What’s In Your Top Ten Concerts of 2007?

In compiling this slide show of 2007 concerts that were not to be missed this year, I realized the list is severely lacking. This year I saw Sunset Rubdown at hi-dive and it changed my life. I watched Elvis Perkins transform his recorded acoustic balladry into a jaw-dropping live performance…

Mile High Music and Arts Festival Update

Update: Click here and here for live blog coverage of the entire event. As reported in this space last month, AEG Live, led by Chuck Morris, who heads up the company’s Rocky Mountain division, announced plans to produce a multi-day, inner city concert series next summer. On Tuesday, the concert…

Moovers and Shakers 2007

Earlier this year, I marveled at how my entire iPod playlist was devoted exclusively to the music made here. That was back in February, and considering that we were only two months into the new year, that might’ve seemed like a moment of breathless hyperbole. At the time, the ink…

Nobody Does It Better

Long before I knew any better, I was a Raiders fan, a fact that riled most of my Broncos-loving kinfolk. Everyone except my dad viewed my inexplicable fandom as something just a notch below heresy. But while Pops didn’t exactly share my zeal, he dug the fact that I was…

Ziggie’s

In his intro to “Constipation Blues,” Screamin’ Jay Hawkins talks about how most people record songs about love, heartbreak, loneliness and being broke, while nobody writes songs about real pain. Then, after a few bars of slow blues, Hawkins starts grunting and groaning like he’s trying to shit a shotput…

White Trash Blistmas and more

It’s Christmas time again in the Mile High City. That means you can count on a few things: Festive, postcard-worthy lights adorning the city and county building, seeing a proliferation of Santa hats on drunken weekend warriors from LoDo to SoCo and, of course, the return of Blister 66’s annual…

45 Second Reviews

Why give anything an intent listen and fair assessment when I can review 5 albums in a matter of 225 seconds? Bullet for My Valentine Scream Aim Fire EP 20-20 Entertainment 00:30-01:15 of “Eye of the Storm” ARG! This is really, really, really bad metal. I believe that someone from…

Planes Mistaken for Stars Final Flight

Just received word from the fine folks at Soda Jerk Presents that the venerable Planes Mistaken for Stars will be playing its last show ever on Saturday, February 16 at the Marquis Theater in the company of friends Mustangs & Madras and Kingdom of Magic. Keep checking Soda Jerk’s site…

Over the Weekend … Kneebody @ Dazzle

Kneebody Saturday, December 15, 2007 Dazzle Better than: Watching High Noon with the sound turned off. “This is the crazy set,” Kneebody bassist Kaveh Rastegar alerted the audience before the band embarked on its second set with “High Noon,” a new song by trumpeter Shane Endsley, who was inspired by…

Denver Does Terrible Band Names

The always awesome Onion AV Club has released their annual list of the worst band names of the year, and sweet nougaty center of fuck are there some unspeakable atrocities of names on it. Now, I could spend a few hundred words heaping my own dose of mockery on such…

Friday Rap-Up

This may be Jay-Z’s last year at Def Jam Right now Jay-Z is celebrating a pretty good year as CEO/President of Def Jam. His label garnered 26 Grammy nominations last week, his artists Rihanna and Ne-Yo are blowing up worldwide and his own project, American Gangster, is topping year-end lists…

The Late Ike Turner Speaks

Ike Turner, who died of thus far unreported causes on December 12 in Southern California, was one of the most divisive figures in popular music. “Rocket 88,” which plenty of observers peg as the first-ever rock-and-roll song, was largely his creation despite it being credited to Jackie Brenston, and he…

Stolen Moments

This fall has certainly been eventful for members of the Photo Atlas. First, they parted ways with drummer Devon Shirley in the middle of an East Coast tour, and then word came down last week that Rob Stevenson, head of the act’s Stolen Transmission imprint, had been handed his walking…

Will Hoge

There are moments where it would be real nice to sleep in your own bed,” admits Will Hoge with a rapid-fire Southern drawl. “But that doesn’t pay for shit, so I have to stay out here and work. No, we’re fortunate to get to play music for a living. Every…

Ninth & Lincoln Orchestra

In high school, Tyler Gilmore had widely varied tastes. The burgeoning composer was into acts like the Smashing Pumpkins and Aphex Twin, but he was equally fixated on transcribing Miles Davis solos to play on his trumpet. After college, Gilmore attended a series of summer workshops taught by Maria Schneider…

Suzy Bogguss

Suzy Bogguss was poised to be country music’s next big thing. After winning the CMA’s Horizon Award in 1992, she sold more than two and a half million albums on the strength of six top-ten singles. But Bogguss’s eclectic and ever-evolving musical stylings left her stranded somewhere outside country’s mainstream…

Hate Fuck Trio

Why has the Hate Fuck Trio been largely inactive for most of this millennium? Jon and Sam DeStefano, the sibling tandem behind one of the best Denver bands of the ’90s, aren’t telling — or rather, they are, but their responses in advance of their upcoming reunion date are highly…

Sanity Claus

The slump that’s afflicting the music industry has apparently bypassed the holiday genre, since nearly forty new or reissued yuletide releases arrived at our door this year. We were happy to receive some of the discs reviewed below. The rest should have been returned to sender. A slew of CDs…

Harrys

In one of my favorite Charles Bukowski poems, “The Insane Always Loved Me,” he wrote about how the unwanted, cowards and misanthropes would often attach themselves to him. I can relate. I’ve had many a nut sit down next to me at a bar, like the guy who made bird…