Hey! I’m Katie Moulton, Westword’s new music editor. On Friday, I drove twelve hours straight west from St. Louis to Denver. On stretches of I-70, I didn’t know whether this was still Kansas or I had just slipped straight into hell. Denver, Damnit became a mantra. For thousands of transplants moving…
In this week’s cover story, “Rhymes to Die For,” we gave you the story of Rachel Aboytes, a local rap artist who performed under the stage name La Baby Smiley. In March of this year, Aboytes was murdered in a drive-by shooting in east Denver. Since then, her fame has…
“I met my daughter this year,” Chance the Rapper told the crowd last night at The Fillmore. The crowd responded with love vibrations that shook the street. His current tour, called Family Matters, is chock-full of sentiment from the 24-year-old Chicago rapper, as he welcomed the birth of his daughter…
Editor’s Note: The Denver Bootleg is a series chronicling the history of local music venues by longtime Denver cartoonist Karl Christian Krumpholz. Visit Kumpholz’s website to see more of his work. …
John Lydon formed Public Image Ltd. in 1978, after the breakup of the Sex Pistols, the infamous and influential punk-rock band he fronted under the stage name Johnny Rotten. PiL wasn’t the first post-punk band, but it quickly became one of the most important — and adventurous. The 1979 album…
Jentry McCombs has a bone to pick. “Your magazine says I’m the ‘self-proclaimed’ best street musician in Denver, but I don’t like that,” McCombs says, semi-jokingly referring to a five-year-old article about Denver’s street musicians. “I am the best street musician, and I am the king of Denver. Who can…
The recent terrorist attacks in Paris were senseless in innumerable ways, big and small — among them the fact that gunmen killed more than 80 people at a Bataclan theater show headlined by Eagles of Death Metal, a band that’s all about fun, not global politics. The group’s name appeared to unsettle…
Big Data, the electro-rock band responsible for the 2013 hit “Dangerous,” will perform at the Ogden Theatre on Wednesday, November 18. The Brooklyn-based five-piece band helmed by producer Alan Wilkis fuses electronic music with live instruments and the spirited vocals of Wilkis and Liz Ryan. Together with the rest of…
Nik Turner’s Hawkwind will be at Lion’s Lair tonight, performing with the progressive-rock outfit Hedersleben in a show that combines music and mythology for a space-rock extravaganza. Turner is perhaps best known as a founding member of the legendary, UK-based psychedelic rock band Hawkwind. From 1969 to 1976, and then again from 1982…
It’s an epic week for music in metro Denver, with shows featuring Glen Hansard, Chance the Rapper, Young the Giant, Chris Young, Minus Bear and Skinny Puppy, among others. See our top fifteen picks below. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 16 Chance the Rapper $39.50/$45. 6:30 p.m. Fillmore Auditorium Glen Hansard $35/$38.50, 7:30…
An upended, dismembered piano sits in the middle of the floor at the ATLAS Black Box Experimental Studio, deep below the University of Colorado Boulder campus. Kneeling before it, a slight, older man is wiring the piano pieces to an array of electromechanical devices. He is the mononominate sound artist…
Sub.mission is taking over the Walnut Room tomorrow for a special, one-off show featuring two of the premier artists from renowned dubstep label Innamind Recordings. In advance of the show, we caught up with Innamind DJ and label boss Kursk, aka Jeremy Pattison, to talk about the visiting DJs, his…
When an elderly man walked into his familiar barbershop in Lakewood last week, he found Cannibal Corpse blaring and a giant Ouija board instead of a quiet waiting room. His normal barber had been replaced with technicolor-haired and tattooed stylists, who informed him that Seven Sins Salon had taken over…
This weekend’s live music calendar includes some great shows, including Trey Anastasio Band at the Fillmore and the Motet at the Ogden, and both groups play two-night stands. The Roots move into the Ogden on Sunday, Low is at the Larimer Lounge, and JD McPherson is at the Fox on…
Multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Dave Preston recently released his first ambient album in five years. The luminously evocative In These Storms is Preston’s third ambient release, following 2008’s Be and 2010’s Soundtrack for Motion. Rather than the synth or beat-driven sounds often associated with the ambient style, Preston’s music features organic sounds…
On the first weekend of November, 2015, The Globe opened for business in the former home of Sidewinder, a longtime Globeville dive bar that later enjoyed a short run as a cozy little bar and music venue, after it was bought in 2012 and managed by Fernando “Fez” Guzman’s family…
The Cure’s first major North American tour since 2008 stops at Fiddler’s Green on Sunday, June 5, with the Twilight Sad opening. The tour will include nearly four decades of Cure material, including hits, rarities and as-yet unreleased tracks in a brand-new stage production. Reserved tickets ($35-$75) and lawn seats…
Lulu and John Demitro got off to an early start in music. Growing up in Boulder, the siblings began playing classical piano before they were five. Through high school John played in bands, including the hard-rock band Bassline; Lulu, who is a year younger than John, played keyboards in that…
On January 12, 2010 an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 hit sixteen miles west of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, devastating the already impoverished nation and killing tens of thousands of people. In the wake of that disaster Haiti has undergone a slow recovery and displaced 1.5 million people who were…
The last time I heard music at the History Colorado Center, it was at an October program on state symbols: Denver Gay Men’s Chorus program director James Knapp sang “Where the Columbines Grow,” Colorado’s first official state song, which just marked its hundredth birthday. Knapp has a spectacular voice, but…
Dreadnought, the local psychedelic, progressive-doom band, defies many stereotypes about what metal is and can be. The act is half-male and half-female, and its members take on non-traditional roles. Kelly Schilling plays guitar and does harsh and clean vocals; Lauren Vieira plays keyboards and does clean vocals; Jordan Clancy plays drums…
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…
