Critic's Notebook

Editor’s Note: The Denver Bootleg is a series chronicling the history of local music venues by longtime Denver cartoonist Karl Christian Krumpholz. Visit Krumpholz’s website to see more of his work…

The violinists are fiddling around. They’re staggered among the darkened rows of wooden seats in Boulder’s 117-year-old, barn-like Chautauqua Auditorium, standing apart from each other in little pools of concentration, tuning their instruments. On stage, the brass and woodwind players and percussionists are tweeting, honking and booming. At 10 a.m.,…

Editor’s Note: The Denver Bootleg is a series chronicling the history of local music venues by longtime Denver cartoonist Karl Christian Krumpholz. Visit Krumpholz’s website to see more of his work…

Today, Colorado-based prank-call artist Longmont Potion Castle releases a career-spanning box set of his recordings. Before the Jerky Boys began their long career as high-profile prank callers, there was Longmont Potion Castle. LPC’s debut release was a 1987 cassette called Butcher the Paleontologist under the moniker Implement of Prognosis, and…

Jazz saxophonist Mark Fox was never really an inside player. Rather, he came in from the far outside, immersed in the music of avant-garde jazz innovators like Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, Pharoah Sanders and David S. Ware before ever checking out Charlie Parker. The album that set Fox down that…

Editor’s Note: The Denver Bootleg is a series chronicling the history of local music venues by longtime Denver cartoonist Karl Christian Krumpholz. Visit Krumpholz’s website to see more of his work. …

Denver-based Sailor Records, which is celebrating its first five years this weekend, started as both a labor of love and a tax write-off. When founder Oscar Ross put out the first album by his hard-rock band Lords of Fuzz in 2010, he did it just to have an imprint on…

At least that’s what you’ll hear if you hang around enough Denver music people. Though Denver’s musical reputation outside the state is as a hotbed for all things EDM and jam band, those genres don’t seem to influence what’s called the “Denver Sound.” Press a knowledgeable Denverite for further details,…

Denver has had a healthy underground hip-hop scene going back to the ’80s, including significant acts like Legion of Doom, Apostle, Future Reference, the Strange Us, the Pirate Signal and Ground Zero Movement. Newer artists like Jimmy V are keeping that world vibrant and breaking ground in establishing an audience…

The typical silk-shirted, fedora-topped crowd at Dazzle probably isn’t expecting it. It’s late on a recent Thursday, and on a stage usually occupied by Denver’s best jazz ensembles is a 26-year-old from Colorado Springs named Joseph Lamar. Megaphone in hand, he’s screaming the lyrics to the Violent Femmes’ “Gone Daddy…

Since winning the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition in 1991, saxophonist Joshua Redman has toured the globe, released more than dozen albums under his own name and collaborated with number of jazz luminaries, but Redman says he still feels like a complete beginner. “Every time I learn something, that…

Editor’s Note: The Denver Bootleg is a series chronicling the history of local music venues by longtime Denver cartoonist Karl Christian Krumpholz. Visit Krumpholz’s website to see more of his work.  The Church will host bands performing at the 2016 Westword Music Showcase on Saturday, June 25. …

Few people had heard of Dylan Montayne before he posted his YouTube video, “Uber driver raps for car full of babes,” on May 24, 2016. The video, which captured Montayne rapping for his Uber passengers, quickly went viral once blogs shared it and has since garnered attention from celebrities like…

It ain’t always sunny in Colorado, and not every octogenarian karaokes to Frank Sinatra. On Tuesday night’s season premiere of TV competition show, “America’s Got Talent,” 82-year-old John Hetlinger proved both of those points with his audition. Hetlinger, of Broomfield, took the stage before the studio audience and the panel…

I’m just going to be real, if you were born after 1996, this article is for you. Not only did you miss out on possibly the peak of modern hip-hop, you missed out on an entire culture. Do you remember when Tupac died? If so, this article might not be for you. I…

Steve Diggle didn’t really intend to be in Buzzcocks, a band that, along with the Clash, the Sex Pistols, the Jam and the Damned, formed the nucleus of England’s punk explosion four decades ago. In fact, Diggle might have ended up in a different band altogether. In the summer of…

Chromeo has been at the music thing for about ten years now, pumping out one synthy, upbeat and dancey track after another. You might think it’s effortless for the duo. But according to the group’s lead vocalist Dave “Dave 1” Macklovitch, Chromeo’s aesthetic isn’t effortless at all. He and the…

When the duo GO DARK released its first EP on Halloween 2014, it was speculated that one member was prolific rapper and beat producer Doseone. Eventually it was revealed to be true that the pioneer of alternative hip-hop had teamed up with newcomer Ash, who had never before been part…

Transitioning back to society after ten and a half years in federal lockup was no walk in the park for Ronald Cosby, who’s now one of the most respected and important figures in Aurora’s hip-hop community. Better known by his nickname, “the Hood Father,” Cosby remembers leaving prison in 2008…

John Baizley, singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist for Baroness, which is part of the Project Pabst lineup on Saturday, May 21, is among the most fascinating figures in contemporary music: smart, complex, conflicted, inquisitive and piercingly articulate. Just as important, his band’s twist on progressive metal operates within the traditions of…

In late 2005, a group of musicians moved into a house at 2155 Franklin Street, blocks from Five Points. The neighborhood, once called the “Harlem of the West” for its thriving jazz scene, had changed a lot by this time, and there were cheap (if neglected) spaces for the young,…

When you’re in a band, starting at the bottom and perhaps still learning your trade, few things are more rewarding than gaining the respect of your peers. If one of those peers happens to run a record label and wants to sign you, then all the better. That’s pretty much,…