The Broke Music Fan’s Guide to Denver: The Internet

While we would never recommend illegally downloading somebody’s art, the Internet is still a veritable garden of riches for the broke music fan. If you’re reading this, you’re online already. All you have to do is navigate. 1. Youtube. Youtube is a solid place to start to get your fix…

How Legendary British Punk Band Buzzcocks Almost Never Existed

Steve Diggle didn’t really intend to be in Buzzcocks, a band that, along with the Clash, the Sex Pistols, the Jam and the Damned, formed the nucleus of England’s punk explosion four decades ago. In fact, Diggle might have ended up in a different band altogether. In the summer of…

The Kills Held Nothing Back in a Flood of Rock-and-Roll Power

Blasting out the gates with “No Wow,” The Kills spent little time with preambles and set the stage for a ferocious energy that lasted for the rest of the show. The Kills aren’t really known for low-key shows, but this performance was especially generous. Even with the drummer, the keyboard…

Ten Great, Vanished Denver Music Venues — 2016 Edition

Denver has been home to many music venues that have had major impact on the local scene and, to some extent, the national music scene. A list of those noteworthy concert venues that are now gone could easily be five times as long. Below are ten clubs, studios and spaces…

Florence + the Machine Brought the Love to Denver

The Pepsi Center is a cavernous place to watch a concert. There are arenas like it all around the world. Basketball jerseys hang from the incredibly high ceiling, concrete stairs run top to bottom, and the sound can echo all around the joint. On Thursday evening, however, Florence Welch’s voice…

Chromeo Adds Dap-Kings Horn Section to Red Rocks Show

Chromeo has been at the music thing for about ten years now, pumping out one synthy, upbeat and dancey track after another. You might think it’s effortless for the duo. But according to the group’s lead vocalist Dave “Dave 1” Macklovitch, Chromeo’s aesthetic isn’t effortless at all. He and the…

Trawling the Small Print for Denver’s Day of Rock Lineup

Editor’s Note: Trawling the Small Print is a new feature wherein we squint hard at big festival lineups and spotlight a few gems that may have been hidden below the headliners. Saturday is the Day of Rock in Denver, a one-day festival this Saturday, May 28, aims to benefit Amp…

Jamie Hince of the Kills on Taking the Trans-Siberian Express

Not so many years ago, Jamie Hince, guitarist and electronics-and-production wizard for the Kills, might have had to give up playing guitar completely. After complications from cortisone injections into his knuckles to treat the strain of playing guitar so much, Hince had to have multiple surgeries and a tendon removed…

Air Guitar Elevated to Performance Art — Yes, Really

When this scribe was a blossoming wee headbanger in the late 1980s and early ’90s, air guitar was what we did instead of dance when we went to clubs underage. It was the tribal ritual for the terminally uncool — those of us without any sense of rhythm and next-to-no…

How Much Did You Hate Prom? Do It Over at Denver’s Goth Prom

Desiree Albee has hosted her music-and-fetish night, Repent, for nearly two years, but she’s always known that the event represented only one flavor of Denver’s goth scene. In a flash of inspiration, she conceived of an event that would bring together the city’s various goth-themed nights and include as many…

Doseone’s New Band GO DARK Broke Into an Abandoned Naval Base

When the duo GO DARK released its first EP on Halloween 2014, it was speculated that one member was prolific rapper and beat producer Doseone. Eventually it was revealed to be true that the pioneer of alternative hip-hop had teamed up with newcomer Ash, who had never before been part…

Latin-Ska Group Roka Hueka Drops Politically Charged Party Soundtrack

Three years after forming, the Denver-based Latin ska band Roka Hueka will release its self-produced debut album Red at Ophelia’s Electric Soapbox on Saturday, May 28, with fellow local Latin-Caribbean fusion acts Quilombo and ArteCura opening. Mixing influences and transcending borders is a recurring theme for Roka Hueka, in both…

My Morning Jacket Embraced the Spirits of Panoramic House Studio

“I think we search for spaces that aren’t really meant to be recorded in and have tons of character and charm,” says My Morning Jacket drummer Patrick Hallahan. From the beginning, MMJ has recorded largely in unconventional spaces and situations. The band recorded its first three albums on the family…