Concerts

Randall Frazier has been running sound at concerts and engineering records in and around Denver for two decades. As a sound engineer and talent buyer at Walnut Room for nearly ten years, Frazier left his mark on Denver’s underground scene.

Encountering masses of intoxicated young adults stumbling along Larimer Street between 27th and 28th streets isn’t all that uncommon on weekends — especially since that part of RiNo is packed with trendy bars including the Meadowlark, Cold Crush, Nocturne and Larimer Lounge. The difference on Saturday, May 21, was that drunk people…

This is all getting horribly familiar, isn’t it? We’ve lost another one — a great musician and songwriter taken far too young. We’ll never know quite why Chris Cornell, of Soundgarden and AudioSlave, made the decisions that he did, but it’s not for us to judge. Here are ten of his best songs.

Project Pabst returns to the RiNo Neighborhood on Saturday, May 20 with a weighty lineup that includes Ice Cube, Phantogram, Danny Brown, Kurt Vile & the Violators, STRFK, while the Five Points Jazz Festival and the Global Dub Festival (featuring Flux Pavilion, Illenium and more) is at Red Rocks on Saturday as well.

When Art Alexakis’s Everclear formed in 1991 in Portland, Oregon, just three hours from Seattle, the alt-rock band was inevitably lumped in with the grunge scene. And sure, there were superficial similarities, from Alexakis’s gaunt demeanor and drug stories to the fashion, but there was very little grunge in Everclear’s…

Are you needing to put a little funk in your step? The Colorado band the Motet, which will be headlining Red Rocks for its second time on Friday, June 2, is premiering its new track, “Supernova,” with Westword.

Roughly two decades ago, Andy Palmer gave up music to practice law.

Chris Cornell, the 52-year-old frontman of Soundgarden and AudioSlave, died the evening of Wednesday, May 17, hours after performing at Detroit’s Fox Theatre, reported multiple outlets Thursday. Soundgarden was slated to play Denver’s Fillmore Auditorium on Monday, May 22.

On Midnight Oil’s politically charged 1978 self-titled debut, singer Peter Garrett pounded his musical pulpit, throughout the band’s intense, guitar-dominated songs.

Paramore, which released its new album After Laughter last week, brings its Tour Two to Bellco Theatre on, Thursday, September 21 with Best Coast opening. Tickets ($38.50-$59.50) go on sale on Wednesday, May 24, at 10 a.m. Mary J. Blige’s Strength of a Woman North American tour stops at Bellco Theatre on Wednesday, September 6. Lalah Hathaway will open. Tickets ($49-$150) go on sale on Friday, May 19, at 10 a.m. HARD Red Rocks returns to the venue on Friday, July 28, with Dillon Francis, DJ Mustard, Destructo, AC Slater, Wax Motif and Kittens. Tickets ($49.75-$99.75) go on sale on Friday, May 19, at 10 a.m.

Fans of Emmy Award-winning reality show RuPaul’s Drag Race know all too well the legend of drag oddity Alaska Thunderfuck whose bizarre take on the classic art form charmed audiences as she broke all the rules. Well, buckle up, Denver. Thunderfuck is coming back to town this Saturday with a batch of songs and a live band, and it’s going to be a bumpy night.

French composer Jean-Michel Jarre’s debut album, Deserted Palace, was released in 1972. That’s a decade before Juan Atkins and Rick Davis formed Detroit techno pioneer Cybotron and, frankly, more than a decade before anyone really considered electronic music a “thing.”

Red Rocks will be playing host for two nights of electronic music when Colorado-raised EDM producer Derek Vincent Smith, better known as Pretty Lights, brings “An Episodic Festival” to Red Rocks.

Westword Music Showcase is right around the corner, and the lineup keeps getting better. Earlier this year, we announced the national acts gracing our main stage – Shakey Graves, the Revivalists, Cut Copy, Bob Moses, COIN and A R I Z O N A – as well as a handful of the locals who will be playing. Today, we’re announcing fifty more local acts who will perform at venues throughout the Golden Triangle.

Waiting in a line that spanned almost two Boulder blocks before Primus’s sold-out show at the Fox Theatre last night – part of the renowned Boulder venue’s twentieth-anniversary celebration – I heard a guy in his mid 20s tell a friend incredulously, “My cousin said he’s never heard of Primus. He didn’t even know fucking ‘John The Fisherman!’”

Katy Perry just announced her new album The Witness is coming out on June 9, and to celebrate, she is headed on the road for a world arena tour. Lucky for us, this will include a Denver stop on November 26.

Have you ever been stuck waiting to go through security at Red Rocks Amphitheatre? Depending on what time you choose to venture inside, the security line can seem to stretch on for an eternity. Many people grumble about security’s snail-pace, but the reality is the speed of the line depends on all of us.

In order to understand Flint Eastwood, you must first understand Detroit. And not the crumbling and derelict caricature of Detroit splattered across the national news, but the real Detroit.

It’s a great week for fans of Les Claypool as he’ll be with Primus at the Fox Theatre for a sold-out show tonight, at Red Rocks tomorrow, and with Sean Lennon as part of the the Claypool-Lennon Delirium on Wednesday.