic life form. Nevertheless, rather than being disgustingly visceral, the pieces were enchantingly visual.

Alisa Zahller had just been hired as the assistant curator of fine and decorative art at the Colorado History Museum when she was handed the job of organizing the season’s major exhibit. The result was Quiltspeak: Stories in Stitches, an intelligent, engaging and beautiful show that examined the history and sociology of quilt-making in Colorado. Ably designed by David Newell, the show included quilts from the late nineteenth century to the early 21st. One quilt, from the 1880s, was made of scraps of cloth on which famous figures had signed their names; another was put together from silk patches (originally World War I tobacco premiums) decorated with flags of the nations of the world. And there were dozens of contemporary quilts, sporting both traditional and new techniques and styles. The show was the first one Zahller had ever organized, anywhere, and it revealed her talent as a curator.

Since the 1970s, the Foothills Art Center has consistently presented the region’s most important annual ceramics exhibit. The most recent version, Colorado Clay 2001, lived up to the tradition. Center director Carol Dickinson called on Wayne Higby, a world-class, New York-based ceramic artist with considerable Colorado connections, to help. Higby grew up in Colorado Springs, studying with artist Mary Chenoweth at the Bemis Art School there and, later, with famous ceramist Betty Woodman at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Higby selected artists, and not artworks, for this exhibit, and in line with this philosophy, those who were chosen were seen in depth. His choices — though made blind — were predominantly the work of women artists, including Vicky Hansen, Mary Cay and Martha Russo. This isn’t that surprising, though, since women have helped mold the field of ceramics for a long time.

Although Skip Kohloff has long been one of the guiding forces behind the Colorado Photographic Arts Center, he has almost never allowed his work to be exhibited there. But when he retired from Cherry Creek High last June after 25 years as the head of the school’s photography department, he finally let CPAC give him a richly deserved retrospective. And you know what? Denver got what Kohloff deserved, in the compelling déjà-view: A Retrospective Exhibition: R. Skip Kohloff, which examined the photographer’s work from the 1970s to the present. The show included nearly 100 photos demonstrating Kohloff’s relentless experimentation with the effect of light on his varied subjects. That may sound trite, but not in Kohloff’s hands — or through his lens.

Though abstraction began pushing aside other styles almost a century ago, modern artists have persisted in their desire to capture the human figure. The Human Factor, at Metro State’s Center for the Visual Arts, proved the point. Half of it was a traveling exhibit highlighting objects from Nebraska’s Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery and Sculpture Garden, including paintings, prints, drawings and sculptures by important American artists such as Richard Diebenkorn, David Park and Louise Bourgeois. The other half, organized by the CVA’s then-director, Sally Perisho, was made up of the work of established contemporary Colorado artists like Matt O’Neill, Jeff Starr and Floyd Tunson. Insisting on a local slant was just one of Perisho’s great strengths. No one knew it at the time — not even Perisho — but the show was her swan song at the venue after a triumphant ten-year run.

Wes Hempel: Fictional Accounts was the perfect title for this show, because every picture told some kind of story. But truthfully, it’s hard to say what those stories were, despite the fact that all of the paintings were done in a strictly realistic style. Over the years, Hempel has conjured up various surrealist worlds in a number of ways, and this exhibit included some examples of his earlier work, such as his signature floating houses. But for these most recent pieces, he captured a land somewhere over the rainbow, a place where the sky was filled in by the old masters, the rooms were fitted out and arranged by the Ancient Greeks, and a young man who looks like he stepped right out of an Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue is seen sitting on the floor right in the middle. Is Hempel’s world the best of all possible ones? Perhaps not, but it was surely worth the visit.

In John Hull, Ron Judish Fine Arts presented a series of ten riveting paintings that laid out a tension-ridden and sorry tale in a downright cinematic way. The saga begins at a picnic from which an underage girl runs off with a roughneck biker. She’s eventually found, but not before a gun is drawn and the police are called. The emotional series is loosely based on a real-life story Hull recalls from his teenage years in small-town Oregon. Because there are so many characters in the paintings, it’s hard to follow every detail, but the gist of it is clear enough. The many players lend the parable the power of an epic, and Hull says the series was partly inspired by James Joyce’s Ulysses. This literary bent is remarkable, as is the artist’s masterful and painterly technique. It’s no wonder Hull’s work is seen at top galleries around the country.

