Arts & Entertainment

The zombie zeitgeist is in full swing, spawning hit movies, best-selling novels and immensely profitable video games. Every city worth its salt has an annual zombie crawl, where zombie fans dress up as the undead and walk, en masse, among the unsuspecting populace. Denver, being particularly salty, has one of the biggest zombie crawls in the nation. The event celebrated its fourth year with a huge turnout — some reports put attendance at more than 4,000 zombies — and even those who didn't want to dress up as the walking dead could participate by marking themselves as allowable victims via duct-taped Xs on their clothes. Whether the eaters or the eaten, everyone had a good time, and word is that 2010 is a go for the fifth iteration. Watch your brains.

Documentaries seem to always get the short end of the reel in the film world: Nobody wants to see Food, Inc. when they can see Avatar instead. But docs do make a difference in our world, and although most major film festivals include a documentary segment, there are just a handful of documentary-only film festivals in the country. We have one of them. Last year, the Denver Film Society and Foothills Art Center joined forces to produce the DocuWest Fest, for which festival executive director Reilly Sanborn pulled together short, essay-form and feature-length documentaries. The festival might not have boasted the level of star power and glamour of some other film festivals we could name, but when movies are this intimate, educational and entertaining, who needs Hollywood? Lights, camera, more action!

As bee champs get older, do they keep their fine sense of spell? Find out for yourself at the monthly adult spelling bees hosted as fundraisers by Metro Denver Promotion of Letters, a non-profit teaching organization that provides free writing workshops for kids. Staged every third Thursday at the British Bulldog, 2052 Stout street,these beer-friendly bees are strictly for grownups, and each first-prize winner pockets a Bulldog gift certificate. Stop by and sit for a spell; it costs only five bucks to join in.

Iraqi-born Colorado artist Halim Alkarim is a true virtuoso. He's done gorgeous abstract paintings, stunning installations and, for his Robischon solo, The Witness Archive, hauntingly beautiful portraits in lambda prints on aluminum that are imbued with political content. The son of a critic of Saddam Hussein, Alkarim and his family (including his brother Sami, another gifted Colorado artist) suffered under the regime until they escaped to the United States a few years ago. Although the works in The Witness Archive were based on photos of real people, the resulting pieces look more like examples of digital animation. This is because Alkarim put his models in elaborate latex masks and took the photos using scrims — then retouched the resulting shots. As befits the show's title, these pieces all resonate with the piercing, unblinking eyes of the sitters.

In Big Lots, a powerful — and beautiful — show, Denver artist Wendi Harford presented a range of stylistic approaches, with works anchored by everything from graffiti-like looping lines to rigid stripes. In fact, the only unifying factor was the size of the pieces, since Harford favored monumental over intimate; her taste in color was notable, too. Harford was a protegé of the late Bev Rosen, her mentor at the University of Denver back in the 1970s, and these pieces very subtly referred to Rosen's work. A longtime artist who's kept a fairly low profile, Harford has typically not shown her work in commercial galleries, but that changed when she recently joined the stable at Robischon. We look forward to seeing more.

Guest curators Katherine and Michael McCoy took over the two main exhibition spaces on the first floor of the Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art, transforming them into a history lesson on the development of modern design. Using some spectacular pieces from the Kirkland's permanent collection, the McCoys walked visitors through the twentieth-century. The show began with the likes of Frank Lloyd Wright, then moved on to the Bauhaus masters, continuing with their American heirs, such as Charles Eames, and then finally arrived at the Italian geniuses, including Gio Ponti. The entire show was stunningly smart and very sharp-looking, especially the installation that included a graphic design incorporating photo blow-ups of the designers.

To the character of Aldonza, the tavern maid whom Don Quixote mistakes for the Lady Dulcinea, Regan Linton brought a lovely voice and strong acting chops, all animated by an incandescent fire. The scene in which Aldonza is raped by the regulars at the tavern is always ugly, but the way Linton — who's wheelchair-bound — played it will be permanently etched in the memory of those who saw her. Torn from her wheelchair and left limp on the floor, Linton dragged herself back across the stage, inch by painful inch, powered by a terrible rage and an unquenchable instinct to survive.

With last spring's Radio Golf at the Denver Center Theatre Company, director Israel Hicks completed August Wilson's magnificent ten-play cycle, which took audiences on a decade-by-decade journey through the black experience in the United States during the twentieth century. Over the years, Hicks had assembled an extraordinary array of acting talent for these rich, multi-textured productions, and Radio Golf was no exception: The powerful Terrence Riggins played an ambitious, Ivy League-educated real-estate developer; Kim Staunton was his upwardly mobile wife; and the production also featured Charles Weldon and Harvy Blanks. The show was a triumph for Hicks and the Denver Center, and a fitting farewell to one of our greatest playwrights.

Not only is the Newman Center a jewel box of a venue, with its three intimate performance spaces and elegant balconied plaza, but it also plays host to one of the finest college concert series nobody ever heard of, thanks to the often adventurous programming of center director Stephen Seifert. In a world where such arts mainstays as dance and baroque music remain hard sells, Seifert fights back by bringing in Pilobolus or the thoroughly different Mile High Voltage Festival, featuring world and avant-garde artists on the Cantaloupe Music label. It's a crapshoot for DU — some acts sell out, while others play to empty houses — but give Seifert a hand for putting a beautiful facility to worthy use. Better yet, buy a ticket and see what it's all about.

In the public realm, they go by the names Jonny 5, Brer Rabbit and Andy Rok, but off stage, Flobots Jamie Laurie, Stephen Brackett and Andy Guerrero are looking for ways to put their ideas to work on a more human level. Through their non-profit Flobots.org, the local-rock-band-made-good brings some of the power back to the people by offering at-risk youth a second chance through music therapy; by supporting grassroots activism through workshops and actions instigated by their Fight With Tools Institute; and by providing a physical space in which to get all that good work done, at the Flobots.org headquarters. Like the song goes: "We need heroes/Build them. Don't put your fist up/Fill them/Fight with our hopes and our hearts and our hands/We're the architects of our last stand."

On the audio side, CacheFlowe produces dense, intelligent and profoundly weird music. His style incorporates IDM, glitch, dubstep and hip-hop to create a beat-driven, brain-warping and brilliantly creative sound. Then he adds custom, real-time-generated visuals, synced to and driven by his music via custom software he wrote himself. The result is an incredible audio-visual synthesis that will make you wonder if someone slipped one of those drugs that's known by just initials into your drink when you weren't looking. As it turns out, though, you'll be enjoying yourself so much you won't even care. This simply has to be seen — and heard — to be believed.

How dope are Boonie Mayfield's beats? Consider this: Mr. J. Medeiros from the Procussions sought out Boon Doc (aka Solomon Vaughn) after stumbling across a clip of him rocking his MPC on YouTube one morning. Medeiros ended up working with Boon on his five-song EP, The Art of Broken Glass, and last summer the burgeoning producer pretty much slayed the competition at the Red Bull Big Tune tournament to move on to the finals in Atlanta (where he and runner-up DJ Psycho ended up losing out to Frank Dukes). Besides having nice beats, Boonie is also gracious. At the beginning of the year, he put together a kit for fellow beatmakers to purchase/download that contains over 350 samples of various drums, percussions and effects. It's a pleasure to watch the man work and even more gratifying to listen to his smooth, fluid and always banging beats.

No band could possibly live up to the hype surrounding My Bloody Valentine's landmark recording, 1991's Loveless, in a live setting, but Kevin Shields and company come close. Somehow, their handful of 2009 North American dates included a gig in Denver, and after a rocky start in the house mix, My Bloody Valentine performed a show that was, at times, as much a physical experience as a musical one. And to close out the night, the band assaulted the audience with a cascading avalanche of sound that made clothes flap with the sheer force of the clamor. Denver hearts MBV.

Not nearly enough people remember the band Facade. The act was a charming mixture of dream pop and jazz that played low-key shows for a couple of years right after the turn of the millennium. Then the band's singer, Kitty Vincent, dropped out of music for the better part of the decade, while guitarist Joe Grobelny went on to Jet Set Kate and the highly lauded Everything Absent or Distorted. Vincent and Grobelny really had something as a musical unit, though, and after EAoD disbanded, Grobelny and Vincent got back together as the atmospherically bombastic, energetic and engaging Le Divorce.

Like some kind of superhero venue, Theory + Practice lives a double life. By day, it masquerades as an art gallery, but once night falls and a sound system and a few lights are added, it transforms into the sweetest underground dance venue in town. It has a central location, nice acoustics, a fine floor for dancing — and it's just the right size to feel both intimate and spacious. Of course, the real kicker is that the promoters who favor it have done a fine job of bringing in top talent from the real underground, making for some great experiences at this dark knight of dance venues.

You want a top-notch clubbing experience in Denver, Beta is the first place you should look. It's been around long enough now to lose that new-club smell, but it's still got an unbeatable tandem of the finest sound system and best talent bookers in town. That means you're going to see the world's best DJs and dance artists here, and they're going to sound just about as good as they possibly can. Add in a bevy of beautiful people and maybe some bottle service, and you've got a recipe for a great night on the town.

