Photo by Helge Øverås via Wikimedia CommonsIf we’re being completely honest, power ballads are responsible for some of the most resonant music-listening experiences in the entire world. They’re a beautiful blend of sentiment and obviousness, a band willfully becoming emotionally available. Everybody makes fun of the power ballad, because sometimes…
Glendale Mayor Mike Dunafon has a story made for viral success: The former rugby player runs an anomaly of a town surrounded on all sides by Denver with his strip-club-owner wife, Debbie Matthews, not so subtly at his side. Now he’s running for governor as an independent candidate on a…
Red Rocks hosted the last concerts of its regular concert series a little over a week ago, signaling the official end of the summer concert season in Colorado. This week on the Backbeat blog, we’re looking back at some of our favorite shows of 2014’s warmest months. Note that we…
Halloween changes as you get older. It starts off with the excitement of candy, which fades into the excitement to get dressed up to get drunk. Once you’re old enough to do that outside someone’s basement, but before you’re old enough to be dressing up kids of your own, Halloween…
The future of the music venue and bar known as The Sidewinder Tavern is currently up in the air. The building housing the establishment is on sale, two years after Sidewinder opened its doors. The hundred-year-old building has been home to numerous bars over the years. Both the business and…
As the sun set over the Denver skyline, a small group gathered at La Raza Park to pay tribute to Isaiah “Ikey” Owens, who passed away in Mexico yesterday while on tour. Though not a Denverite himself, Owens, who has played with the Mars Volta and was on tour with…
Dragondeer is a quickly rising star among Denver bands, playing sets at SXSW and Red Rocks (for Film on the Rocks) earlier this year. But when members Eric Halborg, Cole Rudy, Carl Sorensen and Casey Sidwell stepped into OpenAir’s spacious studio last winter to record a live session, they had…
Editor: Please see the Author’s note on this new photo-driven series at the end of this article. In this second part (read part one here) of the Underground Bands of Denver Music’s Dark Ages, we’re going to use a few bands of the era to spotlight some of the important…
Last summer Yazoo BBQ Company owner Don Hines expanded his 700-square-foot spot at 2150 Broadway, which he opened fourteen years ago, to close to 5,000 square feet, adding to the kitchen and interior dining area, as well as building a patio and rooftop deck. About a month ago, Hines secured…
In the late 1980s, it was nearly unheard of for Japanese underground rock bands to play in the United States. But Shonen Knife, appearing at the Oriental Theater this Thursday, October 16, played a show in Los Angeles in 1989. By then, the band’s music had already spent several years…
Decadence returns to the Colorado Convention Center for two-night New Year’s EDM extravaganza on Tuesday, December 30 and Wednesday, December 31 with Bassnectar, Big Gigantic, Armin Van Buuren, Kaskade and more acts to be announced. Two-day general admission passes, which start at $65, and VIP passes, which start at $135,…
[jump] Editor’s note: Each week, illustrator Noah Van Sciver shares his ongoing story of an 80’s rocker on a road trip through his past with the readers of Backbeat. You can see more of Van Sciver’s work in his new book YOUTH IS WASTED. Last Week’s Episode of Rufus Baxter…
You have to earn a Weezer fan’s trust before he shows you his playlists. First, he’ll make sure you aren’t just parroting somebody else’s post-Pinkerton decline narrative. He’ll want to be sure you don’t believe bassist Matt Sharp secretly wrote both of the band’s two classic albums. He’ll need to…
About a year after Dan King and his business partners took over the Overlook Hotel in Boulder, bassist Mark Diamond started hosting weekly jazz jams in the back of the hotel’s restaurant, before there was a stage set up. Four months later, King started bringing in local and nationally known…
There’s a Marc Maron joke about expensive audio equipment. He wants to buy a $10,000 amp that Jack White has, but decides against it because he feels that every time he’d play his guitar with it, he would just think, “No, this doesn’t sound like $10,000.” It was that joke…
Daniel Pujol, who records and performs under his last name, isn’t one for spectacle or glamour. His music is fueled by repeated guitar hooks and simple lyrics, like, “But I think I did a good job of convincing myself not to blow my brains out against the wall.” Yeah, that’s…
As with last weekend, there’s a decent assortment of acts, from Skrillex at Balch Fieldhouse at CU-Boulder with GTA, Nadastrom and Alesia, to Sondre Lerche, Big Freedia, Shonen Knife and Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey. The rest of our picks are below…
Since Jean-Philippe Failyau opened his first Park Burger location in Platt Park about five years ago, he’s opened a Park Burger in Highland, Park & Co. in Uptown, and a Park Burger in Hilltop. He’s scheduled to open his biggest location yet next month, at 2601 Walnut Street in the…
There’s an insanely eclectic array of shows this weekend. Swallow Hill is celebrating its 35th Anniversary at the Paramount Theatre with Josh Ritter, Brett Dennen and Elle King. Nas performs his classic album, Illmatic at the Paramount. There’s also the New Pornographers, Felice Brothers, the Hot Sardines, War on Drugs…
AKNU (pronounced “anew” and an acronym for A Kind Never Understood) is a Los Angeles-based pop and R&B trio of the brothers Scott — Marquis, Mark and Rayne. Together since 2008, AKNU came out of the early experiences of Marquis and Rayne who, as preteens, performed and toured professionally as…
Ambassador Wolf is used to playing to an audience of massive roaring engines, with the buzz of industrial lights above them. The band, which started as an after-work ensemble for three engineering Ph.D. students, performed in the lobby of their workplace, the Powerhouse Energy Institute in Fort Collins, last weekend…
Josh Ritter (due Saturday, October 11, at the Paramount Theater as part of Swallow Hill’s 35th Anniversary) is a gifted songwriter who has earned a bit of an international following for his imaginatively literate lyrics and simple yet sophisticated observational wisdom. In 2001, Ritter got a big break when he…
