Best Mid-Week Club Night

Off the Wall is a glorious celebration of all things ’80s, without the shlocky retreads that get played ad nauseam. The hump-day affair is helmed by Westword’s own Jason Heller and DJ Al from the Maybellines. The pair’s deep old-school cuts will have you cabbage-patching before you can say OMD…

Best Club Comeback

The space at 60 S. Broadway has weathered many incarnations recently, including 60 South and the short-lived Southpark Tavern. Viable as neither a lesbian club nor a sports bar, it was transformed last year into the Cherry Pit. The format this time? Rock venue. Strangely, the room finally feels like…

Best Dance Club for Dancing

Not to be undone by some 31.8 inches of snow that collapsed its roof during the blizzard of 2003, Vinyl came back bigger and badder than ever last fall. Now boasting what is arguably the best sound system in Colorado, Vinyl is a four-story behemoth of a dance club, with…

Best Dance Club for Hooking Up

With Ted Nugent on the jukebox and silicon-injected blondes peddling trays of Red Bull and Jäger, Brewski’s is the place to let loose your inner Swayze and grab one for the roadhouse. Damn, even the drunk jackass at the bar wearing fake snakeskin boots is getting’ play! When the house…

Best Rock Club

What began as a humble new dive in November 2003 has quickly blossomed into the best room in town. Occupying the space once held by Quixote’s True Blue and the legendary 7 South, the hi-dive offers everything: karaoke, movie screenings, some of the most imaginative DJ nights in town –…

Best Jazz Club

Combining elegance and hep, Dazzle Restaurant & Lounge refracts the elusive quality of Mingus, Monk or maybe even Parker in a soothing atmosphere. From classic to experimental, the joint swings seven days a week. Sheryl Renee pays tribute to the legends on Sunday nights, while Ralph Sharon recalls Ellington, Carmichael…

Best Place to Get Your Jam On

Originally more of a jazz-oriented setup, Dulcinea’s 100th Monkey has hopped branches and now embraces the jam nation with equal enthusiasm. Though images of Miles Davis and John Coltrane have been replaced by shots of Warren Haynes and Bob Weir, the overall vibe remains the same: mellow, welcoming and dedicated…

Best Gay Club

Club Evolution opened last year in the building that was once home to Muddy’s but looked wrecking-ball-worthy in recent years. Fresh from a floor-to-ceiling overhaul, the place is now a gorgeous, two-story jewel of a club with an intriguing split personality. During the day, the upper level welcomes a wi-fi…

Best Large Venue

Sure, it’s pain a for Denver dwellers to drive to Boulder to see a show. But the Fox Theatre makes it impossible not to. Over the past year, the venue has begun snagging a ridiculous amount of noteworthy acts from nearly every sliver of the spectrum: jam, soul, reggae, blues,…

Best Small Venue

There’s no doubt about it: When it comes to booking the best national acts, the Larimer Lounge consistently beats every venue in town. Sometimes, though, the club’s intimacy has worked against it — especially when bands are way too big, in terms of both popularity and sheer size, to fit…

Best All-Ages Venue

All-ages venues have had a spotty history in Denver — mostly due to outmoded liquor laws that make it prohibitive for clubs to admit teens and still serve that rent-paying alcohol. Though Rock Island has long hosted sixteen-and-up dance nights, the club’s kiddie offerings got a boost when Mike Barsch…

Best New Club (Since March 2004)

Before an enormous black-and-white mural of Johnny Cash graced the east-facing facade of Bender’s 13th Avenue Tavern, the run-down, windowless structure was home to a string of short-lived hip-hop and goth-oriented night spots: Tongues Untied, Club Onyx and Club 314. Enter Tyson Murray, upright-bassist for local country powerhouse the Railbenders,…

Best Jukebox

Nothing sucks more than getting drunk to crappy music. But at Capitol Hill mainstay Gabor’s, there are no worries: The bar’s jukebox is stocked with a passel of discs that make the firewater slide down all the easier. From the twang of Patsy Cline and Neil Young to the shiver…

Cut-Ups

The art world is constantly searching out fresh material, which is why there’s always interest in talented artists in their twenties. But another way to come across stuff that’s new is to rediscover artists who’ve been out of sight for a long time — people who are typically in their…

Artbeat

In the center spaces of the Sandy Carson Gallery (760 Santa Fe Drive, 303-573-8585), director William Biety has installed Susan Stinsmuehlen-Amend: Mixed Media, a display of oddball, multi-part pieces made of offbeat materials. The show doesn’t really go with the Jeff Wenzel feature installed across the front of the gallery…

Now Showing

BOCTOK. Steve Antonio is not a former Soviet artist, although his large paintings at Capsule, the gallery part of Pod, might make you think he is one, since these neo-pop compositions depict the first generation of Soviet cosmonauts. The little room at Capsule looks great and is perfectly filled by…

Man, Oh, Man

When I first saw publicity for The Testosterone Monologues at the PS Grille (now PS 1515), I imagined some guy playing with his penis — literally or metaphorically — in a nasty, smoky joint. Surprise number one: PS 1515 is a nice place, well-appointed, shiny wood fittings, roses on the…

Examining 9/11

It takes time for major historic events to find expression in art (a serious body of literature about the Vietnam War didn’t emerge until almost a decade after the peace treaty was signed), and it seems to me that playwrights are just beginning to feel their way into the topic…

Encore

Always…Patsy Cline. Always Patsy Cline is a light, mildly entertaining evening. You get an efficiently evocative set that’s divided into three parts: a down-home apartment; an old-fashioned country bar, complete with jukebox; and, in the center, the stage of the Grand Ole Opry. There are two skilled singer-performers, one of…

Mad About It

The Upside of Anger belongs to Joan Allen, who plays Terry Wolfmeyer, a wife abandoned by her husband and left to pick up the pieces and collect them in a giant bottle of vodka. Terry’s is the cold, composed visage of a woman struggling to keep it together; through her…

Finder’s Fee

Damian Cunningham has the face of an angel — calm, cool blue eyes perched above freckled cheeks and a benevolent grin — which is only appropriate for a seven-year-old boy who speaks with the late, great saints, among them Peter, Joseph, Claire and, of course, Francis of Assisi. Damian sees…

Losing Steam

Katsuhiro Otomo’s Steamboy will be released nationwide in both subtitled and dubbed versions. At the press screening, both were shown simultaneously in neighboring theaters, leaving reviewers to choose which one to see. This critic went with the subtitled cut, not purely for reasons of cinematic snobbery, but mostly because the…