When the Friends of Historic Riverside Cemetery wanted to raise money to help restore Denver's oldest cemetery to its former splendor, they brought a host of historical city figures back to life on Halloween. Period-clad reenactors revived such characters as Sand Creek Massacre good guy Silas Soule, turn-of-the-century temperance worker and police matron Sadie Likens, African-American social climbers Barney and Julia Ford, brewer Philip Zang and many others as tour participants trekked through the burial ground; afterward, an FHRC-sponsored Spirits of Riverside art show reception at the Wynkoop Brewing Company featured Riverside RIP Ale and Riverside-inspired works by local artists.

Where better to celebrate the Day of the Dead than in an actual cemetery, right beside the holiday's honorees? The Chicano Arts and Humanities Council and Denver muertos artist Jerry Vigil put on a grave event worthy of the ancestors in Crown Hill Cemetery last November, complete with a sugar skull workshop for kids, Aztec dancing, mariachi music, fiesta food and an art show and lecture by Vigil. Not only did the event put the meaning of the celebration in clear perspective, but it was also a heck of a lot of fun. Kudos to Crown Hill for adding this to its ongoing series of community celebrations and to Vigil and friends for making it happen.

Popcorn and hot dogs might be classic cinema foods, but sometimes you hunger for more. And for those times, Cinebarre is the place to go. The Thornton theater offers first-run movies with a full menu (and bar!). There's nothing too fancy on the menu -- just pizza, burgers, sandwiches, salads, desserts and appetizers -- but it offers a solid selection of quality comfort foods with movie-themed names. The prices are reasonable, and you even get to sit at a real table. And traditionalists can still get a bucket of popcorn to munch on.

Back in the '20s, when the foothills town of Indian Hills was marketed as a "mountain getaway" for Denver's elite, George Olinger erected the Indian Hills Trading Post to serve as a general store, post office and sales office for the new community, which quickly gained a reputation as an artists' colony. Today the renovated building again welcomes artists, as the home of Mirada Fine Art, a new gallery in a great old space dedicated to exhibiting contemporary art from across the region.

In order to present two solos in the same space, William Havu Gallery often pairs a painter with a sculptor. This approach was stunningly successful when Monroe Hodder: Painting Metabolism!, a show of gorgeous post-minimalist paintings, was put together with Michael Clapper: New Sculptures, an equally stunning exhibit of abstract three-dimensional works. Monroe Hodder, who divides her time between London and Steamboat Springs, creates luscious striped paintings with complicated palettes, while Michael Clapper ingeniously combines stone and metal to come up with his ambitious sculptures. Though the artists work in their own distinctive styles, their pieces were absolutely wonderful together, making for a gallery show as good as any museum exhibit this year.

RedLine was founded by Laura Merage, an artist as well as arts supporter, and the facility combines studio space with one of the most impressive exhibition galleries in the region. Though there hasn't been a regular schedule of shows here, many of the exhibits have been first-rate — and that was certainly the case with You of All People! Here of All Places!, which highlighted the accomplishments of the studio artists. The curating was done by committee, but Jonathan Saiz took the lead; both he and Merage were featured, as were Margaret Neumann, Bruce Price, Clark Richert, Jeff Page, Virginia Folkestad and a raft of others. Nothing linked these artists beyond living in Denver and having studios at RedLine, and the result was an eye-popping assortment of art in a wide variety of mediums. Here's hoping the exhibit becomes an annual outing.

For weeks before Indiana, Indiana opened, Buntport Theater Company was on Facebook, asking for Mason jars. From the moment you entered the theater, you could see why: The entire back wall of the set was composed of glass jars. These were filled with objects representing aspects of the protagonist's past: corks, dried leaves, yarn, used teabags, buttons, seed pods, sticks, bones. Buntport creates its theater pieces as an ensemble, and the physical and technical aspects — lighting, sound, furniture, walls and doors — are part of each play's meaning and are fully integrated into the performances. So the shimmering back wall melded seamlessly with other elements of the production, both human and inanimate, and while from the audience it wasn't possible to figure out just what the jars held, the mysterious shapes and colors within them added mystery and depth.

Steven Burge was a charmer in Fully Committed, a one-man show about Sam, a hapless employee manning the phones in the grubby basement of one of New York's snobbiest restaurants, the kind of place where Diane Sawyer competes with supermodel — and vegan — Naomi Campbell for a table. In addition to playing Sam in this Aurora Fox production, Burge provided the phone voices of dozens of characters, from kvetchy customers to panicked kitchen staff to Sam's kindly father. His timing was terrific, his memory prodigious, and he was very, very funny. But Burge was also vulnerable and sweet, which made it nice when Sam got his own little happy ending.Best Actress in a One-Woman Show

For three days in February, playwrights, critics, actors, theater lovers and theater professionals thronged the Denver Center Theatre Company complex, watching staged readings, attending performances, listening to panel discussions and holding animated debates of their own over breakfast pastries or lunchtime salads and sandwiches. The Denver Center's New Play Summit, which got its start in 2006, becomes more sophisticated and attracts more national attention every year. Several plays that began their life as readings at past summits have been staged by the company; artistic director Kent Thompson has selected three of this year's plays for his coming season.

Patrick Mueller of Control Group Productions (and its home, the Packing House Center for the Arts) thinks Denver hasn't been living dangerously enough — at least in its arts offerings. He aims to fill the gap by booking more challenging, fringe-style performance programming, from Butoh to multimedia to theater to Control Group's own Dance Night for Beginners series, which blends humorous instruction with dance performance. Mueller says he's looking for a bigger space and better opportunities for collaboration with other groups; in the meantime, look for the Stop. Crawl. Walk. Run. multi-arts festival, coming in May.

After his remixing of a HEALTH track a couple of years ago, the ascent of Travis Egedy, who performs under the Pictureplane moniker, to national and even international renown would have been hard to predict. Dark Rift, his 2009 album, made it onto playlists far from Egedy's immediate group of friends. But despite the attention he's received for his own impressive work, Egedy is always ready to go to bat for the Denver underground scene, asserting in interviews both foreign and domestic that it's one of the richest in the world. And he's proof of it.

Chris Bagley and Kim Shively befriended Wesley Willis when he briefly made Denver his home in the early part of the last decade. Fortunately, they had the foresight to shoot footage of the legendary artist and songwriter as he charmed everyone he met. Culled from five years of meticulously edited footage, including interviews with Willis's family and friends in Chicago and elsewhere, Wesley Willis's Joy Rides tells the story of an extraordinary creative mind that would not be hampered by any ailment. Replete with animations of Willis's artwork, this documentary brilliantly portrays an unlikely rock-and-roll hero in loving detail.

Punchline's DIY 3D View-Master wasn't exactly a boon to the listening experience — but it was really freaking cool. Contained in a standard-sized case, the album could be folded into a viewfinder through which you could view photos of the band popping out at you. And given how little reason there is to buy an actual, physical CD these days, anything that draws people off the Internet is worthy of applause. It didn't hurt that the CD itself was the band's most polished effort to date — plenty to justify the fanfare of the package.

What a Christmas present! A week before we all gathered together to commemorate our contributions to mass consumption and consumerism, the Mile High City was treated to a Holy Night of an entirely different order — an all-local bill at the Fillmore Auditorium. Who would've thought we'd live to see the day? Proving that Denver is truly a special place, this massive show was headlined by 3OH!3, the inescapable and completely affable hooligans from the People's Republic, who picked a lineup that spotlighted fellow locals Meese, the Photo Atlas and The Pirate Signal. For casual fans whose limited exposure to the scene hadn't extended past 3OH!3, Flobots and the Fray, this concert gave a real sampling of some of the other outstanding music being made on the Front Range.

With well-received appearances at Monolith and CMJ for its sixth and seventh shows, respectively, it's safe to say that former Cat-A-Tac frontman Jim McTurnan has gone from good with that group to better with his new band, The Kids That Killed the Man. This time around, McTurnan is writing catchier songs that hit harder. Maybe it's the freedom of having the lead role to himself, or maybe he's just wiser and happier; we're not going to ask too many questions. Now with a second guitarist locked in, the band is working on what promises to be an awesome album of rock-and-roll fuzz.

When partners Duncan Goodman, Joshua Sonnenberg, Jeff Howell and Scott Morrill bought Cervantes' Masterpiece Ballroom and the adjoining Quixote's (now known as Cervantes' Other Side) from the Bianchi brothers last October, they immediately started making improvements in both places. And we're talking about a lot more than a new coat of paint and new decor. The partners went all out, putting a new stage, sound system and lights in the Ballroom, while making the Other Side much more functional by taking down the wall that separated the front and back of the club.

