The Best Concerts in Denver This Weekend

It’s a big weekend for hip-hop with KS 107.5 Summer Jam XX, featuring Migos, Ludacris, Kid Ink, Post Malone and more, happening tonight at Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre, while Kendrick Lamar headlines the Pepsi Center tomorrow with Travis Scott and D.R.A.M. opening.

A$AP Mob, Cat Power and Every New Denver Concert Announcement

A$AP Mob, featuring Featuring A$AP Rocky, A$AP Twelvy, A$AP Nast and A$AP Ant, headlines 1STBANK Center on Friday, November 3 with Key! and Cozy Boys opening. Cat Power plays an intimate show at the Marquis Theater on Saturday, August 19; tickets ($38.50-$42) are on sale now. Gary Numan, who has a new album slated for a September release, returns to the Gothic Theatre on Monday, December 18; tickets ($25-$85).

3LAU Parties as Hard as Gronk, Works Even Harder

Justin Blau, who’s better known by his stage name 3LAU, slumps on a black sofa in front of empty lockers. The visiting-team locker room at Mile High Stadium isn’t familiar territory for the DJ; the only thing moderately athletic about him are his black Yeezy sneakers.

AFI Doesn’t Sit Still

Though AFI, or A Fire Inside, formed while singer Davey Havok and long-departed members Mark Stopholese and Vic Chalker were still in high school, and though the first two albums that the band recorded (1995’s Answer That and Stay Fashionable and the following year’s Very Proud of Ya) are certainly efforts to be proud of, the sound of AFI that we know today really started to take shape in ’97 with the Shut Your Mouth and Open Your Eyes record.

Amadou & Mariam Met in Mali at a School for the Blind and Toured With U2

Amadou & Mariam, who headline at the Boulder Theater on July 29, may be the planet’s unlikeliest dance music icons: He’s 62, she’s 58, and they’ve spent decades as both musical and romantic partners following their 1975 meeting at the Institute for the Young Blind in their native Mali, Africa. But if you can listen to Bofou Safou, a remix-heavy EP released in advance of La Confusion, an album due on September 22, without moving, it’s probably because you’re distracted by the priest giving you last rites.

Modern English Is Getting Even Wilder

Modern English is best known for its hit single “I Melt With You,” from the 1982 album After the Snow. The song was in heavy rotation in the early days of MTV and served as an anthem for those struggling to find joy and hope in the dismal age of Thatcher and Reagan.

The Best Concerts in Denver This Week

It’s a great week for fans of ’80s rock, with the Retro Futura tour stopping at the Bellco Theatre tonight that includes Howard Jones, Paul Young, the English Beat, Men Without Hats, Katrina (Ex-Katrina and the Waves) and Modern English, while Violent Femmes and Echo and the Bunnymen co-headlining at the Fillmore Auditorium on Tuesday.

Could Levitt Pavilion’s Grand Opening Have Been Grander?

Confession: Me and my kid fled the downpour Thursday, on opening night of Denver’s newest outdoor venue Levitt Pavilion, long before the headliner, Slim Cessna’s Auto Club played. We were viscerally underprepared: no umbrellas, no raincoats, not even a cotton hoodie – just t-shirts and jeans.