Best of Denver 2005

Arts & Entertainment

Best Free Entertainment
LoDo at Let-Out
The action can get pretty hot and heavy when LoDo's bars let out at 2 a.m. But from the cheap seats on the sidelines, watching the crowds pour out of the clubs and pour themselves into cars and cabs -- after some last-second attempts to hook up...

Best Place to Rant for Free
Open Zine Project
Though Stevyn Prothero's tiny Iron Feather Book & Zine Shop is in danger of losing its space in north Denver, the place's do-it-yourself attitude lives on to the bitter end. Prothero welcomes any and all wannabe zinesters to use his stuff --...

Best Annual Festival -- City
Capitol Hill People's Fair
Capitol Hill encompasses a wide swath of central Denver, so it's no wonder that the Capitol Hill People's Fair is the city's best, and most diverse, festival. From its humble beginnings at Morey Junior High in 1971, when 2,000 people attended, the...

Best Annual Festival -- Mountains
U.S. Comedy Arts Festival
Normally, when you come across a celebrity in Aspen -- say, Kevin Costner fashioning a kayak for an In Style magazine photo shoot -- it's funny, but not ha-ha funny. For nearly one week out of every year, though, Aspen is the ha-ha-funniest...

Best New Festival (Since March 2004)
The Shoot Out Boulder
The first of its kind in the United States, The Shoot Out Boulder celebrated the art of quick and cheap movie production. Filmmakers were given 24 hours to complete a seven-minute short. Only in-camera editing was allowed -- meaning everything had...

Best Outdoor Festival
Cherry Creek North Gourmet Series
Good food and Cherry Creek North? Two of the most obvious bedfellows in town. It took little stretch of the imagination to combine them into a fail-safe annual festival. The glitzy al fresco celebration spreads over several Saturdays and features...

Best Battle of Wits
Stand-Up Comedy Battles
September's inaugural Yell Fest was a wild, chaotic mess. Put on by Comedy Works house comedian Chuck Roy, the night was advertised as a search for "Denver's biggest asshole." What the night actually determined was that given limited rules and...

Best Posthumous Tribute
Lalo Delgado
The only thing wrong with Mayor Hickenlooper's declaration last September naming Abelardo "Lalo" Delgado Denver's first poet laureate was that it came too late for Delgado to savor it -- just two months after he died, at age 73. During his...

Best Place to See an Irish Genius
Regis University campus
It makes sense that Regis University, a Catholic Jesuit institution, should end up with a statue of the great Irish author James Joyce on one of its campuses. After all, Joyce's stand-in, Stephen Dedalus, is referred to as a fearful Jesuit in the...

Best Use of Empty Air Time
On Stage
Stan Kroenke's Altitude Network took a blow right along with the National Hockey League: Pro hockey's strike-riddled lost season translates into lost revenue for the new station, which was conceived primarily to broadcast Avalanche hockey, along...

Best Lecture Series
The Lab at Belmar
Adam Lerner directs The Lab at Belmar, one of several exciting new spaces that have distinguished the urban shopping center as a creative hub as well as a shopping destination; in its first year, Belmar has hosted everything from filmmaking...

Best Architectural Brainstorming Session
Architectural Laboratory - Denver
By day, Maria Cole heads up the expansion of the Denver Art Museum for Davis Partnership Architects. By night, she heads up Architectural Laboratory - Denver, a non-profit group that brings together architects and artists to discuss theories of...

Best Architectural Event
Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver building selection process
The Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver's effort to build a new home began last year, when Mark Falcone and Ellen Bruss donated a tract of land at 15th and Delgany streets. A series of presentations by six architectural firms from around the...

Best Revolutionaries
[denverevolution]
You never know what progressive cause you'll find on www.denverevolution.org . Sometimes it's a notice for a biodiesel meeting; sometimes it's a radical-film night. Tony Shawcross and the rest of the [denverevolution] collective ensure that the...