The jukebox at Gabor's is one of our favorites for price alone, since the staff fills it with credits so often it's as good as free. But this juke also holds some killer platters: from staples like Johnny Cash's Live at Folsom Prison and the Stones' Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! to Tom Waits's Rain Dogs and Lou Reed's Transformer. And in between, there's jazz by Miles, Monk and Dinah; newer alt-discs by Nick Cave, Grizzly Bear and Sonic Youth; and punk by the likes of the Clash and the Ramones. With some fine mix CDs to fill the cracks, any night at Gabor's is guaranteed to come with the perfect soundtrack.

Kiki Nichols had a very good reason for putting together 2009's inaugural Lumberjack Pub Crawl: "I think it sounds fun to dress up like woodsmen and march down Colfax," she told us. And fun it was, complete with Paul Bunyans, a big blue ox named Babe (or two), fake stubble and more flannel than you could shake a hatchet at. One lumberjack even gave out syrup shots in honor of the manliest of all lumberjack breakfasts, the flapjack. Costuming was far less labor-intensive than a zombie pub crawl (unless you're going as Babe), and lumberjacks are definitely bigger drinkers than zombies (unless you're talking about blood). Nichols is already planning her 2010 version, so start practicing the "Lumberjack Song." Timber!

Let there be light! Although several spots around town have holiday light shows, the Museum of Outdoor Art-sponsored extravaganza at Hudson Gardens outshines the rest. Conceived and designed by MOA resident wizard Lonnie Hanzon, Hudson Holiday one-ups everybody else with its artsy attention to detail, whimsy and spectacle that combine to create an experience that's funny (one of its more parodic attractions is an overdecorated and super-synchonized suburban house), psychedelic (huge white globes and animal figures swim with abstract light projections), folkloric (one forested corner of the gardens looks like a page out of a Russian fairy book), and, in part, a steampunkish throwback to Victorian times. Horse-drawn wagon rides are available to take you over the river and through the woods, and we guarantee you'll never want to leave.

Next time you sit down to enjoy Hollywood's finest, why abuse your teeth with high-fructose corn syrup when you can abuse your liver with high-octane ethanol? The Mayan offers a great selection of beer, wine and cocktails to help wash down your next flick. And your designated driver gets pampered, too: This theater offers some of the best coffee and tea available in town, much less at a movie palace.

In 1940, Colorado artist Boardman Robinson created a fabulous 6' x 12' painting for the then-two-year-old Englewood post office, where the mural's been on display ever since. Late last year, though, the U.S. Postal Service suggested that this office might be closed and its operations consolidated with other locations — which meant that the Boardman might go the way of a 43-cent stamp. But after considerable uproar, the Postal Service reversed course, the Boardman was spared, and now Congresswoman Diana DeGette is working to get the building stamped with a seal of approval from the National Register of Historic Places.

Faculty shows don't often rise to greatness, but few college faculties have the artistic talent and range of Metropolitan State College of Denver. In fact, Metro is Colorado's biggest art school. So when the college's mini-museum, the Center for Visual Art, decided to do a show dedicated to its instructors last spring, it had nearly fifty faculty members to choose from. The resulting selections covered a wide range of aesthetic interests, featuring standout pieces from such top talents as Edie Winograde, Sandy Lane, Mark Brasuell, Amy Metier and Carlos Frésquez. The CVA is currently closed and will reopen this summer in a new spot on Santa Fe Drive; given the success of past shows, we can't wait to see what it will do next.

The role of African art in the development of modernism in the early twentieth century is a well-known story. With Floyd Tunson: Remix, Colorado artist Floyd Tunson, himself African-American, turned that story on its head — or at least its side. He painted dead-on copies of famous Picassos and Matisses, put them up sideways, then inserted exact replicas of racist cartoons and illustrations done at the same time as the original paintings. The show, curated by then-gallery director William Biety, was super-smart, very funny and one of the strongest offerings at van Straaten last year. The gallery remains a flagship on Santa Fe Drive, despite now being open only by appointment.

Jazz singer René Marie's self-written, one-woman tour de force packed an emotional wallop that lingered in your mind long after the show had closed. For Slut Energy Theory, Marie created a stubborn, vulnerable, tough-minded protagonist called U'Dean who carried in her mind and body the scars of her father's sexual abuse. Having conjured up U'Dean from somewhere deep in her mind and soul, Marie wrote U'Dean's words; acted the role with depth, precision and mind-blowing intensity; sang to her audiences of love, lust, fear, betrayal and acceptance; and gave new meaning to the overused word "indomitable."

In Radio Golf, the home that once belonged to Aunt Ester, a centuries-old repository of the black American experience, is to be demolished to make way for development, but itinerant worker Sterling Johnson refuses to let that happen. As played by Harvy Blanks, Johnson is one of August Wilson's garrulous holy fools. Needling, wheedling, playing the buffoon or cutting off laughter with sudden rage-filled dignity, he provided the moral center in this Denver Center Theatre Company production.

Who knows where Chris Whyde disappeared to for three years, but with Die! Mommie Die!, he made a sensational re-entry onto the Denver scene as Angela, a murderous Bette Davis/Joan Crawford-type diva. His was an impersonation that even those ladies might have liked: He had every intonation, queenly gesture, dignified turn of the head and changing flicker of expression down pat. When Whyde was gobsmacked, he still maintained his dignity (except for the occasional meltdown and a couple of ear-pummeling screams); when he ran girlishly off stage, he really was rather graceful; and when he plotted mayhem, he evoked every Bach-accompanied Gothic horror-movie sequence you'd ever seen.

Frequent Flyers founder Nancy Smith took a flying leap by opening the doors of a spanking new aerial dance facility and school. Smith, who's been flying through the air with the greatest of ease in Boulder for more than twenty years, started the new year by beefing up her class schedule with a daily curriculum for all ages, increasing community-outreach programs and even offering birthday-party packages for the wannabe Icarus in all of us. A high five to Frequent Flyers!

The warmest love letter to Denver put to tape this year is also its truest. "O, Queen City" begins with a pair of guitars in no particular rush and feels more and more like the perfect day in the Mile High City with every passing bar. The song is about stopping by Denver on the way to a beach destination and getting too drunk on the sun, the people and, of course, the booze to keep driving. It's about settling for Denver and coming to realize that you wouldn't have it any other way.

With the Internet pretty much taking over where independent publishing once reigned supreme, it's refreshing when anyone puts out a new print publication — much less one done in the grand tradition of the photocopied, stapled, black-and-white zine, like Infested With Ugly. True to form, Infested With Ugly focuses on parts of the local punk scene that virtually no one else in Denver covers. Surprisingly well-written, the debut issue of this zine included a thoughtful essay on collecting vinyl by punk-scene booster and documentarian Aaron Say. Stay free and feisty.

Five consecutive sellouts at every major theater in the state. Five! On his own, or as the headliner: Aggie Theatre, Boulder Theater, Fox Theatre, Gothic Theatre, Ogden Theatre. Yeah, Derek Vincent Smith, who performs under the Pretty Lights moniker, is pretty much playing with the house's money at this point. While the recording industry scrambles to figure out just how to survive in the digital era, Smith is giving his music away on his website. All of it. Free. And clearly, the gambit has paid off, since those consecutive sellouts aren't just here in Colorado. Last year, Pretty Lights sold out sixty dates across the country, making it one of the most successful and sought-after independent acts out there right now. Smith, who just released another EP, Making Up a Changing Mind, is slated to issue two more by the end of the year. And this summer, accompanied by drummer Cory Eberhard, he'll bring his banging live show to Red Rocks. Trust us: This one's worth paying for.

Couldn't get tickets to see Matt Morris at the Bluebird? Couldn't find a babysitter in time to make it to the Flobots show at the Ogden? Not to worry: Twist & Shout has you covered with a full calendar of in-store performances featuring the most laudable locals — everyone from Rose Hill Drive to DeVotchKa to Paper Bird. And they sometimes bring in acts from outside the area code. On Record Store Day this month, for example, Paul Epstein's legendary shop will host a special DJ set by Bonobo. Past performances have included Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Ben Harper & the Innocent Criminals, and Jon Butler — all of whom have recorded and released the in-store gigs. And the best part? Every performance is free. Now, that's something to shout about.

The members of Everything Absent or Distorted always played like they were going down in flames, so when they finally did, it was quite the spectacle — never mind that the breakup was for logistical reasons and totally amicable. So maybe there was a little too much booze, and maybe some of it got on some electronics, and that might have been one of several examples of the rock and roll overtaking the music. Didn't really matter: The members of EAoD left us with a reminder of why we bother devoting our lives to pop music. They also left us an excellent EP, which is still available for free at http://eaodals.blogspot.com.

When AEG Live first announced that it had partnered with Kroenke Sports Enterprises to manage the Broomfield Events Center, a far-flung venue with a checkered history, skeptics wondered how the partners would turn it into a choice destination. Still, history has shown that, under the direction of Chuck Morris, AEG Live can transform Commerce City soccer fields into a prime location for a major music festival. And when the curtain was raised on the renovated, renamed 1stBank Center in March, the transformation was impressive. With good sound and great sight lines, this venue feels more like a concert hall than a mid-sized arena.

