From Rhinoceropolis to Blast-o-mat to Road 34, a look at Colorado's best alternative venues

Feature: Alternative venues enliven Colorado’s music scene

By | November 18th, 2011 | 4 comments

A few years ago, the female contestants from the VH1 reality show “Rock of Love” came through Fort Collins for a challenge that would bring them closer to rocker Bret Michaels’ heart.

“They must have been told they were going to a biker bar that also had live music,” said Greta Cornett, who books bands at Road 34, a northern Colorado rock club. “Because when they got here, they were looking everywhere for motorcycles.”

Road 34 is one of Colorado’s great rock ‘n’ roll gems – a biker bar in the straight-spoked, bicycle-wheel sense.

It’s also a bike shop. And a deli. And a rock club.

Need to drop your mountain bike off for a tune-up and grab a locally brewed craft beer and maybe stick around for a show? This is likely the only place in Colorado where you can do it all — and grab a Fire in the Disco Cajun chicken sandwich, too. Its location just off the Colorado State University campus makes it one of the best nontraditional venues around.

As much as Coloradans love their storied live music venues — from Red Rocks’ natural drama to the intimate, ornate Bluebird Theater — some prefer to see their shows in places where unprogrammed craziness can take hold. Warehouses. Bike shops. Living rooms. Garages.

A few summers ago, a small, day-long festival played a janky Lipan Street basement, on Denver’s west side. A renegade trailer stage has been known to crash multiple area music festivals just by finding an open parking meter and firing up the generator. The Whomp Truck is a mobile sound system that brings insta-dance parties to a street corner near you.

Local rocker Kurt Ottaway (of Twice Wilted and Tarmints fame, and currently of Overcasters) has long thrown thoughtfully curated rock shows in his warehouse living space in the shadow of Sports Authority Field at Mile High.

And do you remember the days of Club Inferno, the metal club next to strip bar PT’s Showclub — the same space that housed the legendary 1960s Denver rock club The Family Dog?

A few of these nontraditional spaces are committed to a consistent schedule of live music, and in most cases, they have inspired an entire community around them.

At north Denver warehouses Rhinoceropolis and Glob, the DIY scene thrives. On a particularly sweaty night last summer, Israeli punk band Monotonix took over Glob with a reckless ferocity that is rarely seen in rock ‘n’ roll.

Was that Monotonix frontman Ami Shalev riding a bicycle on top of the crowd? Pretty much. Did a young woman grind on the band’s drummer, who was set up in the middle of the crowd, in the middle of the song? Indeed. It was that kind of wild night.

Kind of like Defiance, Ohio’s show at Blast-O-Mat a while back. The venue sits inside the old mechanics garage to the left of the house space, and there were kids swinging on the heavy-duty pulley — originally intended to help move giant engines — throughout the crowd.

Here are our favorite non-traditional music spaces in Colorado:

RHINOCEROPOLIS, GLOB

Who: A collective of artists live here, including Travis Egedy, who is best known as Pictureplane — the indie electronic sensation behind this year’s release “Thee Physical.”

What: A few of the legendary shows over the years include Lightning Bolt, Matt + Kim, Health, Thee Oh Sees and Dan Deacon.

Where: 3553-3551 Brighton Blvd.; myspace.com/rhinoceropolis, myspace.com/globglobglob

In their own words: “We began this space because we saw a void forming in the DIY scene. … Since then, we have hosted hundreds of shows for bands from all over the world, and many art shows for local up-and-coming artists.”

ROAD 34 BIKE SHOP, DELI AND TAVERN

Who: Owners Willy Owens and Will Overbagh manage the space, while Greta Cornett books the bands.

What: A show here is more of a normal experience than Rhinoceropolis, but still, its package element and bike-friendly nature make it a unique excursion.

Where: 1213 W. Elizabeth St., Fort Collins; road34.com

When: Bill Smith, James and the Devil, tonight at 9, $5

In their own words: “Riding is more than just two wheels and a tour-winning fitness program. We feel that the sport of mountain biking is based on a lifestyle that, more or less, revolves around three things: Partying, riding and living.”

BLAST-O-MAT

Who: A collection of volunteers who run the record store, gallery and venue, and make sense out of the chaos. (There’s even storage space and practice space for bands.)

What: A hub of metal and punk music, filling a void in Denver’s live musicsphere

Where: 2935 W. Seventh Ave.; myspace.com/blastomat

When: Touche Amore, Pianos Become Teeth, Seahaven, Citizen, Sunday at 8:30 p.m., by donation

In their own words: “Blast-O-Mat is an all-ages community space! We have a policy of no racism, sexism or homophobia, etc. We are in the process of becoming a self-sustaining entity dedicated to the production and promotion of all kinds of art and music.”