Best Free Movies
Denver Public Library Film Series
The multiplexes keep multiplying, but they're all showing the same Adam Sandler and Lindsay Lohan atrocities. True cineastes know that Denver's central library can be counted on for filmfests that mix the traditional and the edgy, the classic and...

Best Human-Rights Film Series
ArgusFest
Michael Moore has proven that it's possible for left-leaning documentaries to find a home in the multiplexes. But for most makers of progressive films, widespread distribution -- or any distribution -- is as distant as the expression on George...

Best Specialty Film Festival
Cinema Q
The LGBT community is an active producer of independent film. But not many titles make it to the major theaters. Fortunately Denver has a viable outlet for queer cinema. Now in its sixth year, the Cinema Q festival (formerly Seeing Queerly: The...

Best Local Film (Since March 2004)
Earthlings: Ugly Bags of Mostly Water
When Denver-based movie director Alexandre O. Philippe came across a copy of Hamlet that had, according to its cover, been restored to the "original" Klingon text, it opened a door to a strange world called the Klingon Language Institute, whose...

Best Performance by a Coloradan in a Film
Don Cheadle
Hotel Rwanda
A native Denverite and devoted alumnus of East High School, actor Don Cheadle has impressed movie audiences in everything from Devil in a Blue Dress to Ocean's Twelve . But when he starred as the quiet manager of a four-star hotel in Hotel...

Best Movie Theater -- Food
Mayan Theatre
Landmark's Mayan Theatre continues to expand its commitment to good eats and drinks. Longtime patrons can still snatch up old faves like the big, fat bagel dogs, Odwalla juices (try the Mango Tango) and Alternative Baking cookies (Explosive...

Best Movie Theater -- Comfort
United Artists Denver Pavilions Stadium 15
Generally speaking, a 'plex is a 'plex. But the fifteen-screen Denver Pavilions in downtown Denver offers a couple of advantages over its suburban counterparts: free underground parking (with validation) in a roomy adjacent structure, and the...

Best Movie Theater -- Programming
Starz FilmCenter
The best thing to happen for Denver-area film buffs in decades, the Starz FilmCenter at the Tivoli presents a year-round selection of art-house fare, independent features and revival screenings that rivals the best offerings in cinema-rich cities...

Best Program at the 2004 Denver International Film Festival
An Evening With Morgan Freeman
In the course of a long and illustrious movie career, the star of Driving Miss Daisy , Glory and The Shawshank Redemption has intrigued audiences with his versatility and his gift for nuance. So when Morgan Freeman visited the Denver...

Best Major-Movie Views of Denver
Silver City
John Sayles's elaborate political fable Silver City was less than boffo at the box office, and its cautions about the corruption of the electoral process didn't fly with a weary public amid the bloodiest, most divisive election-year brawl...

Best New Public Art (Since March 2004)
"Indeterminate Line"
The Colorado Convention Center has bigger fins than a '57 DeSoto and is lit up like a laundromat at night. So it can be hard to notice the fabulous rusted-steel sculpture sitting out front, "Indeterminate Line," by international art star Bernar...

Best Art News
Clyfford Still museum
Last August, Mayor John Hickenlooper got everyone's attention with the announcement that the City of Denver had agreed to receive the paintings and drawings in the estate of abstract-expressionist master Clyfford Still. The multimillion-dollar...

Best New Art Hire
Patty Ortiz
The beleaguered and financially strapped Museo de las Américas has been rudderless since founder José Aguayo stepped down a few years ago. But hope for a turnaround spiked late last year, when Patty Ortiz was brought on as director....

Best Museum Exhibit (Since March 2004)
Quest for Immortality
With all the creepy stuff on display at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, including mummies, Quest for Immortality was guaranteed to bring in the crowds. And it did. Tens of thousands marched through the blockbuster collection of ancient...

Best Exhibit About Colorado Art
scene Colorado/sin Colorado
Last summer, Dianne Vanderlip, head of the Modern and Contemporary department at the Denver Art Museum, put together scene Colorado / sin Colorado , an exhibition devoted to the work of some of the state's top artists. Drawn from the DAM's...

