From 2008 through 2010, the DIY space Rhinoceropolis and its sister venue Glob experienced their most active periods. The DIY touring circuit was still in full swing and many of the buzz bands in the underground made Rhino a stop along their route across America. I went to Rhino and…
Early this year, roughly a month after the members of Denver band Flashbulb Fires announced their breakup, former vocalist Patrick McGuire found himself back on stage, this time alone with an acoustic guitar and a new project: Straight White Teeth. He knew, despite being in an emotional place, that he…
Dan Deacon, who headlines the Bluebird Theatre on Tuesday, May 12, makes unclassifiable music that plenty of people insist upon trying to categorize anyhow. His latest album, Gliss Riffer, collects computer-generated music with a stylistic range that encompasses every conceivable genre, as well as some that don’t exist yet except…
When Rhinoceropolis opened its doors to the public for the first time in May of 2005 for an art show, it represented a continuation of Denver’s long tradition of DIY venues. From warehouses and the like for punk shows in the 80s, the Greenhaus of early alternative rock band The…
Rhinoceropolis opened to the public with an art show the first week of May 2005. It was founded by Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design students Harry C. Walters and Jeremiah Teutsch and musicians/artists Milton Melvin Croissant III (aka “Buddy”) and Warren Bedell. The four had spent plenty of…
Denver’s Ian Cooke spent the weekend in Fort Collins, armed only with his cello, his effects pedal and his voice, ready to convert new fans and meet with old ones. On Thursday night, he played a solo set on the roof of the months-old Illegal Pete’s. “That’s an honor, and…
Underground hip-hop was on the ascent by the early 2000s and reached a bit of an apex in its popularity by the middle of the decade. In that time, Chris Steele released his debut album Litterture in 2004. His clever wordplay and thoughtful, if irreverent, humor made his rap songs…
When Dweezil Zappa formed his Zappa Plays Zappa project a decade ago, one of his goals was to hip younger listeners to the music of his father, Frank Zappa, who passed away in 1993. But the first year he took the band on the road, a lot of people from…
Veteran songwriter John Common has been treating Denverites to well-crafted, imaginative songwriting since his days in alt-country band Rainville. Having worked with a handful of bands and projects since then, Common has demonstrated remarkable flexibility in both sound and performance. His collaborators over the years have included a number of…
Darren Kulback and Kevin Wesley had to be bored living in Parker, Colorado as teenagers. But both were aware of truly underground music from a young age. When Kulback was eleven years old he saw that legendary 2002 tour that featured Lighting Bolt, Arab On Radar, The Locust and Blood…
It began with a book: Girls to the Front, by Sara Marcus. After a fellow musician gave David Castillo the book, which chronicles the rise and influence of the riot grrrl movement, he was inspired to make a zine. The zine never happened, but the idea became a band called…
I met Felix Ayodele (aka Fast4Ward) through a small DJ circle when he moved to Colorado twelve years ago. Every week, fellow musician Jacob Sanders and I visited Ayodele’s music shack behind his house, and the three of us would seize whatever instruments were close by, huddling over an eight-track…
Writing a book is hard. Writing a book on something that happened thirty years ago when you’re half way across the world is harder. But for Bob Medina, finding a way to archive and share the Denver punk scene of the ’80s while spending most of his time teaching in…
Colorado Springs is just over an hour by car from Denver, but that has often been enough to prevent too much cross pollination in music between the two cities. Still, anyone willing to make the trip from Denver to check out shows or to catch a Springs band knows that…
Denver trio Edison is releasing a story-filled EP this Friday at the Larimer Lounge. Called Ghost, the four-track album is an ode to songwriter Sarah Slaton’s mother, who passed away five years ago after a year-long battle with cancer. It’s a story that is so ingrained in the music that…
One day about six years ago, Peter Isakovic’s then-nine-year-old daughter expressed an interest in playing drums, and he wanted to make that happen for her. But Isakovic’s life wasn’t in the best shape at the time: He was a recently divorced dad crashing on a friend’s couch while working through…
Grant Kwiecinski, also known as Griz, has made a name for himself in the electronic music world by creating self-described “future-funk,” or combining pre-produced electronic music with live jazz saxophone playing. The Detroit born, Denver-based 24-year-old DJ and producer has put out three full length albums with another one debuting…
When I was thirteen, I became a man. I’m talking about having my Bar Mitzvah. Raised Jewish and middle class, it was a fairly big deal, and part of that involved planning a huge party. So, my mom dragged me to some random office (meaning some event planner’s tacky living…
Although the warehouse venue at 2126 Arapahoe Street continued to be called Monkey Mania well into 2006, and fondly continued to be referred to by the name even as it was re-named Kingdom of Doom, the last show when it was run by the Josh Taylor, Amy Fantastic and their…
Longtime Larimer Lounge booking manager James Irvine moved to New York City on March 1st to take up his new position as a booker at The Bowery Electric. Irvine grew up in Evergreen, Colorado, a small city that has produced more than its fair share of artists and figures in…
While Ryan Scannura was getting his degree in biology in Springfield, Illinois, he started making house music. For a while, he was involved in a club night called Bit Crushed. When he graduated, in 2010, the job market was not encouraging. So Scannura, like many students, decided to pursue an…
By definition, “nocturne” is, “a short composition of a romantic or dreamy character suggestive of night, typically for piano.” The Nocturne Jazz & Supper Club epitomizes this definition. Located at 3130 27th Street, across the street from Meadowlark and diagonal from Cold Crush, Nocturne is the latest addition to Denver’s…
