Concerts

Though the sound of Wham’s “Last Christmas” may have you wishing it was 2011 already, there is hope. Tonight, Matt Morris — along with Jen Korte, John Common, Rob Drabkin and a handful of other smiling local faces — will be singing holiday songs at Casselman’s for the “Something in…

You may not have heard much about Selko, and there’s a good reason for that. With the exception of some occasional tweets and the placement of his ninja stickers around town, he’s kept a relatively low profile. Tomorrow night at Herman’s Hideaway (with Yo, Flaco!, the Dendrites, Gamerlife and Blazing…

Looks like Christmas has come early for John Kinsner. This afternoon, the Walnut Room’s former talent buyer, who moved to Los Angeles this past fall, accepted a position with AEG Live at its LA Live Campus as the new production manager for the Nokia Theatre…

Not a lot of holiday parties circle around events that only happen every 456 years, but tomorrow night at Meadowlark, Real is a Feeling is holding it down as your winter solstice pre-party headquarters. To honor the solstice — which is extra special because it also falls on the lunar…

Last night the first-ever Creep party at Beauty Bar — you may have read about it here on Backbeat — went down. Nightlife photographer Jonathan Shoup brings back these photos. See the full slideshow here: Creep at Beauty Bar…

Yet another great project featuring Suzi Bromfield, Girls Walk By is a guitar-pop band, yes, but in a Pixies kind of way. Three-part harmonies and surf guitar abound, but the darkness saturating the vocals and instrumentation is what gives the quartet an distinction beyond its psychadelic undertones…

In the world of rap and circumstance, there is room for pretty much everyone. Unreleased Tension, Jagwire’s latest, carves out the MC’s lane among the mediocre, if not the motivated. He raps over production that is more advanced than his flow, as is the case with “Shangri-La,” a track about…

Spoke In Wordz has completed work on the Get the Power comp he spoke about this past August. The platter — now titled Power of Wordz and slated for release on Friday, January 21 at Casselman’s — features a vibrant cast of characters from the local hip-hop scene, a veritable…

“Chillwave” is a buzzword used to describe a sound built on brezzy melodies with songs heavy on electronics. Even a short list of artists that have fallen under this umbrella, including bands like Small Black and Washed Out, reveals more diversity in approaches to songwriting than a genre title generally…

Arguably the best single night of the year for live music, New Year’s Eve can be an overwhelming thing to plan for. To help you narrow down your options, we’ve picked the ten best shows this year, plus a few extras we couldn’t ignore. Also, feel free to hype your…

Though Rob Halford still holds it down as the leader of Judas Priest, the enigmatic band leader has kept busy with several other music projects during his forty-plus years in music. With a vocal range that is unmatched, Halford has carried the crown as the living heavy-metal god through two…

Whatever the measure of success — whether it’s defined by artists making music on their own or having someone else doing their bidding — a music scene is only as interesting as, well, the music being made there, of course, and the people who are making it, naturally. As you’ll…

“I feel I’m a good conduit, you could say, for bringing new music to a crowd,” muses Mark Farina. “I get a lot of enjoyment from playing new music, even though vibes and artists have changed over the past twenty years. One of my initial things starting out was playing…

In September, Francois Safieddine bought the building at 1414 Market Street — which is home to his clubs Oak Tavern and 24K — for $1,525,000. At around the same time, he also bought the former home of Mori, the old Nisei lodge at 2015 Market, from the Nisei Veterans Heritage…

Ethan Converse and Sam Martin started Flashlights (due Friday, December 17, at the Larimer Lounge) messing around with synthesizers and software while living in Boulder. They say their early material was rough and not as evolved as they would have liked. Be that as it may, anyone who saw any…

How long has it been since the Darkness finally went away? The correct answer: not long enough. Don’t count your blessings yet, though. Steel Panther is filling the vacuum, doing to American glam metal what the Darkness did to British glam rock — namely, ass-fucking it. The group’s only saving…

Dirty Rotten Imbeciles started out as a speedy hardcore band in Houston in the early ’80s. The band was renowned for its short songs, its leftist politics and the frenzied passion of its playing. D.R.I.’s appropriately-titled, landmark 1987 album, Crossover, lived up to its name by introducing a sound that…

When Low formed in Duluth, Minnesota, in 1993, no one could have guessed it would become one of the most respected underground bands of the next two decades. In an era when most acts traded in sheer volume, Low focused instead on raw emotional honesty expressed with a quiet and…

Whole generations of doom-, sludge-, and stoner-rock bands have come and gone since Buzzov•en first trod the earth in 1989. Raw, screamy and ragged, the outfit helped set the tone for underground metal throughout the ’90s and ’00s — despite the fact that the band hasn’t released a studio album…

Trout Steak Revival formed in the summer of 2008 on the secret shores of a Colorado mountain lake. After singing songs and telling stories during days of rain, the five guys, some of whom are originally from the Midwest and East Coast, came away from the outing with a true…