Sat | Propagandhi at Summit Music Hall | 3/8/14 In an era where many punk bands form and release their first album less than a year after starting, Propagandhi’s development seems remarkably long. Formed in 1986, playing its first live shows in 1989, the band released its early demos a…
THU-SUN | DENVER WINTER SHOWCASE @ BAR STANDARD & NORAD | 3/6 to 3/9 When Andy Roberts moved to Colorado a few years ago, he immediately recognized the scene here as something he wanted to be a part of, which ultimately birthed the idea for the Denver Winter Showcase. Now…
Hall & Oates @ 1STBANK Center | 3/3/14 With no opening act, Daryl Hall and John Oates took the stage with their six backing musicians. Parts of this band have been together for a long time, including sax player Charles DeChant and veteran studio and touring guitarist Paul Pesco. It…
In honor of Miley Cyrus’s gig at the Pepsi Center tonight, we here at Team Backbeat would like to honor the Princess of Twerk by providing a comprehensive guide for child stars looking to go rogue. So you’re a Barely Legal former child star. Welcome to adulthood! Legal cigarettes, voting…
Chris Thile has decided he’s bored of not selling thousands of tickets at a time, so Nickel Creek is back, and they’re coming to Denver. Rod Stewart and Santana are also into selling thousands of tickets, so they’ll be coming through as well. Incidentally, Santana has never meet a collaboration…
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…
Most people regard metal music as an anti-intellectual, chest-beating, noisy fit for cavemen. Despite this being 100 percent true, there are a few positive things that result from having an intense dedication toward one of the most juvenile forms of music out there. While listening to metal may still sentence…
Rule No. 1: Invite me to everything. I love your band — I bought your cassette, even though I don’t have a Walkman, and I bought your shirt, even though I’m getting to that age where band shirts fit me a bit like a corset, and I like your Facebook…
Editor’s note: Hall & Oates are now going as Daryl Hall & John Oates, because apparently that’s the way you add gravitas to a catalogue that will turn your pants pastel and put shoulder pads in whatever shirt you’re wearing if you listen long enough. Here’s the thing: They needn’t…
Pentagram @ Summit Music Hall |2/28/14 Pentagram took the stage with a spooky soundscape coming through the PA, Bobby Liebling looking like a puppet woken up from a nap and blinking. He was all but twitching to life, pulled along by invisible strings. But when Liebling took the mic, an…
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…
If you let the fat cats over at Google dictate your taste in cinema, then you may have avoided the 1991 romantic classic Cool as Ice (starring Vanilla Ice) for the past two decades. Most Americans think this film is worthy of but one star, when in reality, Cool as…
Remember back in the day when you got home from school all psyched to watch some sweet, violent cartoons only to find that the dreaded After School Special? Buzz kill. It was even more of a bummer when our musical heroes took it upon themselves in the ’80s and ’90s…
FRI | ICHISAN at BAR STANDARD | 2/28/14 It’s not often that artists like Ichisan get a chance to play in this part of the world, so dance lovers in Denver should be stoked that he’s headed here. The Slovenian musician began his musical career on stringed instruments — specifically,…
FRI | PENTAGRAM at SUMMIT MUSIC HALL | 2/28/14 If you’ve seen Last Days Here, you’re familiar with the frustrating tale of Pentagram. Formed in Virginia in the early ’70s, the pioneering psychedelic metal band should have, by all accounts, realized massive worldwide fame. Instead, success evaded the outfit, thanks…
Music is life — or at least it is for us. When we’re not writing about it, we’re thinking about it, talking about it or listening to it. These are the things that were in heavy rotation for us this week. What are you listening to? What should we be…
Grassroots California is easily the coolest hat company in the world. With over one-thousand designs, the company that Ryan “Ruga” Connelly started in Venice Beach, selling his hats on the boardwalk, has grown to become the most in-demand lid dealer in the world over the course of the past five…
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…
I feel like simplicity is being strived for in the mainstream,” says Ronnie Weberg, “but we are seeing a progression into more intricate and intelligent music.” Weberg, who makes music under the name Unlimited Gravity, got his start producing hip-hop beats in high school. A shared interest in bass-driven music…
Surprisingly, spoken word is not often successfully combined with rap. On Nightdreams & Daymares, however, Bianca Mikahn does a flawless job of bridging the two. Pulling from deep wells of assonance, consonance and rhyme, Mikahn dances in the ebb and flow of Dile’s dreamy production, her free association finding and…
It’s clear that the members of We’s Us put a lot of care, attention and craft into their self-titled full-length. The evidence lies in the complex melodies, nuanced effects and layered sounds that mark each of the album’s fourteen tracks. A lengthy stretch of effects-laden guitar lines and augmented chords…
