Three words: atmosphere, atmosphere, atmosphere. Sure, you might be able to get a bigger selection of fancy java drinks at Starbucks, but can you drink your skinny caramel macchiato with sprinkles in a locale imbued with such genuine art-deco flair? Arrive early at the Mayan Theatre, buy some tickets for…
What began as a creative outlet for multi-instrumentalist Dave Willey has turned into a real band — and a unique one, at that. Carnival Detournement (Cuneiform) is a cornucopia of jazz, art rock and Eastern European folk music that’s at once endlessly intriguing and unexpectedly accessible…
Randal Myler and Brockman Seawell’s adaptation of onetime Boulder resident John Fanté’s novella 1933 Was a Bad Year entranced from start to finish. That’s mostly because Myler, who also directed 1933, staged the play with near-cinematic fluidity. He was aided by an ever-shifting backdrop of photographic montages: Vintage Boulder neighborhoods…
Bradford Lee Folk’s voice is the musical equivalent of Rogaine, a hormone-rich wonder that raises the hair on the head, neck and everywhere else. One of many highlights in his stellar acoustic group, Open Road, Folk sings pre-country music with ache, anger and appreciation for his forebears. His ghostly, coal-dusted…
An outstanding quartet of local actors drove beyond the shortcomings of I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change to offer up an insightful, sometimes hilarious look at America’s love-hate relationship with dating games. Whether they were dovetailing in four-part harmony, pairing off in warring/cooing duets or going it alone during…
3Deep Presents, which started in 1992 as a mobile DJ unit on the University of Colorado at Boulder campus, consistently brings some of the best hip-hop music to town. In the past year, the crew promoted the DMC Technics Regional DJ championships at the Fox Theatre. And in conjunction with…
The sound can be murky, the toilets are often dubious, and the neighboring establishments range from simply divey to dangerous. But, hey — no one ever said rock and roll was pretty. The 15th Street Tavern is still the best place to get rocked, both for the quality of its…
Okay, so the pinball machine is poorly maintained. And the music is generally targeted at only the most grizzled eardrums in Denver. But the walls in the men’s bathroom at Seven South offer enough philosophical lunacy (okay, idiocy) to amuse those with even the most television-addled attention span. Some key…
In what might have been the group’s final outing, Negativland — the wildly experimental music-and-art collective from San Francisco — brought its True/False 2000 Tour to a packed house at the Bluebird Theater last spring. At nearly three hours in length, the mind-altering spectacle featured more appropriated sound collage and…
Say what you will about the experimental, sometimes difficult work of longtime Colorado filmmaker Stan Brakhage, but his films have stood the test of time. For four decades, Brakhage has been regarded as one of the most forward-looking of all American filmmakers, for his individuality and refusal to compromise. The…
The Upstart Crow Theatre Company’s version of The Rivals was a gorgeously costumed affair. In addition to providing the comedy with adequate staging, director Joan Kuder Bell took on the assignment of designing the play’s eighteenth-century garb. With the help of four seamstresses, she crafted a splendid wardrobe that would…
February 23, 2001, will live in Colorado history as the day Chex Mix was declared the official snack food of Sterling. The event, the result of an on-air survey of snack preferences conducted by KPMX DJ Jason Murphy, was marked by a parade complete with marching band and float and…
Since arriving from Dallas a few years ago, Randy Moore has played a wide array of memorable parts, including a slimy jewelry salesman (The Comedy of Errors), a slithering witch (Macbeth), a blustering patriarch (Life With Father), a bumbling bumpkin (The Winter’s Tale) and, most recently, a paranoid penny-pincher (The…
Richard Blackwell is best known for the acerbic eye he turns on the fashion faux pas of the rich and famous, a public service that culminates in Mr. Blackwell’s ten-best-dressed and ten-worst-dressed lists released every January. (This year’s worst of the worst: Britney Spears.) But CSU knows a different Blackwell…
That unfunny dramatic theorist, Aristotle, probably would have loathed the idea that the high point of the Central City Opera’s production of Dialogues of the Carmelites occurred in Act One, long before a proper “rising action” developed. Even so, audiences appreciated the fact that mezzo-soprano Joyce Castle marvelously commanded the…
Cafe Cero is hip: It’s cool and casual, it serves gourmet bar food, it attracts big-name local acts to perform acoustic sets and comedy acts, and it hosts All-Star Karaoke every Thursday night at 9. With more than 5,000 songs available, there’s no excuse for you not to make a…
Wesley Willis, a schizophrenic Chicago street artist and Casio accompanist, played fiasco-free last Thanksgiving to a receptive Tavern crowd, rendering timeless (and preprogrammed) such holiday classics as “Eat That Mule Shit,” “Shoot Me in the Ass” and “I’m Sorry That I Got Fat.” The evening’s earth-shattering, Mayflower hell ride –…
Denver’s major cultural institutions offered free admission all day on December 31, but that was just a taste of the big, big fun still to come. By 11:58 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, the 16th Street Mall was one mass of happy, freeloading humanity, eagerly awaiting the fireworks that were…
South of Fairplay, west of Colorado Springs and east of Gunnison, one of America’s “100 Best Small Art Towns” devotes a weekend each year to the visual and performing arts. In 2001, Salida is set to go artsy June 22-24 for the ninth annual Salida Art Walk, with nationally known…
Colorado sculptor John DeAndrea is one of only a handful of local artists to have achieved international renown. But there’s no mystery to his success, as the incredible sculptures in last fall’s John DeAndrea make clear. The spectacular show was a knockout even from the sidewalk on Wazee Street: Through…
You’d have to look pretty hard to find a less pretentious entertainer than Paul Lopez, pianist at Charlie Brown’s Bar & Grill. The perpetually congenial Lopez, a fixture behind the bar’s ivories since the late ’80s, always has a good word for patrons, whether they’re participatory-show-tune types or not. He’s…
Denver ceramics genius Martha Daniels threw everything into Grotto, her outlandish installation in which most elements were made of clay. She painted the walls, created architectural elements and even put in an operable fountain. The resulting atmosphere was dark and heavy, exactly her intention, since the show was meant to…