A couple of years ago, Mark Masuoka resigned as director of the Museum of Contemporary Art just as his first major show, Colorado Biennial, was set to open. The exhibit was his view of contemporary art in Colorado, and because he quit, he was never able to follow up there. Luckily, he’s been able to do it as the exhibition director of the Carson-Masuoka Gallery, where a number of his productions have come out of Colorado Biennial, most notably FABstraction, which opened in the innocent days of Labor Day weekend. Highlights included atmospheric paintings by Amy Sloan Kirchoff and nature-based ones by Chad Colby, two young painters who recently moved to Denver. And by displaying John McEnroe’s conceptual installations, Masuoka pushed the definition of abstraction. The thought-provoking show provided some badly needed beauty in the dark days following September 11.

The inner workings of the art world are hard to explain. Consider last winter’s 32/26, at the Andenken Gallery, which paired 32-year-old painter Karen McClanahan with 26-year-old sculptor Jonathan Stiles. Though neither artist had a familiar name, the show somehow generated a tremendous buzz. In fact, the word on the street was out before anyone had even seen the work. Even stranger is that 32/26 lived up to the hype. McClanahan’s chaste, neo-minimalist paintings were fabulous — and although they had nothing in common with Stiles’s various types of modernist sculpture, the pairing was inspired nonetheless. During the course of the show, a who’s who from Denver’s art scene, including curators and gallery directors, came through, and McClanahan and Stiles suddenly found themselves being talked about by everyone. Certainly nothing better could have happened to a couple of former unknowns.

Combining materials traditionally associated with sculpture, including steel and wood, with some untraditional ones, in particular a Texas Instruments Speak & Spell, upstart artist Zach Smith was the subject of the magical Internal Automata this past winter. The wonder-filled show marked Smith’s formal introduction to Denver’s art world. It makes sense that this new kid on the block would make his appearance at Cordell Taylor since the gallery is also new to the scene, having opened in August. Gallery director Ivar Zeile took a risk by scheduling an untried talent in the winter, high season in the art world. But the gambit paid off, and both newcomers can be proud of their accomplishment.

The three well-known artists in Martha Daniels, Amy Metier, Betty Woodman represent three distinct generations of Colorado artists, even if the show’s title listed them out of order. Woodman is the elder stateswoman, having lived in Boulder from the 1950s until a few years ago, when she retired to New York. Daniels came next, having moved to Colorado in the 1960s when she began exhibiting her work. Metier would be last, since she came along about a decade later. But the disparate work of these three artists fit together perfectly — not because they’re all women, though that’s not irrelevant — because all are master colorists. This compatibility, so hard to achieve in a group show, is a big reason this exhibit was one of the year’s finest.

The smart-looking Clark Richert: Recent Paintings, at Rule Gallery on Broadway, showcased a small but significant group of the latest geometric pieces by Clark Richert, a former hippie and current art guru. Richert first came to fame in this area in the 1960s, when he designed and helped start Drop City, an art commune just outside of Trinidad in southern Colorado. And though decades

have gone by, Drop City is still on his mind. A number of paintings based on some of the buildings he designed there — riffs on Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes — were featured at Rule. It was Richert’s recent work, which indicated a new and innovative shift for the artist, that was the truly captivating part of this show, however. Instead of being dense and complicated, like many of his earlier pieces, those displayed here are quite spare. It looks like Richert has dropped back in. Kudos to the artist and gallery owner Robin Rule for giving Denver the best solo-artist exhibit of the season.

When the well-known and highly regarded Cydney Payton took the helm of Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art last year, the art world held its breadth and waited for the unveiling of one of her signature shows. The wait ended with 5 Abstract, a look at five of the state’s most significant abstract artists: Al Wynne, Bev Rosen, Bob Mangold, Clark Richert and Dale Chisman. It was the latest in a series of exhibits exploring the history of Colorado’s modern and contemporary art that Payton has done since long before she was hired by the MCA. And she promises it won’t be the last. Each artist in this exhibit has his or her own strong style, which is not necessary compatible with the others. But Payton gave all five separate space — a tough job in the cramped quarters of the MCA. Sorry you missed it? Don’t be. Responding to popular demand, the MCA has extended it through May.

