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...

By Tom Murphy

October 29, 2015

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As they were in much of the rest of the world, the '90s in Denver were a time of great creativity in music — and if not for the lack of a spotlight directed at the Mile High City, more of our homegrown artists probably would have enjoyed national as well as local popularity. There were far fewer original bands in the city than there are now, but they produced some excellent albums that have faded into history — except in the minds of the people who were there. The list below offers many of the bigger names across several genres of music, as well as a few of the key compilations — including the first Radio 1190 Local Shakedown compilation, which, while released in late 2000, captured what Denver music sounded like at the end of the 1990s.

As Denver's music scene broadens rapidly with the vast influx of people in recent years, we should not forget what came before, and how it helped to shape what we have today. The following is a far-from-definitive sampling of an entire decade of music in Denver; share your own favorite '90s album covers in the comments.

Tom Murphy is a writer, visual artist and musician from Aurora, Colorado. He was a prolific music writer for Westword and a documenter of the Denver music scene.

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