How SnowBall Went Downhill

Last week, tickets went on sale for the Minus Zero Festival, which will take place April 2-3 in Winter Park, Colorado, a mountain music festival featuring the “world’s biggest electronic music acts” like Diplo and Kaskade. Upon hearing this announcement, we couldn’t help but think of Snowball, the EDM festival…

Guess Who’s Playing 4/20 in Denver?

Snoop Dogg and Future headline the third annual Merry Jane Wellness Retreat on 4/20 at Fiddler’s Green with Kevin Gates, Tory Lanez and Raven Felix opening the show.  Tickets ($55-$85) go on sale on Friday, February 19 at 10 a.m.  Ryan Adams headlines Red Rocks Wednesday, August 17 with Kurt…

This Is the Year I Stop Caring About Metric

I hope, in years to come, to be proved wrong about Emily Haines and her band, but last night Metric’s disjointed live show at the Fillmore Auditorium left me disappointed. Looking at Metric’s discography, perhaps the live show’s lack of coherence is understandable. The band’s early music landed right between the…

Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine Isn’t a Dick

Rock and roll has never experienced a shortage of polarizing characters, those individuals whose music we might adore but, when you hear them talk, they just sound like assholes. Maybe they deliberately pull an Axl Rose and delay going on stage for two hours, leaving the fans waiting around like cattle. Or maybe…

Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath Went Hard Into That Good Night

Across the gulf of 46 years since its first eponymous album was released on February 13, 1970, it might be difficult to imagine how Black Sabbath’s music could have seemed evil and dark. But last night, when it was actually happening — those familiar bells, sounds of rain and Tony…

Erykah Badu Elevated and Electrified Valentine’s Day at the Ogden

In the words of Erykah Badu, the concept of a “double bind” is “two conflicting ideas…[which can result in] transcendence, an existence or experience beyond the normal or physical level.” Though this phrase is usually applied to irreconcilable differences, in Badu’s hands it becomes an opportunity for transcendence, words that…

Dr. Dog Digs Out Few New Tricks

By the time Dr. Dog finished touring in support of its 2008 breakthrough Fate, the quirky Philadelphia indie-rock quintet had become what the Band was to musicians in the late ’60s and early ’70s: the group everyone would give a limb to be in. It was the authenticity, the seemingly…

Grown, Sober, Reunited — and Still Ween

As if it hadn’t been four years, and a whole lot of drama, since the last time Ween performed, Aaron Freeman—who had shocked his bandmates in 2012 by announcing, in a Rolling Stone interview, that Ween was over and he’d no longer go by Gene Ween—smiled and told a sold-out,…

Ween, Erykah Badu and the Best Concerts in Denver This Weekend

Ween, who last played in Denver four years ago, reunite for three shows this weekend at 1STBANK Center while the New Mastersounds play two night at Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom, the Flaming Lips are the Belly Up Aspen and Erykah Badu is at the Ogden Theatre on Valentine’s Day. See the…

Open Music Session: Anthony Russo Band Rolls Out the Blues

Anthony Russo Band performed at the September edition of the Open Music Sessions, the free monthly concert and party hosted by Denver’s Open Media Foundation. Fresh off a tour behind Curtis Hawkins’ LP South Clarkson Street, the local trio — which includes Hawkins himself on bass — brought its blend of…

Dead & Company, Phish and Every New Concert Announcement

Dead & Company, which features Grateful Dead members Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann and Bob Weir, as well as John Mayer and others, will headline Folsom Field on Saturday, July 2 and Sunday July 3. They’ll be the first shows at University of Colorado’s 50,000-capacity stadium since Dave Matthews Band’s show there in…