UMS Travelogue, Night Four 7.24.10 | Baker District/South Broadway I have never seen so many neon Wayfarer sunglasses in my life. Ever. It was like I walked into 1982 the second I walked onto Broadway — the hot sun blistered people’s skin but their eyes were blocked by their first-rate,…
Liars • John Wiese 07.24.10 | Bluebird Theater Props to Liars for seeing fit to bring a straight-up noise artist — and a good one — as an opening act. Through his solo work and his numerous collaborations with heavyweights like Sunn O))), Wolf Eyes, and Merzbow, John Wiese has…
UMS Travelogue, Night Thee 7.24.10 | Baker District/South Broadway The TS Board Shop stage was really an augmented version of the truck that Jeremy Gregory of Bands for Lands and The Construct uses to put on shows anywhere and everywhere. This year, someone did something right, and the sound, despite…
UMS Travelogue, Day Three 7.24.10, Baker District/South Broadway I decided to change my pattern for my third crawl along Broadway for the UMS. I’d started late on Thursday and Friday nights, checking out the first venues at 10 p.m. at the earliest. I wanted to get a head start for…
UMS Travelogue, Night Thee 7.24.10 | Baker District/South Broadway There’s been no shortage of buzz surrounding Air Dubai: Though it has yet to hit the national stage, round these parts we’ve already as good as coronated the band successor to Flobots. Though the acoustics were terrible in the Import Warehouse,…
UMS Travelogue, Night Thee 7.24.10 | Baker District/South Broadway It’s said that love and hate are two sides of the same coin. I can’t say if that’s true in all cases, but it certainly sums up my feelings about music festivals. All the things I love about them are also…
String Cheese Incident 07.23.10 | Red Rocks Amphitheater There’s probably nothing anyone could say or write that would convince someone who doesn’t appreciate jamband music to change their mind about String Cheese Incident. Regardless, in terms of concert tickets sold, String Cheese Incident is perhaps the most popular band ever…
A couple quick notes about today’s UMS lineup — but first a post-script to the travelogues we’ve already posted from Jef Otte and Tom Murphy: Heard bits of Papa Bear from the sidewalk outside the Rover, and it was quite lovely. Very eager to hear more. Caught part of the…
UMS Travelogue, Night Two 7.23.10 | Baker District/South Broadway I started my tour of South Broadway relatively late in the evening, heading south from the 404 Lounge at around 9:45 p.m. Turns out I still had plenty of time to catch a wide variety of acts in a wealth of…
Mark Farina with Pillowfight, DJ Rootz and AA 07.23.10|Fox Theatre There’s a covenant involved when listening to live music: You give your attention and energy to the musician, and in exchange, they provide you with some kind of experience that (IMO) should be crafted to capture that attention and suspend…
UMS Travelogue, Day Two 7.23.10 / Baker District, South Broadway Well away from the densest cluster of the festival was a place called Fentress Architects Materials Garden on 4th and Broadway, and when you walked through the glass doors, there was a large room with these odd glass-encased displays that…
UMS Travelogue, Night Two 7.23.10 | Baker District, South Broadway I started out with Papa Bear at the Irish Rover, where the band’s uber sincere Neutral Milk Hotel vibe proved a good start to the evening. The band boasts a small horn section, and I happened to be right in…
There’s nothing like the sweat, thump and catharsis of a great show. But it can be tough to decide which one to go to when you live in Denver, the land of embarrassing musical riches, the land of too many shows and too little time. So which ones are worth…
All right, how many times have you been bopping along, minding your own business, listening to some tunes, when all of the sudden, you’ll hear a line in a song that instantly makes you do a double-take? You know, the ones where you keep rewinding the sucker, marveling aloud to…
In April, Tryst owner Paul Piciocchi closed Tryst for a week, did some remodeling and opened Dive on Fifteenth in its place. Turns out that a lot of people who had been coming to Tryst since it opened six years ago, wanted their old spot back. So Piciocchi’s giving the…
UMS Travelogue, Night One 07.22.10 | Baker District, South Broadway A guy with a pint of hooch in his back pocket was stumbling and struggling to make it across street toward Famous Pizza. After he made it across the street, he paused for a moment and leaned up against pizza…
Wishing you were at San Diego Comic Con but stuck at work/home? Wondering how you can fulfill your nerd quotient for the day? Or maybe you just always wondered what might happen if someone were to combine the world’s most famous zombie video-game series with the infamous cancan song? If…
UMS Travelogue, Night One 07.22.10 | Baker District, South Broadway The first day of the UMS festival, a Thursday, was what you might expect in terms of attendees — mostly other people in bands or those who are clued into the fact that there is plenty of great music coming…
Freeway & Jake One • Mane Rok 07.22.10 | Bluebird Theater The evening began with a soulful performance by longtime LIFE Crew ambassadors, Mane Rok and DJ Tense, who performed tracks off of Mane’s first solo effort, The Ugly Truth, as well as a few throwback tracks from his earlier…
San Diego Comic-Con is in full swing this weekend, with nerds, dorks and geeks combining forces to create a Mecca of awesome in California. While we’re stuck at home twiddling our thumbs and reading, ahem, books, we found our minds returning to comics no matter what we did. So, in…
In case you missed it, 3OH!3 was on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno last night performing “My First Kiss,” the first single from their new album Streets of Gold. Compared to their shiny vest, bulging-chest-hair and mustache flaunting turn on Jimmy Kimmel last month, this performance is slightly more…
Mike D. Chill is somewhat of a Denver legend. Since his days forming the Kut-N-Kru Record label with Gary “Scratch G” Martinez and Jeff “Apostle” Campbell, he’s been putting it down for raunchy, strip-club girls and low-rider, bass crazed homies alike. After nearly two decades, Chill says he’s “Still in…