Letters of the alphabet — painted ones, wooden ones, mirrored ones — made up a total environment for Between the Lines: Word Works by Roland Bernier at the Denver Art Museum. They climbed the walls and were stacked on pedestals covering the floor. Some were arranged into short words, though the meanings of the words were irrelevant, since Bernier’s point wasn’t to tell stories, but to create something purely aesthetic. And although it’s not easy to use words without bringing in their meanings, Bernier did it. This show — dedicated to the seventy-year-old conceptualist — was put together by the museum’s Nancy Tieken, and it was one of those rare occasions when a Denver artist was given the royal treatment at the DAM.

The reputation of late New York artist Alice Neel has been on the rise for decades, and her work became especially important to expressionists and to women artists beginning in the 1970s. It was then that Dianne Vanderlip, living in Philadelphia, organized the first-ever retrospective of Neel’s career. In so doing, Vanderlip found herself on the ground floor of the discovery — actually the rediscovery — of Neel. Now, almost thirty years later, it seems appropriate that Vanderlip, the Denver Art Museum’s curator of modern and contemporary art, would snag Alice Neel, the latest retrospective on the artist. Like that first show, this one came out of Philadelphia, and it packed in the crowds when it came to Denver this past fall and winter. Much to her credit, Vanderlip presented Neel’s triumphs in a coherent, chronological way, something that’s rarely done anymore.

Film is an art form, one that Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art recognizes with Reel Love. Curated by Denver Art Museum film curator Tom Delapa, the current series traces the history of avant-garde filmmaking in this country.

Colorado’s Drive-In Theater Guide, www.carload.com, lists features and showtimes for all twelve of the state’s active drive-ins, plus drive-in news and links to plenty of other drive-in-related sites. It hasn’t been updated since the end of August, but Web master Michael Kilgore plans to start up his labor of love again at the end of April, when more screens open for the season.

These are rooms with a view — of the motel’s giant outdoor movie screen. The sound is piped into your room, and you can watch the show from the comfort of your own bed through huge picture windows. Don’t get the wrong idea, though: The Star shows only G, PG and PG-13 flicks from May through September. And yes, if you’d rather not suffer the embarrassment of moseying over to the snack bar in your slippers, you can just drive in to the drive-in.

It’s too bad that most drive-ins are only open in the summer; otherwise, they’d be the perfect year-round cheap date for the starving — and horny — college student. As it is, only students attending Colorado State University’s summer session get to make out at the Holiday Twin Drive-in. Although the pictures tend toward family fare, the location on the far west side of town gives you a great sunset view of Horsetooth Rock before the show starts.

There aren’t many drive-ins left in the Denver area, but judging from the lines that snake out from the entrance to the Cinderella Twin on weekend nights during the summer, there’s still plenty of demand. This south metro area drive-in boasts two screens, each showing a double feature — PG for the early show, R-rated later — a full-dinner snack bar, FM radio sound in addition to traditional in-car speakers, and free admission for kids under eleven. And as the only local drive-in that runs during the spring — it opens the weekend before Easter — the Cinderella Twin also offers a nice place to cuddle: Special early-season deals, including in-car heaters and a $12 per carload price, last until May.

Operators of the Mayan Theatre have long known that the art house crowd likes specialty snacks, something beyond the realm of a crusty Milk Dud. But those who think the Mayan has grown stale should sink their teeth into some of these recent additions: an expanding collection of Ben & Jerry’s gourmet ice cream bars, flavors of Republic of Tea ice teas such as ginseng peppermint and ginger peach and freshly-brewed bistro coffee with more body. And Sasha Webb, recently named manager of this landmark Landmark theater, promises more to come in the near future.

It was at a Harry Potter screening that we began to feel the magic: The seats at the Westminster Promenade 24 seemed to enhance the viewing of the sorcery-soaked tale. Maybe it was the seat backs, which created a feeling of privacy — a nice trick in a room filled with people. Or perhaps it was the legroom, which allowed one to stretch out like the massive Hagrid in the saga. Whatever it was, we’ll be seeing movies there more often.

Let’s go to the cine! These days in Colorado, you can rent lots of movies with Spanish subtitles or voice-overs. But finding a Spanish-language movie theater is rare. In Aurora, though, you need look no further than the King Soopers shopping center at 6th and Peoria, where Cinema Latino offers Spanish-only movies, English-language movies with Spanish subtitles, and Spanish-language movies with English subtitles. Cinema Latino shows current and popular films, including kids’ movies, “chica” flicks, and adult-themed drama and action films. And with reasonably priced tickets, you can take the whole familia!

