Blogs

Arcade Fire, with LCD Soundsystem
September 17, 2007
Red Rocks Amphitheatre
Better than: Uh, just about anything else in recent memory.

Slide Show

Epic. Grandiose. Those are fitting descriptors for Monday night’s unreal double bill at the Rocks featuring LCD Soundsystem and Arcade Fire.

Soundsystem got things going a little before 8 p.m. with a vigorous set of pulse-pounding tunes that mesmerized the enthusiastic crowd. Despite admitting to being winded (“This is very high altitude,” said frontman James Murphy. “Everytime I sing a high note, I feel like I’m going to pass out. If I do, well, uh, sorry.”), the act had little difficulty moving the masses of asses. LCD, which just joined this leg of the tour, served as the ideal opener on this night, leaving the throng in sweaty anticipation of the impending firestorm awaiting it in the wings.

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Monolith Festival, Day Two
September 15, 2007
Red Rocks Amphitheatre
Better than: Day one -- and my expectations.

Before I even arrived for day two I was filled with fear and loathing of the stairs. I still hadn’t recovered from the first day’s exertions, so I celebrated my arrival by literally collapsing on a bench and refusing to move. My sloth meant I caught the entirety of the Little Ones, seen here, on the main stage, a band I had never heard of and had no intention of covering that turned out to be all right. The singer reminded me of Geddy Lee, which sort of made the whole thing sound like a much poppier, more giddy version of Rush, without all the prog wanking.

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Monolith festival, Day One
September 14, 2007
Red Rocks Amphitheatre
Better than: Any other reason to climb roughly sixty thousand stairs.

There are a lot of stairs at Red Rocks. Usually, once you make it through the grueling hike into the place, you’re done. You settle into a spot and maybe take a riser or two up or down to grab a beer. Monolith demanded more. With five stages spread throughout the venue, it made for painful treks up and down hundreds of stairs mandatory to get the full experience. And despite the aching feet and back, the experience was worth it.

Stopping to catch my breath once I made it in, I caught the start of a set from Everything Absent or Distorted (a Love Story) on the main stage. The band looked and sounded right at home on the big stage, and, as usual, the bombastic pop sound put a smile on my face. As much fun as it would have been to sit and listen, I had to head to the singer-songwriter stage to catch Ian Cooke (above).

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Monolith, Day Two
September 15, 2007
Red Rocks
Better than: Another boring workout on the Stairmaster with your iPod

The first thing everyone has mentioned about Monolith so far is those infernal stairs. I, too, sweated and panted my way up the ramp into the park, then up that interminable staircase to the New Belgium stage, then down the back stairs to the WOXY and Rock Room stages, and, yes, it was hard. However, my friends, we live in Colorado. Suck it up. If you spend each spare moment crammed into dingy rock clubs and never manage to get out into the natural beauty of our state, where you find yourself winded from the thin air and exertion rather than from your 16th Parliament of the day, then shame on you, shame on me, and shame on us all. We owe a debt of gratitude to the good folks of Monolith for reminding us of the unyielding and unconquerable grandeur of the Rockies. We should count ourselves lucky to live in its shadow.

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“And fuck Bush,” Common proclaimed at the end of a sick freestyle at the Fillmore Auditorium on September 13 -- and the crowd went nuts. His flow touched on everything from gang-banging to economic standing before he walked the crowd through a melodic hip-hop history in which he covered everyone from Public Enemy and the Pharcyde to N.W.A. and A Tribe Called Quest.

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Ben Gibbard at MGD's "The Craft"
September 10, 2007
Better Than: Not seeing Ben Gibbard play at all, but just barely.

Like the smell of freshly laid carpet. Or the pungent odor of melting polyvinyl chloride mixed with smugfuckness. That’s what my mouth tasted like after tonight’s Ben Gibbard show at the Fillmore Auditorium, a show entitled The Craft, presented by Miller Genuine Draft and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This toxic taste wasn’t just to blame on the three-plus cold-filtered Miller Genuine Drafts that the two- or-three-hundred invite-only fans in attendance were treated to (read: forced to), but mostly because of Warren Zanes, the long-winded blowhard (and Vice President of Education at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum) who interviewed one of indie rock’s most prolific singer-songwriters. Why was Blonde-Highlights McTeeth so terrible? Because he broke the cardinal rule of rock journalism, over and over and over and over and over, again: Don’t talk about yourself. Also: Do some fucking research, which means don’t ask questions like, “Is Elliot Smith someone who was important to you,” and “So what’s [Death Cab for Cutie’s] process – you, like, sitting with an acoustic guitar and everyone else sitting around you?”

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Cary Brothers with Mother Mother and Stars of Track and Field
July 21, 2007
The Soiled Dove Underground
Better than: The Doobie Brothers
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Made it to the Soiled Dove just as Mother Mother was wrapping up its set and heard just enough to form a vague impression of the act’s sound. The sweet girl-girl-guy harmonies meets quirky, off-kilter rock evoked They Might Be Giants in a roller-derby bout with Shonen Knife. It was intriguing enough to inspire a second look down the road.

