There are albums you love and albums that alter the way you listen to music. …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead’s 2002 masterpiece, Source Tags & Codes, fits squarely in the latter category. Damn near everyone loved this thing; Source Tags was like a long-lost Led…
BRAD MEHDLAU TRIO @ BOULDER THEATER, SUN, 4/6 Over the last two decades pianists Brad Mehldau has recorded and performed in various formats (his latest effort, Mehliana: Taming the Dragon, is a duo recording with drummer Mark Guiliana), but he seems most at home with his trio, which includes long-time…
Carcass (due Wednesday, April 2, at The Summit Music Hall) were pioneers of grindcore alongside their friends in Napalm Death. By the time of its classic 1993 album Heartwork, the band had transitioned had all but fully into its melodic death metal phase. Carcass had already had a lasting impact…
The Black Lips (due Wednesday, April 2nd, at The Bluebird Theater) are the notorious rock and roll band from Atlanta, Georgia who had to flee India for fear of persecution over on stage antics involving band members kissing each other. Their show at the club Heaven in London in September…
AnomalyCon (running March 28 to 30 at the Denver Marriott Tech Center) started as a steam punk and alternate history-themed convention but has since expanded to cover science fiction generally. In its fourth year, the convention is featuring guest speakers, artists, writers and performers that have either direct ties to…
Speedy Ortiz (due Saturday, March 22, at Moe’s Original Bar B Que) from Northampton, Massachusetts came out of the solo side-project of singer-guitarist Sadie Dupuis when she was a member of the rock band Quilty. Taking the project’s moniker from a story in the influential underground comic series, Love and…
The 3rd Annual Bringing Back the Arts music competition is this Sunday, March 16, at the Bluebird Theater. Admission is free. The competition is part of First Lady of Denver Mary Louise Lee’s Bringing Back the Arts initiative, designed to bring greater attention to local artists and to encourage the…
M Sage (due Saturday, May 15, at The Sidewinder Tavern) is Matthew Sage, who grew up in Fort Collins and has been involved in music along the front range as both a fan and artist. Whether in indie rock acts like Castles, the gritty freak-folk-esque M. Pyres or his more…
For several years, you could see Paul Jansen playing violin and guitar in various bands around Denver. First with the “folk Goth” band The December Question then more prominently with Jen Korte and indie pop outfit (die) Pilot. It was toward the end of his tenure with the latter that…
DJ Chonz (born Mario Rodriguez) is a graduate of the Music Industry program at he University of Colorado at Denver. He recently returned to UCD to pursue a Master’s Degree in Communication. A full time on-air personality on Denver’s KS 107.5 FM and still a force behind the decks in…
Corey Baker, who performs as Kill Paris, is an old soul trapped in a young body. Through a series of sporadic moves that have taken him from his home in Indiana to Nashville then Los Angeles and now Boulder, Baker has found his own corner in a rapidly evolving electronic…
Bands like San Francisco-based M Machine are helping American dance music grow and spread its reach into every genre. What started out as three friends working in a parallel field — audio tracking for video games — snowballed into a full-on band, complete with as-it-happens video production and live vocals…
It’s safe to say that no one else has had the kind of musical career that Randy Newman has. He began as a behind-the-scenes songwriter, penning hits for singers such as Jerry Butler and Irma Thomas. Despite unassuming looks, a froggy, drawling delivery and a penchant for featuring reprehensible characters…
When a band doesn’t rely on a set list, musicians often find other ways to communicate on stage during the music. Phish, a band utterly reliant on improvisation, has gotten particularly good at this. In fact, the band has created a whole non-verbal language to let its members know what…
Thrash metal flayed disco band Kiss before bingeing on high-speed guitars, rapid double bass drum and foul lyrics. The emergence of thrash in the early ’80s poked fun at a fan base of metal historians worshiping at the altar of eyeliner. These thrash bands did the world a favor and…
Matt Friedman and Ross Kiser, co-founders of Denver-based Night Supply Records, are making quite a name for themselves as house duo Need & Necessity, doing everything from playing house parties at the University of Colorado in Boulder, where they went to school, to curating shows with The Hundred founder Brennen…
It’s common knowledge that the popular music industry is dominated by a few huge companies, sometimes referred to as the Big Three: Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group. It used to be the Big Four, until EMI was subsumed into the other three. Before that, it…
Dr. Dog (due Saturday, March 8, at the Boulder Theater) draws its roots back to the time that Toby Leaman and Scott McMicken started writing songs together when they were growing up in Newark, Delaware. Dr. Dog was a side project of Leaman and McMicken’s main band, Raccoon. But it…
Thug Entrancer (due tonight at the Sidewinder Tavern) is the latest musical project of Ryan McRyhew. For years McRyhew has been involved in various experimental Denver bands, including The Devil Made the Dinosaurs, Thundercade and Hideous Men, the project he helms with his wife, Kristi Schaefer. Thug Entrancer is something…
FRI & SAT | CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE TRIO at DAZZLE | 3/7-3/8 One of the best bassists in jazz today, 41-year-old Christian McBride has been playing professionally for more than half of his life. He got an early start as a teenager with Bobby Watsons’s group and then went on to…
Since releasing the last Pat Metheny Group album, 2005’s The Way Up, guitarist Pat Metheny has been quite busy exploring quite a few different paths, including his Orchestrion Project, two albums with pianist Brad Mehldau, a solo disc, a trio record, an album of John Zorn’s Masada material, 2012’s Unity…
Electric Six (due Friday, March 7, at the Larimer Lounge) formed in Detroit in 1996. Not content to strictly follow any particular style of rock, the band has forged its own strange and surprisingly original path. Its greatest commercial and popular success came in 2003 with its debut, Fire, which…