For those who missed the Coen Brothers’ The Man Who Wasn’t There the first time around or who feel the urge to watch Mulholland Drive again on the big screen to try and figure out what the hell happened and sort out who all those women really are, Tiffany Plaza Movies 6 is the second-run multiplex for you. Daytime tickets go for a dollar; after 6 p.m. they’re $1.50. Trying to squeeze by on a student budget? Hit the Tiff on Tuesdays: All shows are just fifty cents, popcorn not included. Projection and sound quality in the six houses are good, and the seats are reasonably comfortable — just the place to catch up on your movie-going without breaking the bank.

Since 1941, cinephiles have been showing classics and contemporary art films on the Boulder campus, and the schedule in Muenzinger Auditorium this spring is as strong as ever, ranging from Takashi Miike’s Audition, which addresses marriage and sexuality in contemporary Japan, to Together, a smart ensemble comedy that won four major Swedish film awards when it was released last year, to the controversial works of young Darren Aronofsky, Pi and Requiem for a Dream. On Sunday nights, the Stan Brakhage Film Forum shows selections from the experimental filmmaker’s personal collection, and director Ken Jacobs (Un Petit Train de Plaisir, Crystal Palace) will appear in person. For the whole dish, log on to the series’ Web site.

Featuring six screens and a policy of booking foreign, independent and classic films 365 days a year, the new Starz FilmCenter in the old Tivoli Theaters on the Auraria campus represents a major advance in Denver’s cultural life. Operated by the Denver Film Society, which produces the Denver International Film Festival each October, and Dallas- and New York-based Magnolia Pictures, the city’s first cinématheque will also screen retrospectives, Saturday-morning children’s programs and experimental works, providing a valuable supplement to Denver’s major art-house chain, Landmark Theaters. Now, let’s all go to the movies.

When an epic like The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring comes to town, a typical suburban-style multiplex simply won’t do. Most movie buffs are going to want a wide screen with a booming sound system in order to appreciate Gandalf in all his wizardly splendor. In that regard, the Continental Theatre delivers. With 875 seats and a screen measuring 85 feet by 39 feet, this movie house has been the most satisfying place to see a blockbuster for more than three decades. A 1996 renovation added several smaller auditoriums, technically turning the place into a multiplex, but the main auditorium was left intact — and the addition of a huge lobby with abundant concessions made the place even better. So for watching a formation of orcs swoop down over Frodo and company, there’s no spot more terrifying than a seat near the front of the Continental’s main theater.

As part of the Denver’s Public Library’s Special Readings Project, children’s librarian Heath Rezabek held a birthday party last fall for Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, two of the heroes in J.R.R. Tolkien’s masterful books on Middle Earth, followed by a ten-week reading of The Fellowship of the Ring, book one in Tolkien’s trilogy, The Lord of the Rings. Rezabek, who abridged the book himself for purposes of the reading, held a similar series the year before for The Hobbit, the trilogy’s prelude, and he plans to follow up with the final two books in the next two years. Although the readings are scheduled to coincide with the three Rings movies, Rezabek’s goal is to help kids of all ages use their own imaginations rather than Hollywood’s, and to introduce a new generation of fans to Hobbitdom. No special effects needed.

How much do we love the Tattered Cover? We don’t have enough time to count the ways. And now this Denver institution has given us yet another reason to give thanks. Not content with bringing in an impressive lineup of national authors for readings and signings on an almost-daily (and often thrice-daily) basis to its LoDo and Cherry Creek locations, the bookstore has also started the Rocky Mountain Land Series. Working in conjunction with the Rocky Mountain Land Library, the series features authors whose works are devoted to Western issues, and it covers a lot of literary territory. This land is your land, this land is my land.

Eleanor Gehres, who spent 25 years as head of the Denver Public Library’s Western History/Genealogy Department and made it the institution it is today, is gone — but very far from forgotten. Before her death from cancer last year, she had almost finished a massive mission: determining the “best” fiction of the twentieth century. Golden-based Fulcrum Publishing finished the job for her. The result, The Best American Novels of the Twentieth Century, Still Readable Today, is itself eminently readable, an impressive lineup of 150 terrific books, complete with Gehres’s assessments and profiles of authors ranging from John Steinbeck to Jane Smiley. Read alert!