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Magic Cyclops Benefit Show with The Photo Atlas, Monofog, Lion Sized, The New Rome, Mr. Pacman, Dario Rosa
July 18, 2007
The hi-dive
Better than: Living just about anywhere else could possibly be.
Slide Show

The Magic Cyclops benefit show at the hi-dive was a perfect example of what makes Denver’s scene so great. The night started off with a set from Dario Rosa that took the best parts of early rock history, fueled them with a mix of bluesy guitar and two-and-three-part harmonies and channeled the mix through some solid, catchy songwriting.

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Rocket to Nowhere, Dry Rot, Turbo Knife Fight and Green Fuse
Larimer Lounge
July 18, 2007
Better than: A swift kick to the balls
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Rocket to Nowhere started off this lonely Wednesday night to a crowd of their girlfriends and a buddy. It was the guys' first night out, though, and as they put it, they were “still working out some kinks.” So I’ll try to be nice. It is said that when you undergo brain surgery, you can’t feel the drilling into your head. But I could definitely feel Rocket’s set of guitar-driven, growling rock boring slowly but surely into my skull. After introducing a song called “This is My Life and I Hate It,” I decided it was time to start drinking.

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Slide Show

Nick Terranova
July 13, 2007
The Church
Better than: Most club nights have any right to aspire to be.

Before Nick Terranova took over the decks, 2040 residents Matthew Orloff and Bryan Matthew played a fun opening set that got the crowd amped up for the main event. The pair laid down a few rough mixes, and they seemed to have a hard time really settling into a solid groove, but they did manage to get people moving, sweating and excited for the main event.

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Gravy Train!!!!
July 10, 2007
hi-dive
Better than: Watching drag queens lip-synch to Cher.

The Gravy Train!!!! show at the hi-dive featured flamingly gay men dressed in tighty-whiteys, plenty of silver lamé and kitschy, juvenile sexuality resulting in the type of campy theatrics rarely seen outside of a drag-queen revue. An enthusiastic all-ages crowd packed in front of the stage and bounced along with every cheesy, goofball second of the show. Musically, it amounted to X-rated electro-clash vaudeville, mashing girl-group sweetness with sleazy R&B grooves and pumping the whole mess into a half retarded, half hilarious dance party of epic proportions.

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Coheed and Cambria

Slide Show

At certain times, a reviewer should completely tune out fans in search of total objectivity. At others, the people most into the music should drive the critical train -- and for this look at the thirteenth annual Warped Tour, which stopped at Invesco Field at Mile High on July 8, I decided to share my engineer's cap with some real experts: my twin daughters, Lora and Ellie, and two of their friends, Jessica and Emily. All four of them are fourteen -- smack in the gut of the Warped demographic -- and they love Warped-type sounds so passionately that they should probably slip condoms on their iPods before listening. With that in mind, I told them they could determine the groups we saw, and asked them to grade the bands afterward. I'd weigh in, too, but theirs were the opinions that really counted.

In the end, Coheed and Cambria was among the bands that rated best -- yet the overall marks handed out by the Big Four were generally tougher than I anticipated. (Although I thought they'd offer straight A's, I was wrong.) Below is our Warped experience, complete with injuries major and minor, traumatizing weather and plenty of rocking out to guys with guitars:

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Slide Show

The Tanukis, Ukulele Loki and Chairlift
July 7, 2007
The Larimer Lounge
Better Than: Eating dinner. Seriously, I skipped dinner to see this show.

Sometimes the best shows are the ones that you go to on a whim, where you’ve never heard any of the bands before and end up stumbling on some unexpected gems. That’s an apt description of how things worked out last night at the Larimer Lounge.

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Yerkish and Something Underground
July 5, 2007
The Soiled Dove
Better than: Whatever passes for “Must See TV” these days
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99.5 the Mountain's Homegrown Showcase got underway with Yerkish burning through an invigorating set of heavy art rock as a bizarre video reel projected on either side of the stage. Standout tracks included “Megaman,” about everyone’s favorite blue robot superhero, and “Stasis,” a ripping political barnstormer about the disgust and hatred much of the world feels for the U.S.

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Crash Orchid, Go Patriot, The Dirty Novels
June 29, 2007
3 Kings Tavern
Better than: Missing out on Go Patriot would have been.

Friday night at 3 Kings tavern brought a more or less random mix of bands and music fans out. The night started off with Crash Orchid, a female-fronted local rock band celebrating its CD release. Crash Orchid played a mild, inoffensive brand of coffeehouse rock. Apart from the dulcet voiced (and quite lovely) singer, the group didn’t seem to have a lot going for it. The songs were lackluster, the performance was plagued by the drummer’s inability to consistently stay in time and both the bass player and guitarist seemed determined to look foolish. Apart from a halfway decent cover of “Metro” by Berlin, there wasn’t much there.

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