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Ricardo Baca is the founder and executive editor of Reverb, the co-founder of The UMS and an award-winning critic and journalist at The Denver Post.

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  • Quex23

    next time do a little research on the fort collins scene before writing about it. we have 2 well established underground DIY venues: GNU and the terminal. road 34 is as mainstream of a venue as you could possibly find. the fact that it is attached to a bike shop does not change that.

  • Tom Murphy

    This is an unusual article, Ricardo. For many reasons but first how about some fact checking like how The Weather Center (you know, Kurt Ottaway’s place–something I might know something about) is no longer and hasn’t been for some time now. Also, I’m just wondering how a bar that invites bands in to play is an alternative venue? Club Inferno was basically that. So is Road 34. By that standard, Lion’s Lair is an  alternative venue because it didn’t really host rock shows until close to the mid-90s when the bands came in and “ruined” it for people who just wanted to hang out there and do bizarre events. Bars or other established businesses with real sound systems and stages don’t seem very alternative to me. What about so many other places that have cropped up, some now gone, in the last two years that actually contributed to local culture and the local scene in meaningful ways?

    You can’t write about everything but this is basically digging up old information and pretending like it’s current news in saying how “alternative venues enliven Colorado music scene.” While that premise is absolutely true you don’t really tell us how it enlivens the Colorado music scene. This whole article reads like you don’t know what you’re talking about to people who have an inkling of what’s really going on in Denver and Colorado generally. And I know you know better. Maybe this is for people who don’t know much and need an introduction and that’s cool but that’s not your only audience.

    My suggestion? Reconnect with that world for real and stay engaged. If you don’t want to do that or no longer feel like you can or whatever, that’s understandable but it also means you probably shouldn’t be interpreting that to the rest of the world. I don’t write a whole lot about dubstep, hip-hop, country and the kind of music you hear in dance clubs (among other things) because other than some familiarity with that music (more so hip-hop and country than the others), I’m hardly an expert on that world and not part of it. I think you can get reconnected with the world you’re trying to describe here because you were part of it at one time. Anyone who’s been around here more than a handful of years knows that and respect you for being an early and vocal champion of it. I certainly do. But I have to say when I read this, I thought about all the cool places that exist now and have for a while that are very much a part of the local scene that were not mentioned. Some, maybe you felt like you couldn’t mention or talk about. Fair enough.

    Just reconnect with it, Ricardo. You’re a good writer who cares and those are in short supply.

    • chris

      also, stating that PICTUREPLANE lives anywhere isn’t a way to boost people’s awareness about something… just because he sleeps in a warehouse doesn’t exactly tell people what the space is known for or what they accomplish. Seriously, it’s vain as hell, are you trying to score a date with him? – chris

    • http://www.denvereverb.com Ricardo Baca

      Hey, Tom. I was out of the country for a month, so I’m only now seeing this.
      Let’s start with the fact that this article was originally published in The Denver Post, a daily newspaper with a general readership that isn’t likely familiar with any of these places. It’s my job to tell them about places they’ve never been – places, even, that they’ll not likely go to. I might only make it out to Rhino once or twice a year, but that doesn’t preclude me from being able to write about it in a general sense, as I do here. It seems over-simplistic to you, because you’re a part of that community. But I was breaking it down for readers in the Highlands or Highlands Ranch who have never heard of Blast-o-Mat.
      As far as the Weather Center, it rarely hosted shows regularly. It seemed like a special occasion place, for festivals or record releases or celebrations. If you’re saying that there will never, ever be another live music event in that space again, my bad. But even if it’s a once-a-year kind of thing there, then what I wrote isn’t incorrect.
      How is Road 34 an alternative club? Alternative doesn’t only mean ‘alt.’ Think about its definition, and suddenly a single business where you can get a bicycle tune-up and a deli sandwich and a beer and a rock show is a very alternative venue. Lion’s Lair, like the Bluebird and Ogden and Fillmore and Gothic, was once something else, sure. But now they’re all bars with live music. And that’s pretty standard – and not alternative, in my book.
      Clearly this story wasn’t meant to be comprehensive. If you wanna write that one, go for it. This was a brief and well-illustrated glimpse into three very different rooms for readers of The Denver Post and Reverb. Also, at no point do I claim any of this to be new. But it is worthy of a feature, as indicated by the number of emails I got after its publication. Some people wanted to know more about the spaces. Others wanted to know how they could help, go to shows. Others wanted to do the same thing with spaces they own. It was pretty cool coming back to that kind of feedback.
      Of course there’s also feedback like this, which is fine. Chris’ note below, too. (Chris: It’s noteworthy that Travis lives there. People might be aware of him and not Rhino, and so it puts things in perspective for them, which is one of the media’s roles.) Either way, thanks for the conversation, and I’ll see you around.