In 1938, Frank Sinatra was 23 years old — and much better-looking than you might imagine, judging from the mug shot snapped in Bergen County, New Jersey, where he'd seduced "a single woman of good repute...under the promise of marriage," according to the arrest report. Back then, that kind of hanky-panky could get you thrown in jail — but Sinatra was quickly released when it was determined that the woman in question was already married, and not to him. But first the cops captured this photo, in which Sinatra is staring intently — but also a tad insouciantly — into the camera, a lock of black hair falling over his left eye. He looks good enough to eat. Particularly in the huge blow-up hanging outside the ladies' room of Cactus Jack's, which has only one toilet. It's nice to have something pretty to look at while you wait...and wonder exactly what doing it his way entails.

Zombies are not only dancing in the streets, but they're doing it like pros, thanks to DanzArtz' series of Thriller-specific Guerilla Thrilla classes that teach Michael Jackson's classic video dance sequence step by step to anyone willing to offer up their time and the class fee. On Halloween night, close to 250 students donned zombie togs and makeup and danced the routine in Skyline Park; later, some of them repeated the feat in the Congress Park neighborhood. Fields and crew say they're on board for the event again this year, but it'll go down with a twist: an Addams Family theme. Get ready for a Fester occasion.

Clark Griswold, eat your heart out. If it's Halloween or Christmas, you can be sure that Alek Komarnitsky has bedecked his Lafayette home with the most incredible light display around. After he caught flak in 2004 for tricking visitors to www.komar.org into thinking they could control his Christmas light show (it was an elaborate online hoax), Komarnitsky figured out a way to actually do it. Now folks can log on to his overly stimulating website during the holidays and turn his thousands of lights on and off. It may not make the neighbors happy, but since Komarnitsky uses 100 percent wind energy, makes carbon-offset contributions for the electricity his display consumes and allows online visitors to donate money to celiac disease research, this is insanity for a cause.

If your interest in film extends at all past Hollywood's latest remakes, explosion showcases and toy commercials, you're probably already a regular of Starz FilmCenter. The menu runs the gamut from foreign gems to the best of local indie cinema, with stops at all points in between. It also offers great regular programs, including the GLBT-focused Cinema Q and Doc Night, which brings documentary filmmakers in to show their films and talk about them. Whatever your taste in cinema, chances are good that Starz has something to offer that you simply won't find anywhere else.

Carlos Frésquez was part of this city's burgeoning Chicano artists' movement of the '70s and '80s, creating works that specifically referred to the Mexican-American experience. In the '90s, he started to conflate the dreams of Aztlán with postmodernism, and his paintings grew into installations, setting the stage for his latest triumph, "Un Corrido Para la Gente." This funky piece, the title of which means "A Ballad for the People," consists of a giant guitar, a huge bicycle wheel topped by a crown, and a string of papel picado banners running between the guitar and a monumental shovel handle. Installed this past year at the intersection of Morrison Road and Sheridan Boulevard, it serves as an entry marker to the Westwood neighborhood, and its imagery fits the surrounding Mercado district like a glove.

Though they are neighbors, the Denver Public Library, the Denver Art Museum and the Colorado History Museum rarely cooperate on programs — but Allen True's West, highlighting the career of one of Denver's most important artists, was one of those rare win-win-win collaborations. True's chosen subject was the way the American West was rapidly changing before his eyes, and the trajectory of his career led him from charming book illustrations (shown at the DPL) to powerful easel paintings (at the DAM) to the most significant work of his lifetime, his stunning murals (at the CHM). It took a lot of walking to see it all, but given the high quality of True's work on display, the extra effort was definitely worth it.

One of the area's most clever young artists, Colin Livingston has been pondering art as commodity. In pursuing this, he's done all kinds of conceptual works — including having clients pick from sets of palettes, patterns, logos and slogans, becoming full partners in his paintings. With this show, he pushed the idea even further by creating an installation that aped a retail store, with his paintings the merchandise in custom-made display cartons, some with tabs so that they could be hung from open-front cabinets, à la Home Depot. The exhibit was incredible, worthy of display in a museum before its parts are sold off piecemeal.

Dorian is a brilliant but unstable musician, the most troublesome member of the musical quartet featured in Opus, a man who seems to channel Mozart when he plays. In the Curious Theatre Company production of this play, Hahn brought his usual intensity to the role, but he also gave the character an out-of-world quality, the dreaminess of a man lost not only in music, but in the dissonance of a sometimes unhinged brain — until, that is, the final scene brought an unexpected transformation.

Among all the characters in Eccentricities of a Nightingale, a passionate, sometimes overwrought play, the protagonist's insane mother comes closest to old-style Southern Gothic, and Erica Sarzin-Borillo played her large and theatrical in this Germinal Stage Denver production. But she also acted with such precision and emotional richness that her very staginess hinted at inarticulable and otherwise unreachable truths.

After rehearsing for eleven months, Aluminous Collective — a company formed by director Colleen Mylott and a group of onetime Naropa students — brought Charles Mee's Big Love to Denver. It's a fascinating play: The plot, liberally based on Aeschylus, concerns fifty sisters who have been promised by their fathers to fifty grooms and have fled from Greece to Italy to escape these marriages. The company's approach to this script was imaginative and full of resonant images: a four-man band; women in wedding dresses walking slowly, one by one, toward center stage, each carrying a sieve full of water; a couple expressing their love in a gliding, swooping dance on roller skates. Here's hoping we'll see more of Aluminous soon.

Last summer, the women behind Black Box Burlesque — Reyna Von Vett, aka Cora Vette, and Westword contributor Michelle Baldwin, aka Vivienne VaVoom — experienced some issues with the space they'd been renting at the Denver Civic Theatre. And by "experienced some issues," we mean they paid $2,500 in monthly rent to the facility's sub-leaser, and when said sub-leaser was evicted for not paying his rent to the landlord, Black Box Burlesque had to go, too. But now the ladies are back on their high-heel-clad feet and better than ever: They made a deal with Bender's Tavern to put together themed burlesque shows, and you can now catch Cora, Vivienne, Petra Puse, Annabella Lafontaine, Frangelica Love and others strutting their stuff to seasonal and always-amusing themes. The ladies encourage catcalls and other such hooting and hollering; head to Bender's every Thursday in April to experience the latest installment, Girls in Space: 2010, A Burlesque Oddity. It's bound to be a booty-shaking good time!

Lindsay Thorson of Dream Wagon isn't exactly a household name. For that matter, she's not that well known, even in Denver's underground scene. But she deserves to be, for her innovative Denver Show and Tell Project alone. Launched in May 2008, the project took shape as Thorsen solicited songs from fellow musicians, offering different themes each month. So far, the roster of contributors has included Littles Paia, nervesandgel, BDRMPPL, Pina Chulada, Dang Head, Emily Frembgen and other adventurous musicians with a sense of playfulness. Thorsen continues to be excited about each installment, and a more interesting sampling of local songwriting creativity would be difficult to find. More of Denver should know about this Show and Tell.

We love music. We love free stuff. So it stands to reason that Danny de Zaya's One Track Mind has become a daily destination around here. Every day, One Track Mind offers a free, legal MP3 download of a new track from some hot new band or artist, in styles ranging from electronic to indie. Every track is reviewed and rated, so you know what you're getting. And once a month or so, all the tracks get packaged up in an easy-to-download zip file in case you're too lazy or forgetful to visit each day. Plus, there's a monthly podcast. And as if all of this wasn't already an embarrassment of riches, the blog is also beautifully designed.

The world is getting wise to the ways of the big labels, and the ways aren't working, anyway. Which paves the way for enterprising little bands like Candy Claws, which started with the one thing you absolutely must have before any self-promotion technique has a shot: great music. In the Dream of the Sea Life, released last year, is a record with beauty and depth, and the act debuted music videos for each song on a different music blog around the world. Something's working — the group signed with Indiecator Records in Dublin — and we're guessing the sleeve has not been emptied of tricks.

Sarah Slater, a longtime stalwart of the underground music scene, was the mastermind behind Titwrench, a completely independent festival featuring musical projects in which women had strong, if not always exclusive, creative input, and featuring experimental projects from Colorado and beyond. The enthusiasm of the crowds each night was infectious, and attendance was strong even though there was another music festival across town. Given the success of this first effort, Slater and other organizers are now holding fundraising shows at the Meadowlark (called Surfacing) for the next Titwrench (July 9-11 at Glob). Do yourself a favor and catch these DIY gigs.

Since the infamous Warlock Pinchers broke up in 1992, it's been rare to find Daniel Wanush and Andrew Novick in the same room. Still, the split apparently didn't involve much acrimony, because in September, Novick's Get Your Going project performed Crispin Glover songs with a puppet show on the same bill as Wanush's heavy dub band, Murder Ranks. After the Ranks set, Novick came up on stage and performed a number of Pinchers classics with his former colleague. Since then, a bona fide War lock Pinchers reunion has been rumored to be in the works. We can only hope.

