Loyal fans know that when Green Day comes to town, Billie Joe Armstrong will invite some eleven-year-old kid up to play his guitar every goddamn time. He’s been doing it since the punk outfit started packing arenas in 1994. And we’ve not grown tired of it, anymore than we’ve grown tired of the classic power-chord driven songs.
The new Velorama Festival is like a craft cocktail, pairing seemingly-disparate but intriguing components. In this case, those ingredients are a music festival, a professional-level bike race, and a flea market. The race c
omponent began today in Colorado Springs, but the festival itself will descend on RiNo Friday the 11. Here are six tips on how to navigate (and what to head to at) this weekend at Velorama:
Blame it on Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings movies or even Harry Potter, fantasy, a once-geeky literary obsession, is now one of the hippest genres in pop culture.
Your guide to Denver concert announcements.
Mueller v. Swift et. al, the largest celebrity trial Denver has seen since Michael Jackson’s plagiarism case in 1994, began its first day of testimony after a protracted jury selection. In case you missed it, the trial centers around former 98.5 KYGO DJ David Mueller (known on-air on his morning show as “Jackson”) allegedly groping Taylor Swift’s butt while posing for a photo before her 2013 Red concert at the Pepsi Center. Mueller sued Swift, her mother Andrea Swift, and Swift’s radio coordinator Frank Bell for around three million dollars in damages after he was fired from his job shortly after the incident, and Swift countersued for $1.
It was 2015, six weeks before the soul-pop act Sarah and the Meanies was scheduled to leave on tour. The group’s guitarist, who had taken the reins of the band, sent his bandmates an email that said he was quitting.
Denverites know there is no better place to spend a summer night than in the fresh air, on a patio, with a drink in hand.
When drummer Jeep MacNichol moved to Denver in 2012, he had two CDs in his car: Minor Threat by the hardcore punk band Minor Threat and The Best of I-Roy by ’70s dancehall artist I-Roy. These two seemingly incompatible sounds provided the inspiration for what would become his next project, The Plates.
The electronic-music duo Big Gigantic is donating a computer lab to the youth music-education nonprofit Youth on Record.
The Colorado Music Hall of Fame will induct its seventh class on Sunday, August 13, at Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre, at a concert, the Rocky Mountain Way, to honor Colorado-tied artists and music-industry movers and shakers.
Come September, Music Gear Guys will be closing up shop. The store’s owner can’t afford rent in the Baker area anymore and says he’s being priced out.
While Westword has grieved the Insane Clown Posse’s Gathering of the Juggalo for moving from Denver to Oklahoma City, we are happy to note that the horror-core hip-hoppers from Detroit will be bringing their act to Colorado in September.
Phil Bianchi, who died on July 14 at the age of 51, helped make Sancho’s Broken Arrow, the bar he opened with his two brothers in 2000, a Cheers for Deadheads. He would give customers nicknames and make sure they knew they were welcome there.
Wade Bowen and Randy Rogers don’t mind being the opening act for country singer Miranda Lambert on her Highway Vagabond Tour stop at Red Rocks, on August 8-9.
Country singer Miranda Lambert is at Red Rocks for two nights this week with Randy Rogers and Wade Bowen opening, while Green Day headlines Fiddler’s Green on Wednesday.
If Axl Rose had worked a civil servant job all these years, he could be retiring early. And if he’d kept pushing the boundaries of his music into the future, he might still be performing songs, in his mid-fifties, that are as pivotal to today’s culture as the old songs were to kids growing up in the ‘80s and ‘90s.
Madchild has been in the hip-hop game for eighteen years. This Canadian rapper found great success in both the United States and his home country. He is a former member of the group Swollen Members and began his solo career as Madchild back in 2012, after hitting a low point battling his addiction with Oxycontin.
John Moreland makes his words count. His bluesy folk-rock with a country twang resonates in the chests of listeners, partly because of his deep and raw voice and partly because of his highly personal and honest lyrics.
The singers in Face Vocal Band have been making rock music with their mouths for fifteen years in Colorado.
Jerry Garcia 75th Birthday Concert, featuring Bob Weir & the Campfire Band with Melvin Seals, Jackie LaBranch, Gloria Jones, Oteil Burbridge, Kamasi Washington and more, is tonight at Red Rocks while Steve Earle & the Dukes return to the Boulder Theater.
Seventeen years ago, Michael Weintrob was a student at Colorado State University and the house photographer at the Aggie Theatre in Fort Collins. While he was taking portraits of the Derek Trucks Band backstage, he asked the bass player to do something crazy: put his bass down his shirt.
Steve Earle didn’t just admire the outlaw country movement that was dominated by guys like Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. Earle was part of it.
