THURS, 8/26 It was August 26, 1964, general-admission tickets were $6.60 apiece, and parents feared the worst. They were utterly certain that when the Beatles took the stage at Red Rocks forty years ago today, the crowd, high on that mysterious evil force called rock and roll, would surely riot,…
SAT, 8/28 “There ain’t much time left,” poet Jim Carroll once said. “You’re born out of this insane abyss and you’re going to fall back into it, so while you’re alive, you might as well show your bare ass.” In a life of mythic proportions, Carroll has followed his own…
On the morning of August 9, Mayor John Hickenlooper stood on the front steps of the City and County Building and made a stunning announcement: The City of Denver had formally committed to building a museum to house the work of abstract-expressionist giant Clyfford Still in exchange for a promise…
Walking into the front space at Pirate: a contemporary art oasis (3659 Navajo Street, 303-458-6058) is like stepping back into the early ’90s when half the shows at the alternative galleries were installations of questionable quality. There’s a reason for this: Wake Up Little Susie: Pregnancy & Power Before Roe…
Colorado Clay. Colorado has been a regional center for ceramics for just over a century. The reason is obvious, at least to gardeners and structural engineers: It’s all that darned clay. This sets up Colorado Clay, which has been held at Golden’s Foothills Art Center since the ’70s, to be…
Bovine Metropolis is a fine, cozy venue, the people who run it are lively and friendly, and I’ve seen good comedy there. But The Mammas & the Papparazzis is simply not ready for prime time, either in terms of material or performance quality. Each and every one of the six…
A year or two ago, the Industrial Arts Theatre Company took over an old movie house on Federal Boulevard. It’s always a good thing when artists move into a funky neighborhood, and the Industrial group is no exception. But the company needs to put more thought and care into the…
Cabaret. Cabaret is grim and distressing, and there’s not a hint of redemption anywhere in it. Quite the contrary. But this is a bloody good production, the kind of production that could — and should — attract all kinds of people who might never think of setting foot in a…
Summer movies don’t get much sillier or more empty-headed than Without a Paddle, and that includes Catwoman and King Arthur. What we have here is a low-wattage buddy flick proposing that a trio of boyhood friends, now thirty years old, can shed the last vestiges of their adolescence by traipsing…
Although most people in the moviegoing universe by now know the differences between an “Alien” and a “Predator,” putting the two beasties together in one movie really ought to necessitate more specific species names for each, since both are technically aliens and predators (they’re from outer space and they hunt…
Until now, the landmark creature feature Godzilla (1954) has never been shown on this side of the Pacific in all its high-budget (but still cheesy) glory. The uncut version, in a new 35-millimeter print straight from the lab in Japan, restores forty minutes of previously unseen footage just in time…
There’s a great door-sized poster of Joe Montana and John Elway from the time the two met in Super Bowl XXIV. The quarterbacks stand back to back, helmetless, clad in old-school 49ers and Broncos uniforms. Though each player cradles a playbook in his arms, both Montana and Elway surreptitiously look…
Thursday, August 19 The folks at Backpacker magazine hit the fourteener right on its tippy-top with their Get Out More! In 2004 Tour: The traveling showcase throws just about everything to do with camping, hiking and adventuring in the great outdoors into its old kit bag. Laura and Eric Poole…
William T. Wiley, art’s great old hippie, has been both revered and ridiculed. A leading proponent of the Bay Area Funk School that also included such San Francisco Art Institute cohorts as Robert Arneson and Roy DeForest, Wiley helped pave the way for art to take itself less seriously. And…
SUN, 8/22 Attend today’s unique African Market at Augustana Lutheran Church, and you will never again think of Africans as a generic people. That’s the goal of the event, says Phil Gazley of Lutheran Family Services, a sponsoring organization that provides resettlement services to refugee groups from around the globe:…
SAT, 8/21 Watching the hellish Eco-Challenge Adventure Races on television may have kept some would-be daredevils frozen to their couches. Anyone tempted by the extreme concept but hoping to avoid undue pain (leeches, anyone?) would be better served by today’s Denver Oyster Urban Eco-Adventure Race. The event gets going at…
WED, 8/25 Denver’s El Centro Su Teatro proudly traces its roots back to the 1960s theatrical-political actions of Luis Valdez and El Teatro Campesino, which supported César Chavez and the United Farm Workers grape boycotts, and later evolved into the prototypical Chicano theater group. Such solidarity is just part of…
FRI, 8/20 Play all the folk music you want; it’s no good without the folks. To that end, Swallow Hill Music Association is putting on the Swallow Hill Folk Festival, its annual gathering of pickers and fans dedicated to the perpetuation of true American roots music. Four Mile Historic Park,…
Colorado has been a regional center for ceramics for just over a century. The reason is obvious, at least to gardeners and structural engineers: It’s all that darned clay. This readily available natural product led to what I call a “clay rush” beginning in the 1890s. In the late-nineteenth and…
The Sandra Phillips Gallery (744 Santa Fe Drive, 303-573-5969) has kept a pretty low profile since it opened last summer. Though I’d heard of it, I didn’t have any idea where it was. In retrospect, this is strange because it’s right across the street from Space and just a few…
Dots, Blobs and Angels. Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art is presenting an enormous solo that is dedicated to the late David Rigsby, an artist who played a big part in the local art scene in the ’70s and ’80s. The exhibit was organized by director Cydney Payton, who installed it…
Of this summer’s three productions, The Comedy of Errors is the one most in tune with the Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s slogan, “Shakespeare Under the Stars.” It’s funny, bright, relaxed and magical, the perfect amusement for a soft summer night. Comedy of Errors is an early work based on the comedy…
