As you might have read here on Backbeat, Electric Avenue Music and Arts Festival is going on this weekend (it wraps up tonight.) Last night, photographer Eric Gruneisen stopped by the festival in Five Points and brings back these photos: Electric Avenue Music & Arts Festival (slideshow)…
If you missed it last night — you can’t blame us, we we’re giving away tickets — here are photos (shot by Aaron Thackeray) of the indie tour that swung through Red Rocks Amphitheatre last night: Vampire Weekend (for whom we can Justify Our Love), Beach House and Dum Dum…
Ah, Labor Day weekend: Time for us to chill and do nothing like it’s our job. Our musician friends, however, well, they’ll be putting the “labor” in Labor Day. To that end, there’s a ridiculous number of options if you’re looking to do something compelling and music related, and we’ve…
Okay we all have some skeletons in our closet, shit we dig — be it music, movies or television shows — that we’d just as soon that nobody else knew about. Guilty pleasures is what most people term these sort of inclinations. Well, here at Backbeat, there’s no shame in…
Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom may have changed owners last fall, but things are clearly still kicking at the venue, and there’s still plenty of music in the streets. Last year, before changing hands Cervantes’ hosted the Dancing In the Streets, a three-day festival that took place at 26th and Welton…
As much fun as he has touring with 3OH!3 and being a member of that act’s live band, and as fond as he is of playing in Young Coyotes with Zach Tipton, American Tomahawk is Adam Halferty’s baby, the place where he’s able to express himself the most freely as…
The Gamits were one of the classic, melodic punk bands of the late ’90s. Unlike many of their peers, they survived well into the new decade before calling it quits, shortly after releasing the best album of their career, Antidote, in the summer of 2004. After touring extensively across the…
Safe Boating is No Accident is the musical/performance art project of Leighton Peterson and Neil McCormick, who both came to Colorado within the last several years. Forming Safe Boating about two years ago, Peterson and McCormick found a way to combine their love of old timey music with a modern…
School’s back in session! Which means, for at least some of you, that right now you should probably be doing your homework instead of looking at music blogs. But don’t worry — we’ve got you covered. Today, you can enjoy all the bloggy goodness of Backbeat and get your learn…
“Me and my roommates were reading way too many Lone Wolf and Cub graphic novels,” says Odam Fei Mud’s Daniel Crosier about the formation of his neo-kabuki performance group, “and watching way too many Akira Kurosawa films.” But that’s just the inspiration behind Odam Fei Mud, slated to appear at…
Once upon a time, pop music — like the rest of American popular culture — was in closet. From Liberace and his floor-length furs to George Michael’s dangly earrings, gay men were marketed as female conquests. Thankfully minds and attitudes have (for the most part) evolved, and a band like…
In this Internet age, it’s about as important to consult Google when you name your band as it is to do a trademark search. Bands frequently come up with names that, while catchy or clever, often make a quick Google search for them somewhat maddening. If you factor Myspace out…
So the Epilogues have finished work on its new “Hunting Season” video, which was filmed on location this past spring in the woods at the site of the infamous Hayman forest fire of 2002. To celebrate the premiere of the Dillon Novak directed video, the outfit has put together one…
Back in June, you might remember us mentioning how Boonie Mayfield’s studio had been burglarized and how he had lost most of his equipment. When we caught up with the seemingly always upbeat producer, one of our favorites, to discuss the robbery, he was, well, dependably upbeat. Heartened by the…
Okay, the level of attention Tennis has attracted is officially absurd at this point, especially considering the short amount of time the act’s been together and the ridiculously low number of shows that it has played thus far. Don’t know if you caught this, but in advance of its pair…
There’s something about the act of playing guitar that makes white people — as famously portrayed in this Chapelle Show sketch — act a fool. In that spirit, we present to you many, many faces of John Mayer during his concert last night at Red Rocks Amphitheatre. All photos by…
JOHN MAYER With special guest Owl City 09.01.10 | Red Rocks Amphitheatre View slideshow You ever been around somebody who’s had a near-death experience? Notice how they’re just a little more gracious than the rest of us, and perhaps a little more sincere? Or how they don’t take life’s fleeting…
Well, it’s official. Guns ‘n’ Rose frontman Axl Rose is less of a man than Justin Bieber, and we have the video evidence to prove it. As you’ll see in the video above (skip to 1:20 or so if you want to avoid the histrionic intro to “Welcome to the…
Coincidences often come in small, profound packages. The day Devin Mendoza and Justin Trujillo sit down to discuss their post-metal duo, Adai, just so happens to be the sixth anniversary of Adai’s first rehearsal — which took place in the practice space of their previous band, Yuriko. Not that Mendoza…
It was fun while it lasted — but Jazzmatazz Lounge, which opened last November in the space at 1612 East 17th Avenue, next to Limón, only lasted as a jazz club for a few months. And while Limón has occasionally booked bands in the space since Jazzmatazz closed, it hasn’t…
If Ahab had lived to write a memoir, its title might have been the inspiration for the name of this band. Just the same, Safe Boating Is No Accident’s lyrics aren’t as overtly tempestuous as hunting for the great white whale on the Pequod. Even though the outfit’s sonics are…
On their first two albums, Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally perfected a sound so haunting and unique that they could easily have left it exactly as it was and built a small but everlasting cult around it. But while they kept the same basic ingredients — old organs and drum…