Over the past three years, DJs Low Key and Sounds Supreme (aka Justin Green and Nate Watters) have built the Solution, their underground hip-hop night, into the best weekly party in town. The club night got its start at Milk, then moved to the Funky Buddha, and recently relocated to the roomier Bar Standard, where the DJs can make good on their plans to bring in national acts. They've more than succeeded in their original goal of creating a night they'd want to attend themselves: Now anyone who wants a guaranteed good time knows that the Solution is the solution.

There's always been plenty to say about the Lion's Lair. From the artists on the stage to the cast of characters who occupy its dark corners at all hours, the Lair is one of Denver's most storied haunts. Yet the conversation got more interesting when Matthew Hunter, the Lair's longtime manager, launched a bi-monthly series of art exhibitions last spring. Hunter, a painter, sculptor and bass player for local bumcore combo Slakjaw, invites artists to contribute works under a broad theme: A recent show featured ruminations on barns; another was a sublime and squirm-inducing homage to Christ. Hunter's own work, which blends a trampy innocence with dark humor and found objects, is intriguing, unsettling and original. Hunter's exhibitions prove that art can live anywhere — even nailed to the crackling red plaster of a Colfax dive.

There are some seriously badass hippies hanging out at Confluence Park on Sunday nights. If you never thought you'd see the words "hippie" and "badass" in the same sentence, well, you have no idea how awesome things can get in a hurry when you give half the hippie crowd hand drums and the other half fire. These informal Colorado Fire Tribe practices are free to watch, but the participants are very serious about working on their moves, which include swinging flaming balls and other jaw-dropping techniques. Occasionally, one of them will catch fire and jump in the river, which you just don't see every day.

Every Friday and Saturday night at ten, Denver Film Society programming manager Keith Garcia brings in what he calls "the cooler films," films that don't always get the exposure they deserve. The Watching Hour incorporates all corners of offbeat cinema, including sub-series of zombie films and Ozploitation movies, the original Italian Inglorious Bastards, an archival print of the Dario Argento classic Suspiria, the '80s cult classic The Legend of Billie Jean and even Teen Witch, and provides a time for cinephiles to see all manner of excellent cult and genre films on the big screen, from obscure, overlooked gems to bona fide classics.

Long before they got their nicknames, the historic neighborhoods of LoDo and RiNo were defined by the railroads that brought commerce to Denver. That heritage creates the perfect conceptual tie-in for Joseph Riché's "Trade Deficit," a three-part sculpture spread near Broadway between Blake and Lawrence streets, with the most successful portion on Blake. For all three, Riché used discarded freight containers painted different colors to create constructivist piles that simultaneously refer to the area's past as a hub of transportation and to its present — and future — as an art center.

Artists Edward and Donna Marecak were major modernists: He was an idiosyncratic painter and she was a master potter. With the help of gallery director Paul Hughes, Z Art Department owner Randy Roberts tapped the estates of the couple to create a pair of intertwined retrospectives that showed just how great the talents of the late artists were. The Marecaks had been at the forefront of historic Colorado modernism and the subject of a number of shows since the 1990s, but amazingly, much of the material at Z had never been exhibited before, making for one of the year's best exhibits.

Artist Mary Ehrin, a protegé of Clark Richert, made her initial claim to fame with feather paintings, one of which is in the Denver Art Museum's collection. In recent years, she's turned to installations of three-dimensional objects that, like those earlier works, refer to stylish garments and accessories. In Mary Ehrin: Rockspace, at Rule Gallery, viewers passed through a lattice-work gateway to enter a space filled with imitation rocks placed on white laminate stands. The phony rocks were covered with luxurious fabrics, including metallic and leather materials. They looked positively swank and very otherworldly — like swatches from the costumes in a Star Trek movie.

What a pleasure to see Kathleen Brady in a role worthy of her abundant talents. In the semi-autobiographical Well, playwright Lisa Kron explores her own mother's long-term debilitating, unclassifiable illness or persistent hypochondria (take your pick). As the actress representing Lisa tells her story, the mother herself appears in all her disheveled warmth, passion and humor to kvetch, talk to the audience, contradict her daughter and tell her side of the story. It's a rich, vital role, and Brady was simply irresistible in it. Poor Lisa didn't stand a chance.

Real-life conspiracy theorists tend to be boring people with bad breath who trap you in corners to expound endlessly on the actual author of Shakespeare's plays and how the CIA staged 9/11. But Yankee Tavern's Ray is way funnier and more ironic. He talks to ghosts, hates Starbucks and the facial-tissue industry, and carries a moon rock in his pocket — a rock from the real, invisible moon landing, as opposed to the highly publicized 1969 event. Marcus Waterman is always a pleasure to watch on a stage, but he tends to play dignified, somewhat authoritative roles. Given the juicy part of Ray, he got to mutter and shamble, poke and joke, and plain dominate the action whenever he was on stage.

Dinner theaters aren't called on to worship at the altar of art, but rather to satisfy down-home audiences looking for anxiety-free entertainment: families, young couples, church groups, business groups, people celebrating birthdays and anniversaries. But Boulder's Dinner Theatre nimbly accomplishes the two-step between commercialism and creativity, mounting summer productions filled with adorable kids; old chestnuts that reliably fill the house; smaller, quirkier shows; and the occasional sexy sizzler. This year, the roster was Annie, Singin' in the Rain, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and Chicago, and BDT produced them all with style. Every show featured fine singing, energetic and sometimes inspired acting, well-conceived sets and costumes, the music of Neil Dunfee's talented small orchestra, and the cast's infectious exuberance. There's a lot to be said for pure enjoyment — and this BDT season said it all.

The Denver Botanic Gardens boasts one of the most beautiful — and intimate — open-air concert halls in the city, where it hosts its annual summer music series under the stars. Tickets can be pricey and hard to come by, but they're well worth the effort. And who better to choose the performers for such an exclusive venue than Swallow Hill, Denver's own acoustic-music stronghold, where music and beauty have always walked hand in hand? As Swallow Hill seeks to broaden its constituency by offering more diverse concert performers and the DBG continues to grow, the two organizations should make beautiful music together.

Like the previous compilations in this series produced by Radio 1190, Local Shakedown Vol. 3 is both a labor of love and a love letter to the underground scene. Everything in this collection — from Magic Cyclops's faux-commercial introduction to the debut of a true hip-hop act with Time's "Cockroach Goddess" to previously unreleased tracks by Cowboy Curse and Bad Luck City — was organized by Katherine Peterson, who recently stepped down as host of Local Shakedown. She'll be missed.

Travis Egedy of Pictureplane writes blogs like he makes music: weird and like he's floating in outer space and ridiculously optimistic. It's good for contextualizing his music, sure, but it was also here that we first heard about Die Antwoord and Lil B's "I'm God." Plain Pictures is one-stop shopping for obscure mixtapes, confessions of a crush on Kristin Stewart, and generally remembering that pop culture is supposed to make you feel good.

Painting your face to look like the ghoulish visage of a pasty, rotting cadaver has long been the province of death-obsessed, Scandinavian black-metal bands. The practice, though, dates back to '80s punk legends the Misfits — which is probably where Boulder's the Widow's Bane got the idea. But here's the funny thing: While clearly drawing inspiration from the bleaker side of the human experience, the Widow's Bane plays a folk-based music full of minor-key waltzes and cobwebbed shanties. And, really, what's creepier: a grim reaper slinging an electric guitar, or one squeezing an accordion?

Avant-garde metal band Sunn O))) finally came to Denver and played a packed house at the Bluebird. Before the show, the stage crew filled the theater with a nearly impenetrable layer of fog; those lucky enough to make it to the foot of the stage could see the mighty Attila Csihar of Mayhem come on stage dressed alternately as a wizard and as a tree spirit while the band, shrouded in robes like Lovecraftian sorcerers, laid down crushing, cavernously dark riffs from beyond the walls of sleep. But everyone could hear Csihar's utterly unearthly, soul-shaking vocalizations. And long after the music ended, the fog continued to roll down the street.

Mike Marchant is a ridiculous talent as a songwriter, guitarist and general gangly badass. Fortunately for the rest of us, he's willing to share, both as a member of umpteen Denver bands, including Houses and Widowers, and as the host of a songwriting workshop at the Meadowlark. Every other Monday, Marchant leads an informal conversation about the making of music. Ideas are sussed, music is played, and higher levels of understanding are reached. We're not sure what his plans are for the future — the dude's busy — but it's a novel concept and a humble donation of time from one of the city's best artists, regardless.

In the year since Adam and Andrew Ranes opened Casselman's Bar & Venue, it's gone from a 9,000-square-foot space with a lot of potential to an outstanding, multi-use venue that's equally inviting whether it's being used for live music or corporate events. While the back room, which was a distribution warehouse for the May Company in the '40s and '50s, used to sound a bit boomy, a new sound system has done wonders for the place. So has the talent-buying team of Caddy Cadwell and Samantha Hanson, who are gradually ramping up the caliber of national acts coming to Casselman's.

