Sean Sullivan

The Sword at last year's Showcase. Get your ears blown-out this year from the front-row with our VIP contest.

Welcome to round five of this year's VIP upgrade contest for the Westword Music Showcase -- June 23 in the Golden Triangle -- in which we'll give two people VIP upgrades (totaling $150) for the festival each week leading up the show. Read on to find out how to play.

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Michael Weintrob

Mickey Hart (due tomorrow night at the Ogden Theatre) was one of the Grateful Dead's two drummers; along with Bill Kreutzmann, Hart helped weave the unique polyrhythms of the legendary band. Whether as a solo artist, with the Dead or as an activist, Hart always puts his heart and his being into his work, and his active mind has taken him down probably every path that has struck and stirred his imagination.

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Denver Police Department photo

Update #2 (5/16/12): Denver Police just released the statement of probable cause in the arrest of OneRepublic drummer Eddie Fisher. The statement paints a clearer picture of what happened yesterday morning: According to the report, police were dispatched just after 1 a.m. to a residence on the 600 block of North Clermont Street on a report of a physical domestic in progress. The initial call was made by Mandy Engel, a roommate of the alleged victim, Lonnie Weygant (aka Loni Rae).

When police arrived on the scene, Fisher waved down officers and told them that his girlfriend was acting hysterical and had locked him in a bathroom and struck him several times in the head. "He then had to jump over her to get away," the report reads, and was reportedly making his way out to his vehicle when he claims Weygant came outside and took his dog.

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The story of Creed (due this Saturday, May 19, at the Paramount Theatre) begins in the mid-'90s, when the band changed its name to Creed from Naked Toddler and embarked on a career marked by hard riffs, mainstream metaphors and Vedder vocals. Not too long after winning a Grammy in 2001, the act nailed itself to a cross with an explosively bad concert in 2002 and eventually disbanded a couple years later. In 2009, the guys came back to life for a national reunion tour and a new, if overtly symbolic, album titled Full Circle. Three years later, the guys are in the midst of another resurrection that involves playing their first two albums in full across the country (Denver gets Human Clay).

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All photos by Nick Callaio for Westword

Montbello High School's drum line marched down the 16th Street Mall yesterday in preparation for the inaugural Make Music Denver event on June 21. Hosted by the Downtown Denver Partnership, Make Music Denver will be a day-long festival that celebrates World Music Day, simultaneously in more than 450 cities around the globe. Nick Callaio was on hand, and he brought back these photos.

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Skrillex at Red Rocks on Thursday, August 9. Tickets on sale this Saturday, May 19, at 10 a.m.

Every week, just when we think we've seen the best of the upcoming concert season and that things couldn't possibly get any more compelling, there's a whole new batch of new shows to make us flip our lids. This week: Skrillex at Red Rocks in August, preceded a few days earlier by two Neil Young shows with Alabama Shakes! Plus, two nights with moe. at the Ogden Theatre this July, and Dethklok, Lamb of God and Gojira at the Fillmore in September. Page down for ticket info on those shows, plus this week's playlists on the local-music specialty shows and the area's top album sales.

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SerenaWilliams.com

Over the weekend, Serena Williams might have been in Spain playing tennis, but she was getting more attention in the blogosphere for seventy seconds of a leaked rap song she made. The results sound like an amateurish impression of a collaboration between Missy Eliot and the Neptunes. The opening line sort of sums it up: "I ball hard, no tennis racket/I can see these haters through my Gucci glasses."

The leaked track raises a lot more questions than it answers. Is there a mixtape in the works? Did she write those bars herself? Is this a publicity stunt? Whatever the case, Williams is just another example of a successful athlete taking an ill-conceived turn at being a musician. Just because someone is good at sports doesn't mean they're ready to rock a stage.

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Caroline Desilets

Plants and Animals (due tonight at the hi-dive) began life as an all-instrumental band in Montreal that made sprawling rock epics informed by an improvisational sensibility. But by the time the band was ready for its 2008 debut full-length, Parc Avenue, it no longer seemed to feel the need to explore all directions at once. While that record still showed signs of the trio's origins in more progressive improv, it also displayed hints of where the act would go next.

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Google Maps

The space at 22nd and Champa will reopen as NORAD Dance Bar on Saturday.

Since being transformed into a nightclub from a coffeehouse, the tan building on the corner of 22nd and Champa Street has been known by many names over the years: Club Evolution, the Loft, Club Ra, Gallery 22 and, most recently, 2200. This Saturday, May 19, the club will be rechristened once again as NORAD Dance Bar, with a completely new concept.

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The Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street, released on May 12, 1972, turned forty this past weekend.

By the spring of 1971, the heroes of the '60s were dropping like flies. The Beatles had broken up, Angela Davis and Timothy Leary were on the run, and everyone in California was becoming a born-again Christian. The previous autumn, Jimi Hendrix asphyxiated on half-digested sleeping pills and red wine, followed by Janis Joplin's lonely heroin overdose two weeks later. It was a time for hiding, not necessarily for self-reflection, but hiding from the truth that the lifestyle of the '60s either killed you or turned you into a sober religious nut making forgettable music -- and which was worse?

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