While Squeeze (due at Denver Botanic Gardens at Chatfield on Wednesday, July 4) has had a few hiatuses in its almost forty year history, singer and guitarist Glenn Tilbrook says the band sounds more energized these days — so energized, in fact, that the group has even started work on…
Baby Dee (due Tuesday, July 3, at the Walnut Room) has been recording music for over a decade, and her music defies easy classification. A multi-instrumentalist, Dee’s songs are driven by piano, harp and various other instruments that accompany her unique, sometimes haunting voice, which also manages to be curiously…
MC/label founder/activist Sole (aka Tim Holland) has been espousing the virtues of DIY long before the internet made it so easy for everybody to put out their own albums. But since splitting with Anticon (the label he founded), he’s been living his philosophy again, and that feels good. Now, having…
Say what you want about Justin Bieber — “he looks like a girl,” “he’s annoying,” “he’s only relevant to thirteen-year-old girls” — but the pop star sensation is doing something right. His new album, Believe , sold 374,000 copies in its first week. That number may not seem like a…
Happy Westword Music Showcase weekend, friends, Romans, hip-hop heads! This weekend promises to highlight all the reasons why the music scene in Denver houses some of the best talent in the country. With the hip-hop scene, in particular, the styles and profiles of the MCs, DJs and singers have been…
Battles (due tomorrow at the Westword Music Showcase on the main Stage) first came together when Ian Williams, a former guitarist in math rock pioneers Don Caballero, moved to New York and got lured back into playing live music. He ended up working with like-minded musicians with their own backgrounds…
The last time we caught up with Seattle rapper Macklemore (due tomorrow at the Westword Music Showcase on the main stage), he was working on his latest album with remarkable fervor — he chose to skip SXSW. That effort, combined with having been inducted into XXL’s prestigious 2012 freshman class…
Ceremony (due tonight at the Marquis Theater) started out in Rohnert Park, California, as a straight-ahead hardcore outfit. The band’s fast, hard-hitting songs put it in good company with like-minded bands influenced by that era of punk where a song could be less than a minute long, so long as…
Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” remains number one for another week on the Billboard Hot 100. However, on the Billboard 200 albums chart, somewhat unexpectedly, Usher overtakes Adele for the number-one album in the country with Looking 4 Myself — even without a strong lead single to drive sales…
“It started as a total joke,” says Sarah Anderson of Harpoontang (due tomorrow night at the Larimer Lounge), the outfit which also includes the trio of Paper Bird vocalists, Laura Goldhamer and M & the Gems singer Maria Kohler (also known as Kitty Crimes). “But every time we practiced, something…
This Saturday, some of the hottest local talent will be getting busy on fifteen stages throughout the Golden Triangle for the annual Westword Music Showcase. After the Showcase wraps, Q-Tip, hip-hop’s premier rapping, producing and trendsetting superstar will rock a rare DJ set at City Hall Amphitheatre for the official…
Røsenkøpf (due tonight at Rhinoceropolis) is a trio whose membership came out of punk but didn’t bother with trying to shed the ideas or trappings of punk. Even sonically, there is a bit of punk’s edge to the band’s darker moods and atmosphere. But the dark to be found here…
Katy Perry’s teenage dream is finally over. “Wide Awake,” the eighth and final single off Teenage Dream sees Perry sing about completion, realization and “falling from Cloud 9” — and takes a few jabs at her failed marriage to Russell Brand, too. The music video, which was just released, however,…
Girl Talk (due this Saturday, June 23, on the Westword Music Showcase main stage) started when Gregg Gillis was earning his degree in biomedical engineering. Eventually, Girl Talk took up enough of Gillis’s time to become a full-time endeavor. Although influenced in part by early mash-ups, Gillis was more inspired…
Japandroids (due tonight at Larimer Lounge) started out with their own reinterpretation of angular, splintery punk and post-punk. But instead of sounding like another band that just discovered the Stooges or Joy Division, Japandroids plays their songs with a certain conviction you normally hear in blue-collar rock with a hint…
Over the course of the next few weeks, Backbeat will be counting down the twenty most fabled moments in Denver music history. Today, a look back at when Nirvana came back to town for a show at the Gothic Theatre with Dinosaur Jr., fresh off of recording Nevermind. When the…
Did you know Bob Dylan once spent a summer in Denver as a then-unknown teenager with a fake accent, sleeping on a floors and gigging at the Satire Lounge? He was nineteen at the time. It was just a year after the young Robert Zimmerman adopted his iconic stage moniker…
It was a big week for a certain Canadian this week, as the import’s song finally overtook Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used To Know.” And no, we’re not talking about Justin Bieber, but she is his protégé. Carly Rae Jepsen’s inescapable viral and radio hit, “Call Me Maybe,” conquers the…
Milli Vanilli will always be a part of pop-culture history. In February 1990, the duo of Fabrice Morvan (due this Saturday at Denver PrideFest at Civic Center Park) and Rob Pilatus won the Grammy for Best New Artist. Nine months later, the pair’s lives and careers came crashing down when…
See Also: Ministry’s Al Jourgensen on his ties to Colorado: living in Breckenridge, attending Greeley High School and his ill-fated attempt at a rodeo career Ministry (due Sunday, June 17, at the Ogden Theatre) got its start when Al Jourgensen moved from Colorado to Chicago, where the Wax Trax label…
This week, we’ve got a ton of music for you to catch up on. With all the sunshine, parties and pretty girls on the horizon, someone’s got to be out there making the soundtrack for the summer, and those on the scene in Colorado have been very, very busy crafting…
Over the course of the next few weeks, Backbeat will be counting down the twenty most fabled moments in Denver music history. Today, a look back at when Dean Reed (aka “Red Elvis”) came back to Denver and didn’t receive the warmest of welcomes. Dean Reed was more than a…
