ALICE COOPER / MARILYN MANSON @ RED ROCKS | 6/3/13 The moment everyone was waiting for and had to guess was coming came at the very end of the show, when Alice Cooper came back on stage for his encore. As the familiar strains of “I’m Eighteen” drew cheers from…
THE XX @ FILLMORE AUDITORIUM | 6/3/13 Clad in black and appearing every bit as mysterious and guarded as their music implies, the xx stepped on stage, strapped on its gear and began playing “Try” from its sophomore album, Coexist. The siren-like drone from Jamie Smith’s synthesizer set the tone…
ALICE COOPER & MARILYN MANSON @ RED ROCKS | MON, 6/3/13 Alice Cooper and Marilyn Manson at Red Rocks. Sweet Jesus! How this totally obvious and sure-to-be-awesome pairing has not happened before now is anybody’s guess. The music world’s O.G. shock rocker and his direct artistic descendent are slated to…
TAYLOR SWIFT @ PEPSI CENTER | 6/2/13 Taylor Swift knows what people say about her. She’s heard it all — the rumors, the criticism, the constant derision. She knows, as she acknowledged a few times during her performance at the Pepsi Center last night, but she doesn’t care. Why should…
GETO BOYS @ SUMMIT MUSIC HALL | SAT, 6/22/13 When it comes to the history of hip-hop in the Dirty South, it begins with Geto Boys and their self-titled, Rick Rubin-produced debut. The group had existed, though with a different cast, since ’86, but it wasn’t until the turn of…
THE POSTAL SERVICE @ RED ROCKS | 5/30 “We had to cancel last night because I lost my voice, but I’ve got it back, kinda sorta,” Ben Gibbard told a packed house last night at Red Rocks, referring to scrapping the previous night’s gig in Salt Lake City. “And by…
ALABAMA SHAKES @ RED ROCKS | SUN, 6/2/13 Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes has a powerful and mesmerizing voice and she sings with an impassioned believability that sounds like she has experienced a fuller life than her young years could hope to contain. Her earthy vocals and the band’s solid,…
BASSNECTAR @ RED ROCKS AMPHITHEATRE | FRI & SAT 5/31-6/1 “When I first got going,” recalls Lorin Ashton, “I was into fuckin’ brutal, satanic death metal.” Even with all of his hair, it’s hard to imagine that Ashton, better known as Bassnectar, was once enthralled with extreme metal. After all,…
Selina Albright tried the saxophone once. She got dizzy, though, and that’s pretty much all it took for her to realize that the sax wasn’t for her. “I’m just going to use my lungs for my vocal cords, and that’s it,” says Albright, whose father, Gerald, is renowned in contemporary…
During the 1980s, Denver and Boulder both had thriving experimental-music scenes, with acts like Architects Office, Walls of Genius, Human Head Transplant and the Bruce Odland Big Band, which included Ron Miles and Mark McCoin. But the longest-lasting and most prolific of these is Thinking Plague. Rather than being grounded…
On Whiskey Tonight, their seventh album, the Indulgers, led by vocalist/multi-instrumentalists Damien McCarron and Mike Nile, step things up a bit, injecting a considerable amount of vigor into many of the fourteen original cuts, particularly the buoyant “It’s You” and “Doin’ Fine,” an instrumental. Drummer Francesco Mannone’s tom-heavy tribal beats…
On the Dizzo Drizz Dotta EP, Benjamin Banks deserves credit not only for his selection of musical ingredients, which are as diverse and unconventional as hymnal chants and telephone rings, but also for his contextualization of those ingredients into consumable entrees. Banks has broken out of the box of traditional…
On Million Dollar Mixtape, MDZ affects a king-from-the-gutter persona. In rap and beyond, it’s a classic, always viable story. The challenge is telling the story in a way that’s fresh and new. While the opening track, “STRONG,” includes some personal moments that help explain MDZ’s character, most of the tape…
It’s rare to find a free CD in the front of an independent record store that’s worth more than a casual listen. Greasy Demos, by Pizza Time, was crudely recorded, it sounds blown out, and the music is raw, primitive stuff. There are no track titles on the cover or…
Rockmount Ranch Wear has a slew of regular and returning customers. Among the latest: the Arctic Monkeys! In town this week for a show last night at the Ogden Theatre, the band stopped by Rockmount. Again. Last time the guys were in town a year ago warming up for the…
Yuzo Nieto is best known for his stint as the gifted sax player in Pee Pee and the ringleader of avant-garde jazz and Afro-Cuban outfit Pink Hawks, the latter of which is still a going concern. Nieto has been a music teacher at SOAR Charter School in Green Valley Ranch…
SOUNDGARDEN @ 1STBANK CENTER | 5/28/13 Five songs into its set last night at 1STBANK Center, with the stage bathed in emerald light and Chris Cornell appearing sans guitar for the first time in the set, Soundgarden performed “Outshined,” one of its first radio hits. Cornell put his mic toward…
ARCTIC MONKEYS @ THE OGDEN THEATRE, 5/28/13 During the decade Arctic Monkeys have been together and the seven years of space since their debut album, the guys have exchanged their polos for panache. While their lyrics continue to question their lives and loves, the stage is reserved for charm. They…
JUICY J @ CERVANTES’ MASTERPIECE BALLROOM | 5/28/13 Juicy J is like the frying pan that you don’t wash. You’d never show your guests you’re cooking with him, but he is just so damned flavorful. With the crowd at Cervantes’ already in his hand, and the energy fading somewhat, Juicy…
While you’ve already got well over a hundred compelling reasons to pick up your tickets for the nineteenth annual Westword Music Showcase, here’s one more: Last night, in the basement of Boettcher Concert Hall, I got a sneak peek at the highly anticipated and ground-breaking collaboration between the Colorado Symphony…
MUSICFEST @ MAGNESS ARENA | 5/25/13 The Head and the Heart took the Magness stage at around 10 p.m., after the outdoor acts played earlier in the day and the three other groups played the main stage off and on for about three hours. At that point, folks seemed far…
ZZ WARD @ GOTHIC THEATRE | WEDS, 5/29/13 While riding the bus to school as a child, Zsuzsanna Ward spent her time in headphones, thinking about just how much she wanted to become a singer. As an adult better known as ZZ Ward, she reached the crux of that dream…
