Rap-Up: BreakEFX looks back at 2008

This was a pretty good year for hip-hop dance crew BreakEFX. They not only won the Colorado’s Best Dance Crew competition earlier this year, but they’ve been booked solid for quite a few events. Some of the standout events include Mighty 4 Colorado, Rockers Rumble 2008, and the recent Boyz…

Local blogs list year-end picks

As Eryc Eyl so astutely noted in his Mile High Makeout column today, it is indeed that time of year again, when fans, bloggers and pundits alike compile and weigh in on their top picks for the year. So far, we’ve stumbled upon a pair of lists, one from Julio…

Sneak peek at the Ideal Fathers’ upcoming EP

For the past couple of days I’ve been enjoying what will probably be one of early 2009’s most interesting local releases, the Complete Waste of Time Travel EP from the Ideal Fathers. I knew when I saw these guys more than a year ago that they had some serious potential,…

Another winner in Fader‘s vinyl single series

Magazine promotions don’t get much cooler than Fader’s vinyl single series, produced in conjunction with Southern Comfort, which presses edgy indie music on old-school jukebox 45s. The seventh offering is a case in point. The A-side features Brooklyn-based Telepathe, whose “Heat” raises temperatures with a monstrous synth riff that makes…

Mercury Rev at the Fox Theatre

Mercury Rev amd the Duke Spirit Sunday, December 14, 2008 Fox Theatre, Boulder Better Than: The last unbelievably great Mercury Rev show at The Fox. It probably would have been wiser to stay home on a night like this and not risk the icy streets and highways between Denver and…

The Black Crowes at the Fillmore Auditorium

The Black Crowes, Vetiver Saturday, Dec. 13 Fillmore Auditorium Better than: Revisiting the sounds of ’60s soul and ’70s rock with a middling bar band. “I swear I’ve heard that riff before.” That was the recurring thought as I watched the Black Crowes and Vetiver perform Saturday, as the solos,…

Got an extra $75K? Rock & Roll Grill up for sale

Always secretly harbored a desire o get into the live music game? Here’s your chance. The owners of the Rock & Roll Grill, located at 15th and Champa, have put the venue on the market. With approximately 5,000 square feet combined, the space, which purportedly was a speakeasy at one time,…

Angie Stevens to work with Malcolm Burn

After years of grinding it out on her own, writing, recording and performing here and across the country on her own dime, truly embodying a grassroots, do-it-yourself approach, Angie Stevens is about to get a major boost from a well-regarded member of the music industry. Next month, the affable local songstress…

Rap-Up: 93.3 KTCL adds hip-hop artist Improv to Top 10

Nowadays, alternative rock station 93.3 KTCL is showing more and more love to hip-hop music on the air. First it was the Flobots being added to daily rotation last year, then it was the addition of Judgemental (of Basementalism) to Ralphie’s First Trax show on Saturday mornings (6 a.m.-10 a.m.)…

Memorialize Monolith on the cheap

Did you miss out on the Monolith festival, but want people to believe you were there? Or maybe you blew all your cash on a ticket and a few $7 beers, leaving you no funds to purchase the appropriate shwag to remember the event by? Or maybe you’re like me,…

Rap-Up: A Ground Zero Movement reunion?

The Ground Zero Movement pretty much went on hiatus a few years ago and with the direction that the members were going it kind of looked like the group basically disbanded. But a new track has been leaked from Sid Fly, Dow Jones, Aseone, D.O. the Fabulous Drifter and DJ…

Friday Night Lights, an unexpected bastion of good music

Hello. My name is Dave. I’m addicted. Hopelessly addicted. Hello, Dave. No, seriously. I’m a junkie. I’ve got it bad for Friday Night Lights, man. Really bad. Last year around this time, I got a terrible case of the flu. I missed a couple days of work. It was ugly…

Laura Goldhamer is a “Lion” sized talent

Since seeing Laura Goldhamer perform two weeks ago, I’ve been a little preoccupied with her work. Part of it is my girlfriend’s repeated calls for me to find some of Goldhamer’s music for her, but mostly it’s been her songs getting stuck in my head and remembering the very cool…

Nuts & Berries show canceled

Just received word from Brad Turner of Nuts & Berries that the show slated to take place this Wednesday, December 17, that Tom Murphy wrote up this week has been canceled to make room for the Larimer Lounge’s annual Christmas party. Turner and the Lounge are in the process of…

Yerkish has about had it with all this monkey business

That’s something we’re trying to shake,” says Yerkish frontman Tim Kaminski. “We don’t want people to think, ‘Oh, the monkey band,’ because you either think that it’s a band of monkeys, which has been done before, or you think it’s just some band that plays silly music. We try to…

When Cafe Cero closed, Open Tap took over

The sign outside still reads Cafe Cero, but 1446 South Broadway is now officially The Open Tap & Grill. After taking over the place two months ago, Linda Sarace overhauled the kitchen; she now has people painting the interior walls. After she gets the bar and dining room refurbished, she…

There really is no place like home

We were driving toward Hollywood to catch Shwayze at the Roxy. Atmosphere was playing in the background, and my son was grumbling about Denver, futilely trying to sell me on the virtues of living in L.A., the sunshine, the palm trees — second-verse-same-as-the-first. I was trying just as futilely to…

Nuts & Berries at Larimer Lounge

This project has all the hallmarks of something conceived alone in someone’s bedroom. And on stage, Brad Turner solo with his laptop is hardly the stuff of which rock-and-roll legends are made. But anyone with the nerve to get on stage in the first place knows it takes guts to…

Barry Weaver and DJ Reza at Beta

No matter what the endeavor, playing with others can yield some great results. For example, take a twenty-year-plus veteran of dance music who’s been there for everything from piano-driven, post-disco proto-house to the current-now sounds of minimal and electro house, then pair him with a hot, rising star with a…

Colourmusic searches for its identity

Ryan Hendrix and Nick Turner, the founding partners of Colourmusic, aren’t cut from the same cloth. Hendrix is an Oklahoma native who worships at U2’s altar, while Turner is a Brit by birth who much prefers My Bloody Valentine’s oeuvre to anything by Bono and company. No wonder that when…