Being in a rock-and-roll band typically doesn't pay the bills, and it seems like half of Denver's musicians earn their keep at either City, O' City or its sister restaurant, WaterCourse. And those who don't work here come here, anyway: Chella Negro has a song called "City O'," in honor of her time at this restaurant. We're not sure if it's the lack of meat, the inspirational quotes on the chalkboard above the bar or the Girl Scout cookies, but something about Denver's greenest hangout attracts some of its best creative types.

We know what you're thinking: Avatar didn't take place in Crested Butte, it was set on some far-off mystery planet that exists only in the computers used to animate it! That's true. But as University of Colorado teacher and Crested Butte resident David Rothman points out, there are enough coincidences between the movie's plot and the town's history to make a conspiracy buff's head swim: In both, a uniquely beautiful natural wonderland is threatened by attempts to extract rare, precious resources and saved by a paraplegic in a wheelchair. Oh, and director James Cameron has a home in the Butte. It's enough for us — and a lot more believable as conspiracies go than alien encampments under Denver International Airport.

There are nerds, and then there are all the subsets of nerds: comic-book geeks, music freaks, LARPers and word nerds, of course, which is why the Denver Public Library's Fresh City Life program has devoted the last Wednesday of every month to epic throwdowns of the Scrabble variety. From 5 to 8 p.m. at Novo Coffee, word lovers can try their hands at any number of language-based games provided by Fresh City Life — but if you have your own, bring it along! Prizes — gift certificates from Novo, Mad Greens and Mad Wine Bar — are awarded each month for the top nerds. Start practicing that triple-word-score strategy!

Perhaps the most successful space in the controversial Frederic C. Hamilton Building is the new Denver Art Museum shop built into the formerly bleak and cavernous lobby. Roth Sheppard Architects, one of the city's most distinguished firms, did an undeniably brilliant job of using all those dramatic glass and canted walls — and then the museum did an equally commendable job of filling the shop with an incredible inventory. It includes not only a big assortment of arty gift items and jewelry, but also a vast selection of books that makes it the best art-book store in the state. The Hamilton's interior is clearly a work in progress, but with the installation of this new gift shop, it's off to a good start.

Over the past several years, Hugh Grant, the founder of Denver's Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art, has been enthusiastically collecting art by historic Colorado artists; in the process, he's turned his institution into the principal depository of paintings, sculptures and works on paper by the state's impressive roster of artists. Not only that, but he's become Colorado's most important cheerleader for our prominent place in American art. He recently cemented this high ranking with 100+ Years of Colorado Art, a two-floor show of first-rate pieces that he put together for the Arvada Center.

Back in the '60s, when boomers began to experiment with drugs, particularly LSD, the effect was labeled "psychedelic" — and the altered perception colored the psychedelic posters used to promote concerts. A half-century later, those posters are considered art — and the Denver Art Museum has become a major collector of them, as revealed by The Psychedelic Experience, a super-popular blockbuster last summer. The show was put together by AIGA graphics curator Darrin Alfred, drawing from the first-class collection of material assembled by Boulderite David Tippit, and it appealed to both graphic specialists and old hippies — a veritable poster child for an exhibit that was both accessible and artistically impressive.

The Skin of Our Teeth, Thornton Wilder's play about human history, apocalypse and a whole lot more, is tricky to pull off, with its illogical, non-linear plot and crazy mixing of comedy and profound seriousness. The Aurora Fox production owed its success largely to the performance of John Arp as Antrobus, the prototypical human male at the center of the action. Antrobus rules his household, invents almost everything from the wheel to the alphabet to beer, is sometimes affectionate and sometimes furiously threatening — and Arp did all this with humor, conviction and warmth.

Hannah Duggan gets better every year. We could single her out for the high-heeled, mustachioed nurse she played in The World Is Mine, but we think recognition is really due for her versatile, smart, funny acting in Indiana, Indiana, the Buntport production in which she doubled as a nurturing mother and the touching, slightly mentally unhinged young love interest, Opal.

Over the years, there have been hits and misses at Curious Theatre Company, transformative plays that vibrated in your mind long after you'd seen them and others that slipped instantly into oblivion — or that you wished you could send there. Nonetheless, Curious is the most consistently interesting and risk-taking company in Denver, and that's because founder Chip Walton is that rare being: a highly competent administrator who's as uncompromisingly committed to the art of theater as he is to managerial and financial stability. And he's also a strong supporter of new work by both local and national writers. Other companies suffer identity problems or offer uneven seasons, but Curious, now in its twelfth year, provides theater that's always professional and, every now and then, transcendent.

The measure of a great promoter is simple: Do they bring in killer talent that you otherwise wouldn't see? When it comes to Sub.Mission, the answer is unequivocally yes. Now in its third year, this outfit is largely responsible for the dubstep scene in Denver. Sub.Mission has brought in names like Caspa, Skream and Shackleton, exposing longtime bass heads and new fans alike to some of the world's top practitioners of dubstep's wobbly future breaks and bass madness. Something tells us that both Sub.Mission and the dubstep sound are just getting started.

Dalton Lawrence Rasmussen should be given a key to the city for this detailed and encyclopedic compendium of Colorado underground music of the late '70s. Tracking down the songs and having them remastered took Rasmussen years, but all his effort paid off. The availability of Rocky Mountain Low on vinyl salutes an era when you could listen to these songs only in that format, and the companion booklet, with photographs, fliers and contemporary accounts of the scene, is an invaluable resource for anyone curious about a largely lost history of the counterculture in Denver and beyond.

From the instant you hear Summer, Houses sounds familiar. Maybe that's enough, and you'll be whoa-oh-ing in seconds. And even if you're skeptical of this level of warmth, of retro pop music this golden, there's no resisting the second of the band's three seasonal EPs. Andy Hamilton hits the perfect balance in these songs: They're generous without being naive, sweet but not sickly. And the band playing them is stacked seven deep with very, very good musicians who would rather be here than anywhere else.

Since its name suggests motion and lethal grace, it shouldn't be surprising that this band — which includes former members of Monofog, Red Cloud and Space Team Electra — would make music to match. Arch lyrics accompanying dynamic polyrhythms and hazily incandescent atmospheres combine in vibrantly fluid songs that are a marvel in blended contradictions. Frontwoman Hayley Helmericks cuts a figure both savage and sensitive while shifting between darkly melodic singing and forcefully declarative statements. Don't be surprised if this Snake stretches far from Denver over the course of the year: The act's talent more than measures up to its ambition.

Many bands do shows where they cover famous acts. But Denver Does Denver featured local bands covering the songs of other local bands. Across two venues and over several hours, you could hear Mike Marchant covering "Sleepy Shoes," by the Pseudo Dates, Pictureplane covering "Punk Bitch," by 3OH!3, Married in Berdichev covering Milton Melvin Croissant III and vice versa, and Safe Boating Is No Accident covering Pictureplane. Were the performances note for note? No, but that wasn't the point. Instead, the goal was to have peers of each band give new interpretations to great songs in a display of true community spirit.

With a rotating cast of noteworthy curators, Tuesday night's open stage at the Meadowlark has seen its fair share of subpar or nascent talent. More often than not, though, you'll catch a diamond in the rough or an established musician testing out new material on a crowd that's far above coffeehouse class. This is one of the few outlets where an act's draw doesn't matter — only its courage.

Dubbed "Boulder's Home of the Blues," Blues & Greens Restaurant (which was formerly Skinny Jay's Pizza) really qualifies as Colorado's Home of the Blues. One of the few spots on the Front Range dedicated primarily to the blues, Blues & Greens takes that dedication seriously. Almost every night of the week, it brings in fine local talent like the Delta Sonics, Lionel Young and the Informants, or nationally recognized acts such as John Nemeth, Bob Margolin, Alvin Youngblood Hart and Tommy Castro. And on Sundays and Tuesdays, B&G hosts blues jams during which players can sharpen their skills.

It's fascinating to watch how the clientele at the Carioca Cafe, better known as Bar Bar, changes over the course of a day (and three happy hours) — especially when this classic dive, one of the last left downtown, brings in live music. Get there a few hours before a gig and you'll find some of Denver's finest barflies, a few of which might have been there since the doors opened that morning. As the hour gets later, an assortment of hipsters, punks and rockers mixes in with those barflies, the music gets loud, and the next thing you know, you're in a veritable drinker's nirvana. Dive, he said.

Amy Adams, Castle Rock's finest export, has already received considerable critical acclaim, netting Golden Globe and Oscar nominations for roles in Junebug, Doubt and Enchanted. In 2009's Sunshine Cleaning, though, she showed that she could carry a film single-handedly. The film, about a single mother who starts her own crime-scene clean-up business, was too quirky for its own good, never seemed to settle on a tone and left plot threads hanging all over the place. But Adams's charm, screen presence and ability to sell every line saved the film from itself. She was simultaneously so believable and engaging, it hardly mattered what was going on around her.

