Five Great Books About Music – Some Obvious, Some Less So

Music is a tough subject for writers of fiction. Because unless an author has actually lived the life of a musician or someone in the music business, writing with anything approaching legitimacy is nearly impossible. Even people who know the subject inside and out face myriad problems, the first of…

Kneebody Trumpeter Shane Endsley on Moving Back to Denver

In the two decades since East High grad Shane Endsley left the University of Colorado to attend the Eastman School of Music, the trumpeter went on to co-found the Grammy-nominated group Kneebody; tour with Ani DiFranco; perform with forward-thinking jazz players like Steve Coleman, Ravi Coltrane and David Murray; and…

Music Journalist Steve Knopper Talks About His New Book on Michael Jackson

Veteran music journalist and Denver-based author Steve Knopper, who will speak tonight at the Boulder Book Store, recently released his latest book MJ: The Genius of Michael Jackson through Simon and Schuster. The current music-business editor at Rolling Stone, Knopper is a Colorado native and worked for several daily newspapers…

The Brief and Glorious Life of CP-208

Noise rock/no wave band CP-208 split last month. While that development may not be big news to anyone who didn’t like the band (or didn’t even know about it), the dissolution quietly marked the end of a certain era of underground music in Denver — because the band’s membership and…

Tommie Phillips Creates Album Art From the Heart for The Syn

Tommie Phillips has one foot in the past and the other securely in the future. Having lived through the psychedelic sounds of the ’60s, the progressive rock of the ’70s, the revival of both in the ’90s and the death of numerous music formats and their subsequent resurrections, he’s seen…

High Plains Underground: 21st Century Colorado Shoegaze and Dream Pop

One of the sounds that has long been part of the Colorado music scene is lush, atmospheric rock. Even though Colorado boasts more than 300 days of sunshine each year, many significant Colorado artists have an indisputable attraction to music that, if not exactly dark,  suggests an inward expansiveness and…

33 Great Album Covers From Denver in the ’90s

The ’90s in Denver, as in much of the rest of the world, was a time of great creativity in music — and if not for the lack of a spotlight directed at the Mile High City, some of the local talent probably would have enjoyed national as well as…

New Children’s Book Tackles the Question: What Is Punk?

My daughter, Sidney, is somewhat of a punk-rock connoisseur, at least for a Boulderite, and especially for a five-year-old. Sure, she’s obsessed with Cinderella (the princess, not the band) and digs Frozen, but “Rebel Girl” by Bikini Kill is near the top of Sidney’s favorite songs. Plus, when she heard…

The Wide-Ranging Power of Denver’s Lust-Cats of the Gutters

With the 7th edition of Titwrench in the rearview, now is a good time to consider the legacy of one of festival’s mainstays: Lust-Cats of the Gutters, which is no longer an active project. The duo featured former Westword contributor Robin Edwards on guitar and vocals and Alex Edgeworth on…

Hether Fortune of Wax Idols on Goth Fans and Justin Bieber

Wax Idols is making an appearance at Juice Church on Friday, October 23. The band has long been the outlet for songwriter and lead vocalist Hether Fortune, who started the band while she was living in the San Francisco area. Initially, the band was often described as garage rock, but…

R.I.P., Chris Forsythe: Much More Than a Sound Man

Chris “Sizzle” Forsythe passed away in the early hours of October 14, 2015. Not long before that, he’d been dropped off at his home after a night serving as sound engineer at the Black Sheep, the club in Colorado Springs where he’d been working for a decade. He was among…

Scenes From a Denver Punk Reunion at Mutiny Information Cafe

Saturday’s release party for Bob Rob Medina’s illustrated memoir chronicling the ’80s Denver punk scene packed Mutiny Information Cafe — and that was before most attendees found out The Frantix were going to play.  The Frantic, who played their last show in 1983, said they  got in a mere two…