By Jack Spencer In my years attending punk and metal shows, often as the only one with a pen and pad in the middle, I’ve noticed that there are a few unwritten rules when participating in a mosh pit. The seemingly amorphous fits of aggression that explode from the center…
This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. To commemorate the occasion, organizer Planet Bluegrass is releasingTelluride Bluegrass Festival: 40 Years of Festivation, a book full of photos and essays by various artists who’ve performed there. We’ve reprinted the introduction, written by Telluride’s longtime master of ceremonies,…
Travel agencies may be dying off, but 420 EDM Tours has found a niche that even websites like Orbitz and Priceline just aren’t privy to yet: raging. The company has planned a series of bus-based tours that include stops at Colorado landmarks, tickets to concerts and, of course, a very…
The Westword Music Showcase is next Saturday, June 21. It’s our annual love letter to Denver music, with over 140 local bands playing. All of them are nominees for Westword Music Awards, and together we hope the two efforts will help a few people discover some new things about the…
The reach of the Telluride Bluegrass Festival extends down the mountains, across the country and around the globe. The weekend-long celebration of acoustic instruments, immaculate songwriting and untamed nature has brought big-name artists from around the world to its stage. Next weekend, Telluride Bluegrass will celebrate its fortieth anniversary, with…
It may not be unusual for a metal show to push the Ogden Theatre to full capacity, but any promoter is facing an uphill task in selling a Monday-night show. Still, Denver metal fans rallied together for Meshuggah and Between the Buried and Me with no concern for work, bedtimes…
The budding blossoms of summer were on full display at Stoney’s last Friday evening. ‘Twas a night for banishing the wintertime sads and celebrating the upcoming Westword Music Showcase. If you weren’t there, here’s the cool stuff you missed:…
Performers in all spheres often discuss the importance of ritual — but especially in music, where a pre-concert ordinance may be more significant to the band than we ever know as observers. One might think that rituals are reserved for witches and baseball players, but we have evidence that musicians…
The Global Glow music festival premiered over the weekend in Evergreen. The festival was created to showcase the CU Denver’s music program and give faculty a space to showcase their musical and artistic work. Todd Reid, Percussion Area Coordinator at the University of Colorado Denver played his iPad alongside the…
It’s the kind of week where we’ve got fourteen recommendations below and we’ll be spending this introduction talking about the ones we had to leave off: Tech N9ne is in town again/still in town, playing in Colorado Springs. Greater Than Collective’s Social Club at Lannie’s Clocktower has its June installment…
Not too long after the Hard Rock Café opened in 1998 on the 16th Street Mall, the Fray played one of its first gigs there. John Lindsay, Hard Rock Denver’s senior sales and marketing manager, said the guys in the band walked up the mall begging people to come to…
It is, as even casual observers of this section and/or billboards in the vicinity of the Golden Triangle will be aware, Westword Music Showcase season. I say season because it’s not just the festival itself (but: June 21 on that). It’s also about the related Westword Music Awards, which give…
Hugh Evans used to have three indoor soccer fields housed in about 80,000 square feet where heran the Colorado Clash soccer club. There was also an 18,000 square-foot party room where large bands from Mexico would sometimes play. But after the building was bought by some pot growers and Evans…
Backbeat’s goal has always been to get more people involved in the Denver music scene and to give the people who already are some things to think about or laugh about or generally just spend time with. That mission has evolved over the years as our resources have, and starting…
It’s a good one, folks: KS 107.5 FM’s Summer Jam brings hip-hop royalty to Englewood tonight, and most of the people there will probably be capping off their weekends with The Fray at Red Rocks on Sunday. There’s more: Dragondeer, subject of this week’s Backbeat feature, will release its long-awaited…
Film on the Rocks kicked off its fifteenth season on Tuesday with a screening of Caddyshack. As at all of these, a couple Colorado bands played opening sets. We won’t make you wait for a verdict: It is spectacularly awesome to have one of those spots. There are down sides…
A Colorado summer can be short, but there are plenty of ways to make it sweet, especially if you pack it with as many festivals, road trips and patios as possible. We’ve picked out ten music festivals sure to give you the flavor of the state’s musical offerings — everything…
Eric Halborg is best known in Denver music for his work fronting the Swayback, a hard-driving rock band that has toured the country and attained unusual success here at home. He’s got another band these days; called Dragondeer, it’s an outlet for the kinds of blues and jam bands he…
Fantasia 2014 is billing itself — at least on Facebook, anyway — as a “performance festival.” But it’s not a big, multi-stage summertime throwdown for thousands. Fantasia 2014 is an intimate experience, one that co-curators Colin Ward and Stefan Herrera hope will draw people to fest location Rhinoceropolis, especially those…
It’s Westword Music Showcase month, and today we have a schedule for you. In case this is unfamiliar territory: For the twentieth year, we’ll celebrate the wide array of Denver’s music scene with a music festival right here in the city. The thing has grown over the decades, and this…
Ed. We got a dispatch from this weekend’s Bassnectar show by a young writer and music lover who is just over three months sober. We’ve chosen to leave her name off of it because the Internet never forgets anything. She is experiencing her first summer in the concert playground of…
Going to an electronica show is a fantastic excuse to bust out a wild outfit to accentuate your dance moves, and Bassnectar, in town this weekend for their annual appearance at Red Rocks, was no different. Here are the ten best getups from the show, as found by photographer Eric…