Ken Arkind and Panama Soweto dropkick the notion that you can't make a living as a poet. You just have to be a really good poet. Arkind and Soweto, who have ruled Denver's slam scene for years, are both National Poetry Slam champions, a credential that brings calls from universities, clubs and venues. As the Dynamic Duo, this two-man team travels the country performing feats of literature (a word they coined, "gnuck," was recently added to the Urban Dictionary) and inspiring the next generation of slammers. When they're not on tour, the pair stays busy in D-town, leading poetry workshops and classes for Denver youth. That's definitely not gnuck.

Since coming to the Denver Art Museum from Germany, director Christoph Heinrich has been a workaholic, refitting the permanent-collection galleries devoted to modern and contemporary art and putting together a couple of major shows, including Embrace!, an over-the-top, pull-out-all-the-stops installation that's garnered national attention. The title reflects his goal of having artists embrace the revolutionary interior of the four-story Hamilton Building; to pull it off, Heinrich selected seventeen artists, including three from Colorado: John McEnroe, Rick Dula and Timothy Weaver. The resulting show makes this addition a far more accessible space — and one that the community, as well as artists, can truly embrace.

Paul Gillis is an artist's artist who toils away in his studio, creating quirky, cartoonish paintings and watercolors — but rarely exhibits them. Realizing that, Simon Zalkind, one of Denver's most gifted curators, mounted a show devoted to pieces that Gillis had done over the last dozen years, almost none of which had been displayed before. Although the works are nominally narrative, it's hard to say just what story Gillis is telling: His pictures include robots, animals and vessels of various types, as well as writings in imaginary languages, all of it set in weird, surrealistic settings that look simultaneously ancient and futuristic. His cryptic work was a fitting choice for the Singer, long a force in the Denver art world, but now facing an uncertain future at the Jewish Community Center.

Sure, Eugene Carthen can sing the blues. Hell, dude's been honing his pipes since he was four years old, singing gospel through high school and performing with various R&B groups since then. While he regularly gigs around town as Eugene Sings the Blues, he also hosts a Wednesday-night blues jam at Herb's, where players join the listeners packing the bar's back room, waiting for the chance to shine with Carthen.

The Antrobus family represents all of humanity in The Skin of Our Teeth, Thornton Wilder's strange, 1940s play about the end of the world, and the playwright clearly saw Mrs. Antrobus as a conventional housewife. But in Billie McBride's hands, she was less a submissive helpmate than a woman intent on protecting her family, and so strong in her beliefs that she could withstand almost anything. She was also hyper-competent. "I can starve," she remarked calmly at one point. "I've starved before. I know how."

Scott Beyette's lisping, daft and desperate William Barfee was the highlight of the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, a sweet, silly musical about competitive kids. In this Boulder's Dinner Theatre production, Beyette (who's also been doing some excellent directing at BDT) pulled off the neat trick of being hyper-funny and completely over the top while still communicating all the teenaged angst and vulnerability of Barfee. That's Barfay, he kept exclaiming desperately.

Jeffrey Nickelson founded Shadow Theatre Company on a $500 gift in 1997, kept it going on a shoestring, moved it into a fine new home in Aurora two years ago, resigned abruptly last summer and, shortly thereafter, died of a heart attack. Since then, the company has dissolved in a welter of accusation and counter-accusation. Nickelson may never have been able to achieve the stability he wanted for Shadow, but that shouldn't distract Denverites from his profound accomplishments: his passion for black history and desire to teach through theater, his efforts to reach out and heal division, and, above all, the evenings of revelation, drama, heart-stirring music and sheer lighthearted comedy that Shadow provided for so many years.

Singer/guitarist Aaron Hobbs isn't any older than many musicians who started making their mark around town in the '90s. But his first band, Small Dog Frenzy, crafted an indie-rock racket that's undergone many reincarnations since, an unbroken string of excellence that includes the projects Acrobat Down, Hobbs NM and, currently, Popwreck. Hobbs's raspy, catchy anthems have served as a model for great songcraft and, yes, even integrity for over fifteen years now — a lifetime in terms of music trends. Through all of indie rock's ups and downs, he's remained true, sure and full of soul. Listen up, kids, and learn how it's done.

A few years ago, video whiz Tony Shawcross and his merry multimedia pranksters took over Denver's public-access TV channels and re-branded them Denver Open Media, in an attempt to revolutionize what had become boring and bland. There's no better proof of their success than The Key of D, an interactive music show that Shawcross hosts on Comcast channel 56 every Tuesday night at 9:30 p.m. As part of the program, viewers text in song requests which Shawcross, his co-hosts and special guests (such as celebrated local musicians Laura Goldhamer and Tyler Potts) do their best to accommodate with off-the-cuff, often unrecognizable renditions. So far, the show's received more than 3,000 requests from hundreds of viewers. Aqua's "Barbie Girl"? No problem. "Loving You Sunday Morning," by the Scorpions? Sure thing. "White Lines (Don't Don't Do It)," by Grandmaster Melle Mel? Why the hell not? The key? If you text it, they'll mangle it.

In a crowded field of standout releases from some of the city's finest MCs and DJs, The Format, a mixtape by FOE and DJ Awhat, quickly rose to the head of the class — and that's saying a lot, because many of those mixes are hot as hell. Gliding on top of dense electro backdrops fashioned from borrowed beats put together by Awhat, FOE (Father of Enemies, aka Bobby Rogers) spits with a velvety-smooth, unhurried cadence, offering the kind of languid delivery that sounds like it was crafted in a dispensary for, ahem, medicinal purposes. Add to that cameos by Karma, ManeRok, Trouble, Yonnas Abraham from The Pirate Signal, Haven and 800 the Jewell, and you have a mixtape that shows just how high hip-hop in the Mile High can go.

Air Dubai, which began life as a hip-hop duo and showed tons of potential right out of the gate with its debut long player, 2008's The Early October, has made an absolutely stunning transformation. From the sounds of the act's latest tune, "I Know How," recorded at Coupe Studios with studio time the group earned through a recent University of Colorado battle of the bands victory, Air Dubai, now a seven-member crew, has kicked things up a few notches. Recalling the classic soul flavor and musicality of cuts like "Break You Off," by the Roots, this new tune is instantly entrancing and offers a promising glimpse of what's to come from this act — which is clearly no cookie-cutter rap-rock hybrid. Air Dubai is currently in the studio working on its next album, due out sometime later this year.

Many bands are content with learning the chords and melody of one of their favorite songs, then getting up on stage and pumping it out. The so-called faithful cover song is often a cop-out or just plain filler — but not in the hands of JT Nolan of the Lovely and Talented. He decided to put a hot-jazz spin on his nearly unrecognizable rendition of the Pixies' "Subbacultcha." It's such a radical reinterpretation, Nolan even gives himself co-songwriting credit with the Pixies' Frank Blank on the liner notes of the Lovely and Talented's latest disc, The New American Fable. That takes some chutzpah — but one listen to Nolan's version is enough to make you realize he's earned it.

Good karaoke bars need several things: cheap booze, a thick songbook, a DJ capable of inflating your ego, a no-cuts-no-butts-no-coconuts method of choosing singers and, perhaps most important, a loyal following of wannabe Axl Roses who will sing along to the lyrics of almost anything and cheer you on while you do the Vanilla Ice dance during instrumental breaks. Charlie Brown's has all this and more. The cheap booze flows from morning until night, and you can keep your pipes primed during the five-times-a-week piano sing-along. That way, when the karaoke starts at 9:30 p.m. on Sundays, you'll be ready to join in with the rest of the appreciative audience, encouraging every intoxicated rendition of "Ice Ice Baby." Word to your mother.

When guitarist Cole Rudy started his every-other-Monday Jazz Expo nights at the Meadowlark, he was looking to re-create the backyard jams he'd enjoyed with his music-school friends. Some of those friends are now part of a rotating cast that includes gypsy-jazz guitarist M'hamed El Menjra, trumpeter Gabe Mervine and alto saxophonist Matt Pitts. Whether they're burning through standards or collectively improvising, these Jazz Expo musicians make some of the most exciting music you'll find in town — especially on a Monday night.

Yes, there was a man on stage in Calamity _ a musician supposedly hired by Calamity Jane for the crazed, disorganized Wild West show with which she attempted to eke out a living later in life — but he served primarily as a foil for the drunken, obscenity-spewing, self-pitying, self-destructive creature Jane had become. This was essentially a one-woman show, and Ethelyn Friend was unstoppable in the role of Calamity: singing, staggering, insulting her musician and the audience, cradling her bottle, and filling the small theater with gust after gust of insane energy.

The tiny, intimate Ubisububi Room, in the basement of the Thin Man, has quietly become home to the best free film series in town. Curated by Gio and Carmela Toninelo, the Ubisububi has turned Wednesday nights into a chance to see programs featuring everything from sci-fi classics to indie romances, frequently with a seasonal twist (expect to see horror movies come Halloween). The siblings' deep appreciation of cinema and eclectic tastes keep the selections fresh and engaging, balancing must-see favorites with more left-field fare. And since the series is free, you can spend those last few dollars in your wallet at the bar upstairs, which is bound to help your enjoyment of any movie.

