Monolith Festival @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre: Day 2

[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:P1080972.JPG,full,pp_image] Sunday night’s All Star Jam-Balaya at the Fillmore — with Leo Nocentelli and Allen Toussaint, left — featured the finest musicians from Louisiana and benefited the Friends of New Orleans charity. Allen Toussaint grabbed his ear, shook his head. Like he couldn’t believe the fire raging behind him. He was one song in — a ferocious “People Say” — as the guest key tickler for The Meters, a rare reunion of George Porter Jr., Leo Nocentelli and Zigaboo Modeliste on Sunday at the Fillmore. [...]

[photopress:round.jpg,full,pp_image] The HomeVibe “in the round” stage was one of 20 venues at the Denver Post’s 8th annual Underground Music Showcase. Photo by Laurie Scavo. The Denver Post’s 8th annual Underground Music Showcase (UMS), which took place Aug. 1-2, brought to mind a song from Colorado’s underground history: “88 Lines About 44 Women” by the Nails (from the Boulder underground in the mid 1970s). As I ran between the nearly 20 venues and caught sets from 22 local bands over the two-day festival, I used [...]

[photopress:Josh_Ritter_1.JPG,full,pp_image] Josh Ritter rocks the Mile High Music Festival on Saturday. Photo by John Moore. Music festivals are a pain in the ass. By nature. If it’s not the ticket price, it’s the traffic nightmare, or the $11 beers, or the sketchy outdoor acoustics, or the 100-degree heat, or the 50,000 obnoxious CU frat boys (OK, some are surely, by now, frat alumni), or the underwhelming lineup of radio-friendly pabulum, or the preponderance of hippie Dave Matthews jam-band wannabes. The inaugural Mile High Music Festival [...]

[photopress:13_StoneTemplePilots_PJeye.jpg,full,pp_image] Scott Weiland (right) and Stone Temple Pilots eased their way into a worthy reunion show at Red Rocks on Wednesday. Photos by Mark T. Osler. I grew up listening to Stone Temple Pilots, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that my parents listened to them as well. Well, not actively — but they regularly heard “Core” and “Purple” pumping from my bedroom upstairs as I made my way through my adolescence, which is why it made perfect sense that I should take them [...]

[photopress:jill_sobule_1.jpg,full,pp_image] ’90s one-hit wonder? No way. Jill Sobule proved she has a lot left to say at Lannie’s on Friday. Photo from TedBlog.com. Girls kissing girls is totally tame now. And rightfully so. But when former Denverite Jill Sobule, best known for her controversial 1995 hit “I Kissed a Girl,” emerged from the red curtains at Lannie’s Clocktower Cabaret on Friday, it was hard to know whether to expect a washed-up one-hit wonder or a still-viable singer. The crowd was definitely into AARP territory and [...]

[photopress:return3.jpg,full,pp_image] A fourtop of jazz giants paddled a packed Paramount down an eclectic river Tuesday, delivering imaginative thrills galore after a quarter century hiatus. Photos by Brian Carney. Chick Corea’s famed Return to Forever was only around for six years in the ’70s, weaving through three variations and offering eight albums. But it was a formative six years. As the deeply devoted say, Return to Forever is to jazz what Led Zeppelin is to rock. Jazz’s devout were out Tuesday, filling the Paramount. Outside, very [...]

Live review: R.E.M. @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre

SXSW 2008: John Wenzel’s comedy and music journal