Back in the ’50s, a group of Denver journalists and authors would gather at local watering holes to trade wet witticisms about writing. The Evil Companions, they called themselves — and not without reason. A decade ago, this admirable tradition was resurrected in the form of the Evil Companions Literary Award, an honor presented to poets and writers living in, writing about, or having ties to the West. Sponsored by the Colorado Review, Colorado State University’s literary journal, the Tattered Cover Book Store and the Oxford Hotel, the annual ceremony — held at the Oxford, a classic in its own writes — has honored writers ranging from Tom McGuane to Annie Proulx, the 2001 winner. This year’s deserving recipient, Kent Haruf, is the author of the lyrical Plainsong.

Introduced on the City of Denver’s Web site in February, Denver’s Beat Poetry Driving Tour and Denver’s Literary Landmarks were designed to give both visitors to and residents of the Mile High City a little lesson in local literary lions. The first tour focuses on Beat Generation legends Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady, who spent some time in the area in the 1940s, as well as Allen Ginsberg, who later moved to Boulder and taught at the Naropa Institute until his death in 1997; it includes descriptions of (and driving instructions to) six local Beat poetry landmarks. The second driving tour highlights seven places associated with well-known writers, including editor and poet Eugene Field, who penned “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod,” and Katherine Porter, author of Pale Horse, Pale Rider. What you’ll find on these tours may surprise or inspire you, and will surely makes for an a-muse-ing day.

Dragon-boat racing originated some 2,000 years ago in China. But here in the United States, it’s an up-and-coming sport in which anyone who’s willing (and has a strong constitution) can participate. All that you and your twenty-person team have to do is paddle like hell and hope you can maneuver your dragon-headed, canoe-shaped vessel faster than the other teams. Denver joined a growing list of race-sponsoring communities across the nation last summer, and you couldn’t ask for a better debut: The inaugural event drew thousands out into the sweltering heat of August to enjoy pan-Asian culture and food while cheering on the sixteen teams who competed. In the end, the Colorado Mongolian Project’s team took top honors — quite a feat, apparently, since Mongolians tend to lack sea legs.

Cool! The little mountain town of Nederland came up with a novel way to heat up the winter tourism business: Frozen Dead Guy Days, a festival celebrating Bredo Morstoel, the Norwegian man whose body was frozen after he died back in 1989 and is currently stored in a shed behind the former home of Morstoel’s grandson — a skinny-dipping nutcase who was sent back to Norway several years ago but is still hoping to thaw and revive his grandfather one day. Festivities at the first annual incarnation of the reincarnation celebration included a showing of the Beeck sisters’ acclaimed documentary Grandpa’s in the Tuff Shed, coffin races, a parade and a pancake breakfast — fresh, not frozen.

Call her madam! Lou Bunch ran the most successful whorehouse in Central City back in the days when the mining town was known as the “Richest Square Mile on Earth.” These days, it could be the saddest square mile on earth, since Central City’s plan to mine the wallets of would-be gamblers was blocked by nearby Black Hawk, which literally moved mountains to make sure that its big casinos would snag all the suckers before they could head farther up the hill. As a result, though, Central City has managed to retain some of its classic character — and you’ll never see more classic characters than at Lou Bunch Days. Held every Father’s Day weekend, the festival features includes bed races up and down Main Street (complete with appropriately attired female riders), costume contests and a dance; a recent, unofficial addition to the lineup is the return of many old Zekes, Central City residents who were frightened away or pushed away by gambling but return for this wild, wacky weekend. “It’s a great time to be in Central City,” says Lew Cady, publisher of the Little Kingdom Come newspaper (“published whenever we damn well feel like it”). “Especially for people who are longtime lovers of the town.” And current lovers of good old-fashioned frolics. “If New Year’s Eve is amateur night,” Cady adds, “this is for the professionals.” And no one was more of a pro than Madam Bunch.

No bones about it: Over the past few years, the Denver Blues and Bones Festival has grown into a great weekend. There are much bigger festivals — the Taste of Colorado, the Cherry Creek Arts Festival, the People’s Fair — and much smaller neighborhood fairs, but Blues and Bones is just the right size, every inch and minute packed with great blues music from a variety of national acts and finger-licking good barbecue from both amateur and professional locals. Cross your fingers that the atmosphere survives a relocation from the Golden Triangle to Invesco Field at Mile High; see for yourself at this year’s event Memorial Day weekend, May 24-26.