On a chilly January afternoon in West Hollywood, the heavily tattooed singer Otep Shamaya can’t hide her excitement about the release of Hydra, her namesake band’s sixth studio album. In the testosterone-fueled genres of aggressive rock and heavy metal, it’s not easy to be a lesbian singer, but Shamaya has…
The Warlocks, one of the earlier bands in the new wave of psychedelic rock, formed in 1999 when founder, singer and sole continuous member, guitarist Bobby Hecksher got some encouragement from Anton Newcombe of the Brian Jonestown Massacre to start writing his own songs. The Warlocks took a fairly different…
Blues Control is an experimental rock duo that got started in New York City in 2006 as a kind of side project from their New Age music project Watersports. The greater immediacy and visceral impact of Blues Control connected with audiences, and soon, the side project became the main band…
Tonight at the Seawell Ballroom, Barry Fey will be inducted into yet another hall of fame, this one the Denver & Colorado Tourism Hall of Fame. In honor of his induction, we’ve been posting the stories that didn’t make his memoir, Backstage Past. Today, Daniela Stolfi, Barry’s assistant, recounts one…
Josh Mayer and Marty Folb are some of the freshest producers on the grind right now. In addition to driving their own projects, Glitch Mob and MartyParty, the two hip-hop heads co-pilot PANTyRAiD together. Following the success of their first two releases, The Sauce and Superior, PANTyRAiD (due at the…
More than being one of the best selling albums of all time, more than having the most recognizable album cover the world over, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon was a cross-cultural, trans-generational album that connected with audiences on issues of death, greed, life-purpose and the horrors and triumphs…
By Bob McMahon From the perspective of a casual observer, it would be all too easy to label the members of Menomena as miserablists. The group’s mixture of reverb-laden piano, woodwinds, crashing drums and pretty much every keyboard voice and stringed instrument in existence has always cohered into a solemn,…
On Wednesday, March 6, Barry Fey will be inducted into yet another hall of fame, this one the Denver & Colorado Tourism Hall of Fame. In honor of his induction, we’ll be running the stories that didn’t make his memoir all this week. Today, Tony Funches on first meeting Barry…
Alright, we’ve got another fresh batch of local hip-hop for you. Hope you’re ready. We’ve got a Slam 1 collab with Tech N9ne from the Last Dragon mixtape, Trev Rich, the rapper formerly known as Rockie, reaches for new heights on a cut called “Top of the World,” TC Crook…
As a teenager in the late’80s, tenor saxophonist Chris Potter performed with the great Red Rodney. He later went on to collaborate with luminaries like Herbie Hancock, Jim Hall, Paul Motian, Dave Holland, and, more recently, he was a member of the Pat Metheny Unity Band. While he’s played as…
Today, Westword welcomes the latest addition to our family: our new, improved and ready-to-use Westword mobile app. Like the previous version, you can use it as a handy, thumb-friendly guide to Denver arts, entertainment and dining. Hungry for Asian? We’ve got you covered. Bored, with no weekend plans? Just check…
Besides being a long, seemingly unfounded piece of local-music folklore, as well as a now well-documented and utterly fascinating part of the Smiths mythology, the story of James Kiss is a redemptive one. It’s a case study of desperation, certainly, but it’s also a cautionary tale of a troubled young…
On Wednesday, March 6, Barry Fey will be inducted into yet another hall of fame, this one the Denver & Colorado Tourism Hall of Fame. In honor of his induction, we’ll be running the stories that didn’t make his memoir all this week. Today, the late Leslie Haseman with a…
Some bands want to rock your face off. Some want to make you swoon with emotion. And still others are just looking to scare you half to death. Genessier, the new project featuring Ryan Policky of A Shoreline Dream and Eddie Breidenbach of the Omens, fits in that last category…
Passion Pit began in as a solo project of lead singer and keyboard player Michael Angelakos in 2007. The project quickly fleshed out into a full band that combined a keen sense for upbeat pop melodies with lyrics that didn’t exactly try to sugarcoat the complex emotional life and experiences…
On Wednesday, March 6, Barry Fey will be inducted into yet another hall of fame, this one the Denver & Colorado Tourism Hall of Fame. In honor of his induction, we’ll be running the stories that didn’t make his memoir all this week. Today, Pam Moore shares what it was…
Glucose (aka Ben Gleason) makes hallucination-inspired music, so it’s seems only fitting that for a living he owns and operates an isolation tank — yeah, just like Altered States, only without William Hurt or the primal-DNA time portals. It’s a job that leaves him plenty of time to work on…
See also: More than a fascinating piece of Smithsology, the ’80s radio takeover is a story of redemption After examining the letters he wrote to his parents, which were included in the original Lakewood police file, and the details of that harrowing and fateful day in the fall of 1988…
On Wednesday, March 6, Barry Fey will be inducted into yet another hall of fame, this one the Denver & Colorado Tourism Hall of Fame, and that couldn’t be more fitting. Next to sports, music is probably our state’s biggest attraction, and we have Barry Fey to thank for that…
Mouse on Mars is a German duo made up of Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma, who started the project from their respective home cities of Cologne and Düsseldorf as a means of exploring sounds and organizing them into unconventional compositions. Whether this meant using traditional instrumentation, synthesizers, samples of…
Update, 2/25/13: The Smiths ’80s radio station takeover: Here’s what really happened according to the original offense report filed by the Lakewood Police Department, plus letters written by the suspect to his parents prior to the incident. By Dave Herrera and Josiah Hesse Well, so, we finally got to the…
Whoa, whoa… We just had a batch of killer local hip-hop to present last week. Are you telling me there’s already a whole new set of juicy cuts to be enjoyed? Yes. That’s exactly what we’re telling you. It can’t stop and it won’t stop. First, we have a new…