Residents of the Denver Women's Correctional Facility have a lot of time to think — and they show that they've put that time to very good use in Captured Words, a collection of poems, stories and essays that they wrote in the fall of 2009, when a group from the University of Colorado Denver visited the facility every week to work with the women. As Erika Baro wrote: "The skies are dark and gray/The rain won't stop falling/The lightning throbs and screams/Looking at the turmoil in my soul/I realize I'm not the only one/Who feels this way/The world also hurts/It just broke before I did."

San Francisco artist Rex Ray, who used to live in Colorado, has become a hot property over the past few years. Fortunately, Denver is one of the spots where his remarkable signature style is regularly highlighted. Ray's work riffs on mid-century modern, using organic shapes in cut paper arranged in the manner of abstract landscapes. For most of 2009, a Ray mural hung in the Promenade Space at MCA Denver, surrounded by wallpaper that he also designed. Both elements were created specifically for this show, a solo tour de force curated by former MCA director Cydney Payton, who returned to the museum to do it.

New York artist Barnaby Furnas, who's achieved international fame over the past ten years, made his local debut this year at MCA Denver in a show put together by new director Adam Lerner. Handsomely ensconced in the Large Works Gallery, Barnaby Furnas: Floods included a handful of the artist's remarkable — and sometime huge — acrylic paintings. Furnas considers himself a narrative painter in the tradition of the great European landscape artists, and if you squinted a little, you could almost see what he means — but these works clearly place him among the heirs to abstract expressionism, with his technique of pouring paint and his embrace of spontaneity and accidents, à la Jackson Pollock. Good show!

Foothills Art Center typically presents group shows, but last summer the entire place — even the Carol and Don Dickinson Sculpture Garden — was given over to a fabulous solo that delved into the abstract and conceptual sculptures and installations of the legendary Charles Parson. The pieces outside were a trio of gongs in the form of hieratically composed tubular metal spires, while inside there were some surprisingly realistic landscape drawings, along with a facsimile of the artist's studio. The exhibit culminated with a group of interactive gazebos — some with audio components — that viewers were meant to walk through. It was a stunning departure for the Golden facility, and one of the best shows Foothills has ever presented.

Leonard Barrett is a jazz singer, which meant he brought new shadings to the familiar songs of Man of La Mancha, an old warhorse of a musical, soaring on the title song and giving "The Impossible Dream" just enough originality to make it unsentimental and fresh. Barely recognizable as Don Quixote in his thick, old-man makeup, yet masterful, powerful and tender, Barrett immersed himself completely in the role, dominating the stage whenever he was on it.

Long Day's Journey Into Night, Eugene O'Neill's most famous masterpiece, is talky and long, and although Paragon's production was pretty good, watching it felt a bit like fulfilling an onerous school assignment or being trapped in a bar by a self-pitying, whiskey-breathed old fart who won't shut up. But Jim Hunt, who played paterfamilias James Tyrone, redeemed the evening with the performance of a lifetime. Sure, the guy was slippery and miserly, but he was also deeply human, and his frustrated love for his wife and their two dysfunctional sons shone through everything he did and said, touching the heart.

Frank Georgianna almost single-handedly kept theater alive in Boulder, founding Boulder Rep and staging classics, new plays and musicals during a period when almost nothing else theatrical was happening in that small town. Then Donovan Marley discovered Georgianna's talents as an actor and director, and for several years he worked with the Denver Center Theatre Company. Devoted to Lee Strasberg's Method approach, Georgianna was an inspired — if often difficult — director; as an actor, he communicated a powerful sense of risk, danger and excitement, always working at the very edge of his craft. When his wife, Ernestine, who had tirelessly supported his theater work, developed Alzheimer's, Georgianna took devoted care of her until her death. He himself succumbed to cancer in December, at the age of 74.

Ever since he moved here from Indiana a few years ago, Matt Fecher has demonstrated that he possesses exceptional sensibilities. Say what you will about Fecher — he strikes some folks as a little too cool for school — the guy definitely has a great set of ears. Witness his knack for pulling in stars of tomorrow for the Monolith Festival, which he co-curates with Josh Baker: Ghostland Observatory? Check. Phoenix? Check. Chromeo? Girl Talk? The Cool Kids? Hood Internet? Check, check, check and mate. Thing is, having admirable tastes as a music fan doesn't necessarily translate to making good music. When Fecher first tried his hand at deejaying under the name Hot to Death, a few high-profile gigs drew the scrutiny of cynics, who assumed he'd only landed the slots because of his stature as a promoter. And while that may have been true to some extent, Fecher has since proven himself worthy with both Animals at Risk — reworking tracks by the Swayback and The Pirate Signal — and, most recently, Honey & the Bear, a randy, tongue-firmly-in-cheek acoustic duo.

Although Eric Heights hangs his hat in L.A. these days, his heart is still very much in the Mile High City, judging from the videos he's produced for so many Denver artists. From his most recent work with Spoke in Wordz and ManeRok to past clips for Ichiban, 3 the Hardway, The Pirate Signal and Deca, Heights has used his artistic vision to help us really see these artists, elevating the scene in the process. His distinctive, high-contrast style helps bring the music to life. And it's not just musicians he's working with, either. Even with all the other projects he's been juggling, he found the time to create a well-shot and -produced promo video for Guerilla Garden Studios. Thanks to Heights, Denver is looking good.

The Fresh Breath Committee lives up to its early promise by delivering an engaging album imbued with a classic feel and brimming with fluid grooves and compelling beats. Featuring a stable of stellar MCs who could easily turn heads on their own, the Fresh Breath crew manages to shine individually without stepping all over one another. Lyrically, the Committee has substance; whether they're grappling with matters of the heart or simply reflecting on life, the wordplay is always thoughtful. And the hooks, propped up by the soul-kissed pipes of Crystal Goldenberg, make the platter even more memorable. While there were a number of outstanding local hip-hop releases over the past year, CPR's excellent production, eye-grabbing artwork and overall continuity made it the clear winner.

The Foot: Great band with a lousy name that doesn't come close to describing the music — unless, of course, it's some sort of subtle reference to an ass-kicking or something. Because then the name makes complete sense. Fortunately, these guys put far more thought, time and effort into their music than their handle, and it shows. Primary Colors, the band's latest effort, available for free download right now, is an utterly delightful listen. These three University of Denver grads clearly have some chops, which is immediately evident from listening to the tasty guitar work and drum fills on the album. And that's to say nothing of the melodies, which are tuneful, and the harmonies, which are superb.

Always a fine band with an exciting live show, Action Packed Thrill Ride became can't-miss by smoothing some of the rough edges and leaning away from country and toward rock and roll. Now the band's shows are as much fun as its name. The group recorded a new EP, Best I've Felt, and offered it for free as a download and at its shows. There's a warm, inclusive feel to the new stuff, and we're confident the band's full-length followup to the very good A Looseleaf Script will be its best yet.

Since the state's smoking ban was introduced several years ago, longtime coffeehouse Paris on the Platte and the adjoining Paris Wine Bar were among the only places where people could legally smoke in the city. Near the end of 2009, though, owner Faye Maguire made the tough decision to go smoke-free. But she did more than clear the air; she procured a cabaret license for the wine bar, took down a wall, built a stage, added a sound system — and started booking a weekly stream of live music and DJs. These days, Paris is smokin' — in a good way.

There's a reason that Dazzle keeps winning awards, a reason that Downbeat magazine rates this spot as one of the top 100 jazz clubs in the world: Dazzle keeps getting it right. Seven days a week, you can count on the club to bring in stellar talent, whether it's a high-caliber national act along the lines of Tom Harrell, Bill Frisell, Brian Blade, Charlie Hunter or Joey DeFrancesco, or one of the city's finest offerings, pulling from the likes of Ron Miles, Fred Hess, Jeff Jenkins, René Marie or the jazz supergroup Convergence. Combine the talent with two comfortable listening rooms, a Colorado-centric bar and some damn fine food (including a great happy-hour menu), and you've got a dazzling jazz club that's definitely world-class.

Nathaniel Rateliff has been an undeniable presence on the local scene for years, from fronting the critically lauded Born in the Flood to, more recently, serving as the driving creative force of the Wheel. With Flood, Rateliff's expressive vocals added a layer of distinction to already stirring indie-rock compositions. When he's on his own, though, his captivating voice — which has stilled more than a few boisterous crowds — showcases the subtler nuances of his songwriting. On the heels of successful stints at last fall's CMJ New Music Marathon in New York City and March's SXSW in Austin, which generated positive notices from Brooklyn Vegan and Vanity Fair, Rateliff has truckloads of momentum going into the release of In Memory of Loss, his Rounder Records debut due out this spring. Finally, Rateliff seems poised to get the national recognition he so richly deserves.