Before the show at the Gothic last Sunday, we wondered why Hot Water Music had gotten back together. After the show, we knew exactly why the band had reunited. Photos by Joe McCabe. This past year Hot Water Music made a slight ripple when they announced they were coming off what was supposed to be a permanent hiatus. This news officially put on hold the Draft – the group formed by Hot Water Music members after the departure of Chuck Ragan – and Chuck Ragan’s [...]

Ice Cube’s still-fresh flows had the audience eating out the palm of his hand at the Ogden on Sunday. Photo from MTV.com. As I crept down the old wooden staircase to the backstage area of the Ogden Theatre Sunday night, my nose was greeted by a warm, familiar smell. I reached the landing and spied the culprit of my temptation: there, in disheveled paper buckets on the table were crispy wings, thighs, drumsticks and breasts. With his back turned to me and the pails of [...]

Andy Schneider of the Archive rocks the keytar at the Hi-Dive on Friday. Photos by Samuel M. Gault. At first glance, Denver rock quartet the Archive seems to share little with frequent show companions We Are! We Are! The former indulges its performance whims with self-consciously proggy solos, drum fills, keyboard lines and vocals, building sonic towers wrapped with squiggly synth vines and twisting melodies. The latter, on the other hand, eschews effects pedals and showy solos for something that more resembles a jazz trio [...]

[photopress:public_enemy.jpg,full,pp_image] Inimitable rapper Flava Flav (left) and Chuck D of Public Enemy brought the noise to the Boulder Theater on Aug. 27. Photo from Virgin Media. I was not all that excited about the DNC coming to town. Sure, it’s an exciting time for Americans, with redemption just two months and half a nation’s votes away, but the city was overrun with media and street mimes and the chaos in Capitol Hill was almost unbearable. So, away from the city we drove the night before [...]

[photopress:outside_thom.jpg,full,pp_image] Headliners Radiohead rocked the first night of San Francisco’s Outside Lands Festival. Photos by Julio Enriquez. Reverb contributor Julio Enriquez checks in with this report from the Outside Lands Festival, which took place at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park Aug. 22-24. – Day 1 – The uncomfortable feeling you have when your get your shoes wet upon arriving at a campsite was much like my first day at the very cold, very foggy Outside Lands Festival. I spent the first day trying to acclimate [...]

[photopress:IMG_9031.jpg,full,pp_image] Slim (left) and Munly Munly preached to the punk choir at the Bluebird Theater on Saturday. Photos by Joe McCabe. Colorado’s in the blood of Slim Cessna’s Auto Club. It’s an essential part of the band’s DNA, a fiber of its being. Its dreary Southern Gothic alt-country is as much of a reminder of Denver’s cow town days as an updated, urbanized reminder of the city’s place playing host to the Democratic National Convention. Its religious bent whirls the fundamentalism of Marilyn Musgrave’s constituents [...]

[photopress:NOFX.jpg,full,pp_image] NOFX are still jerks — thank God. Photo from the band’s MySpace profile. If I were to correctly recount all of what was said, done, and insinuated by NOFX at the Punk Rocks show at Red Rocks Friday night, a passerby of this article could snap up my words, stray them from context, and accuse me of being a racist, a pervert and a bad writer. But I can only write the truth, and what would a NOFX show be without talk of lesbians [...]

[photopress:mm1.jpg,full,pp_image] My Morning Jacket’s dizzying sampling of genres fired up the crowd at Red Rocks on Thursday. Photos by Laurie Scavo. My Morning Jacket have been waiting their whole lives to headline Red Rocks, and for much of a glorious last Thursday night, it seemed they might keep going for what’s left of theirs. The amorphous Kentucky guitar heroes jammed, howled, progged, emoted and howled their way through an expansive three-hour set that exhausted everyone save for the bounding boys on the stage, who surely [...]

[photopress:el_vez.jpg,full,pp_image] Hola, baybeee. El Vez is no stranger to the art of performance. File photo. Performers exhibit the behaviors you come to see in showbiz, plucking this or crooning that. They’re doing their job. Think of, for instance, a guy and his paper hat working a large griddle. He can do that, and even well, but I’m sure the color would drain from his cheeks should he ever watch the griddle at Benihana. The difference lies in the flourish. The performer will not be flipping [...]

[photopress:2742956542_b1013462ca.jpg,full,pp_image] “Rain? What rain?” Photos and text by Laurie Scavo. While dark, murky skies were a threat from the start of the evening, I thought surely the heavens would smile down on the sold-out Red Rocks Amphitheatre and let James Taylor work his magic on a warm August night. About five songs in, my optimism vanished when the entire crowd donned their rain ponchos in unison. With every color of plastic flapping harshly in the cold, gusty wind, James Taylor and his Band of Legends [...]