The eight best shows in Denver this weekend

The Fourth of July might mean fireworks, hot dogs and apple pie to some folks, around the parts music will be a big part of that. If you’re down with a 90-minute drive, there’s the South Park Music Festival, which kicks off today and runs through Saturday while Umphrey’s McGee…

Five must-see Colorado outdoor venues to check out this summer

It’s summer in Colorado which means it’s time to enjoy the outdoors before winter arrives again and the beautiful green fades to a snowy white. Summer also means the Denver-area concert calendar is packed, and thankfully, you can enjoy both mother nature and music in the same place this summer…

Denver musicians sing the praises of their peers

Now that we’ve wrapped up the 2014 Westword Music Showcase and awards ceremony, we’re looking forward to spending the next twelve months getting our hands – and ears – on as much Colorado music as possible. We asked a number of local artists to talk about the peers they admire…

The South Park Music Festival survival guide

Thousands of people will descend on the tiny town(s) of South Park and Fairplay this patriotic weekend for the South Park Music Festival. Whether you’re a pro at camping music festivals or a newbie who only bought tickets because you didn’t realize South Park was a real town, there are…

Rufus Baxter fails to sell merch

[jump] Editor’s note: Each week, illustrator Noah Van Sciver shares his sunny outlook with the readers of Backbeat. You can see more of Van Sciver’s work and even buy it on his website. • BACKBEAT’S GREATEST HITS • – The fifty best rap lyrics of all time – The ten…

The five best shows in Denver this week

There are some excellent shows in town this week as we lead up to Fourth of July weekend, including Fitz & the Tantrums two-night stand at the Ogden Theatre, Sarah McLachlan at Red Rocks, as well as Zeds Dead and Dada Life co-headlining at Red Rocks…

The eleven best shows in Denver this weekend

The mighty King Rat turns twenty this weekend and will celebrate with a pair of unusual shows at Three Kings. If you go to nothing else this weekend, we advise you go there. But we understand if you go to Red Rocks instead for Widespread Panic’s annual weekend getaway in…

Photos: The 2014 Westword Music Award Winners

We’ve just announced the winners of this year’s Westword Music Awards. See the winners in each of our forty categories in the post that follows — the names of the artists who came out on top of the public vote are bolded and enlarged. We took a few photos of…

Photos: The face-painting mastery of KISS fans

It is no surprise at this point that KISS fans do not come unprepared. Still, a flock spanning three generations spent hours getting that eye-star just right before last night’s show at the Pepsi Center. Photographer Aaron Thackeray was there to commemorate their work. Here are our favorite face-painted KISS…

How Bob Marley was sold to the suburbs

Bob Marley wasn’t a particularly successful commercial artist during his lifetime. This week’s Backbeat feature explores how he became a household name around the world with the help of one greatest-hits compilation…

In defense of silent crowds at shows

When Gregory Alan Isakov and Nathaniel Rateliff played The Aggie in Ft. Collins earlier this year, the audience was silent. The only time the crowd made a peep during the music was when a diabetic girl fainted in the audience. It was weird. It was beautiful. It may have been…

Nick Cave is the master of American mythology

When Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds went into “Stagger Lee” from the 1996 album Murder Ballads, it was an iconic moment of an evening of music in which the band took the tradition of American folk mythology and breathed into it a larger-than-life electricity. Cave brought raging emotional intensity…

Highlights from the Westword Music Showcase

The twentieth annual Westword Music Showcase brought over 11,000 people to the Golden Triangle to watch more than 150 bands of every possible variety. Our writers and photographers saw excellent lunacy and affecting songs — the bands and artists of Denver have built a music scene that contains the best…

Eleven things that make the Telluride Bluegrass Festival magical

As the town of Telluride changes hands from tourists back to locals, and “festivarians” everywhere and finally cut off the last vestiges of Festivaria, including their wristbands, we look back at one of Colorado’s most popular music festivals. The list of the best things about the Telluride Bluegrass Festival is…