Concerts

Memorial Day is here. It’s time to dance and sing our hearts out, remembering those who have come and gone before us, who have struggled to make this world a better place.

Lost Walks vocalist Dameon Merkl sits in the back room of Carbon Cafe & Bar. The experience is surreal for him. The now-upscale joint was once home to Paris on the Platte — a hot spot for Denver’s counterculture for nearly thirty years.

Sure, hiking, backpacking and rafting are all good reasons to go to the mountains. But when you’re tired of nature, consider attending these stunning live-music events, venues, concerts and festivals – some of which are free – up in the high country.

After finishing classes at Bear Creek High School on Thursday, June 10, 1971, Steve Baum, who had just turned sixteen, and a few of his high school buddies drove straight to Red Rocks Amphitheatre to see Jethro Tull. Little did they know, tear gas would soon be burning their eyes.

One of the first DJs to explode into mainstream stardom, Paul Van Dyk won the first ever Grammy for “Best Dance/Electronic Album” in 2003. Van Dyk didn’t stop there: He was named No. 1 DJ in the world for two consecutive years as he went on to sell over three-million albums.

Randall Frazier has been running sound at concerts and engineering records in and around Denver for two decades. As a sound engineer and talent buyer at Walnut Room for nearly ten years, Frazier left his mark on Denver’s underground scene.

Encountering masses of intoxicated young adults stumbling along Larimer Street between 27th and 28th streets isn’t all that uncommon on weekends — especially since that part of RiNo is packed with trendy bars including the Meadowlark, Cold Crush, Nocturne and Larimer Lounge. The difference on Saturday, May 21, was that drunk people…

This is all getting horribly familiar, isn’t it? We’ve lost another one — a great musician and songwriter taken far too young. We’ll never know quite why Chris Cornell, of Soundgarden and AudioSlave, made the decisions that he did, but it’s not for us to judge. Here are ten of his best songs.

Project Pabst returns to the RiNo Neighborhood on Saturday, May 20 with a weighty lineup that includes Ice Cube, Phantogram, Danny Brown, Kurt Vile & the Violators, STRFK, while the Five Points Jazz Festival and the Global Dub Festival (featuring Flux Pavilion, Illenium and more) is at Red Rocks on Saturday as well.

When Art Alexakis’s Everclear formed in 1991 in Portland, Oregon, just three hours from Seattle, the alt-rock band was inevitably lumped in with the grunge scene. And sure, there were superficial similarities, from Alexakis’s gaunt demeanor and drug stories to the fashion, but there was very little grunge in Everclear’s…

Are you needing to put a little funk in your step? The Colorado band the Motet, which will be headlining Red Rocks for its second time on Friday, June 2, is premiering its new track, “Supernova,” with Westword.

Roughly two decades ago, Andy Palmer gave up music to practice law.

Chris Cornell, the 52-year-old frontman of Soundgarden and AudioSlave, died the evening of Wednesday, May 17, hours after performing at Detroit’s Fox Theatre, reported multiple outlets Thursday. Soundgarden was slated to play Denver’s Fillmore Auditorium on Monday, May 22.

On Midnight Oil’s politically charged 1978 self-titled debut, singer Peter Garrett pounded his musical pulpit, throughout the band’s intense, guitar-dominated songs.

Paramore, which released its new album After Laughter last week, brings its Tour Two to Bellco Theatre on, Thursday, September 21 with Best Coast opening. Tickets ($38.50-$59.50) go on sale on Wednesday, May 24, at 10 a.m. Mary J. Blige’s Strength of a Woman North American tour stops at Bellco Theatre on Wednesday, September 6. Lalah Hathaway will open. Tickets ($49-$150) go on sale on Friday, May 19, at 10 a.m. HARD Red Rocks returns to the venue on Friday, July 28, with Dillon Francis, DJ Mustard, Destructo, AC Slater, Wax Motif and Kittens. Tickets ($49.75-$99.75) go on sale on Friday, May 19, at 10 a.m.

Fans of Emmy Award-winning reality show RuPaul’s Drag Race know all too well the legend of drag oddity Alaska Thunderfuck whose bizarre take on the classic art form charmed audiences as she broke all the rules. Well, buckle up, Denver. Thunderfuck is coming back to town this Saturday with a batch of songs and a live band, and it’s going to be a bumpy night.

French composer Jean-Michel Jarre’s debut album, Deserted Palace, was released in 1972. That’s a decade before Juan Atkins and Rick Davis formed Detroit techno pioneer Cybotron and, frankly, more than a decade before anyone really considered electronic music a “thing.”

Red Rocks will be playing host for two nights of electronic music when Colorado-raised EDM producer Derek Vincent Smith, better known as Pretty Lights, brings “An Episodic Festival” to Red Rocks.

Westword Music Showcase is right around the corner, and the lineup keeps getting better. Earlier this year, we announced the national acts gracing our main stage – Shakey Graves, the Revivalists, Cut Copy, Bob Moses, COIN and A R I Z O N A – as well as a handful of the locals who will be playing. Today, we’re announcing fifty more local acts who will perform at venues throughout the Golden Triangle.

Waiting in a line that spanned almost two Boulder blocks before Primus’s sold-out show at the Fox Theatre last night – part of the renowned Boulder venue’s twentieth-anniversary celebration – I heard a guy in his mid 20s tell a friend incredulously, “My cousin said he’s never heard of Primus. He didn’t even know fucking ‘John The Fisherman!’”