Best Supporter of Colorado Art
The Kirkland Museum
It started as a museum devoted to the work of a single artist, Vance Kirkland, but the Kirkland Museum has expanded its collecting scope greatly over the years, and now has an exhaustive collection of decorative art on display. Kirkland director...

Best Museum Solo
John David Rigsby: Dots, Blobs and Angels

Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver
As a curator, Cydney Payton is at her best when dealing with art she really loves, which is why Dots, Blobs and Angels was so darned spectacular. Payton's a fan of John David Rigsby's work, and it's easy to see why. The quality of the paintings,...

Best Historic Show -- Solo
Emerson Woelffer
Emerson Woelffer: Life in the Abstract , at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, wasn't large, but it was definitely grand. Woelffer, one of the best of a generation of abstract expressionists working in southern Colorado in the '50s, is mostly...

Best Historic Show -- Group
True Grit
A traveling show out of New York, True Grit addressed the work of a group of women artists who rose to prominence before the feminist revolution of the '70s. Organized by Katherine Crum of the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, the exhibit...

Best Gallery Show -- Solo
Virginia Maitland: Opened Windows
Studio Aiello typically hosts big, unwieldy group shows in its big, unwieldy building, and only rarely presents solos. That's surely because few artists have enough work to fill it. But Boulder painter Virginia Maitland came up with enough to cram...

Best Gallery Show -- Group
Repeat Offenders
The title of Repeat Offenders indicated that each artist in this group show did work in a series. That was a fairly open-ended qualifier, since nearly all artists create their pieces that way. But the handle gave Singer Gallery director Simon...

Best Solo by an Out-of-Towner
Rex Ray: Recent Work
San Francisco artist Rex Ray is perhaps best known for his graphic designs for Apple Computer, Bill Graham Productions and David Bowie. But he's a fine artist first, as demonstrated by the knockout show Rex Ray: Recent Work at Rule Gallery. Ray,...

Best Duet by Out-of-Towners
John Buck and Manuel Neri
It was a brilliant stroke last spring when the Robischon Gallery, the city's flagship, presented two sculpture shows, John Buck and Manuel Neri , and installed them back to back. The show illustrated how the two artists compare and contrast...

Best TV Appearance by Local Artwork
David Mazza
In a recent episode, Extreme Makeover -- Home Edition came to Arvada to build a duplex for two low-income families and, next door, a community park. Young hotshot David Mazza was tapped to create a sculpted entry for the public space. Inside a...

Best Painting Solo -- Abstract
Bruce Price: Fill
Put together during the few short months when Ivar Zeile was teamed up with Ron Judish, Bruce Price: Fill was a major success -- unlike the partnership. Price is a local pioneer of post-minimalism, known for pattern paintings based on his...

Best Painting Solo -- Representational
Pictures From Sonny's Place John Hull
Nationally known Colorado artist John Hull likes to mix Hollywood-style shoot-'em-up imagery with traditional painting techniques; taken together, his cyclical narrative pieces could be called visual novels. In Pictures From Sonny's Place , Hull...

Best Ceramics Show -- Solo
Michael Coffee: Place of Mind
The Lakewood Cultural Center has made ceramics a specialty, with regular group shows devoted to the medium. The center hosted a rare solo show last fall, when Michael Coffee's smart-looking Place of Mind was installed in the north gallery....

Best Ceramics Show -- Group
Colorado Clay
One of the state's biggest and most important annuals, Colorado Clay , has been held at Foothills Art Center in Golden since the '70s. This year's guest juror, Peter Held, from the Arizona State University Art Museum, took a new approach: Instead...

Best Painting Solo -- Emerging Artist
Brandon Borchert: Random Art Two
The Powerball lottery seems an unlikely source for paintings and prints. But in Random Art Two , his smashing solo at Capsule@Pod, Brandon Borchert assigned a specific image to each of the Powerball numbers, one through 53. The images illustrated...

Best Sculpture Show -- Solo
Andy Miller: A Deconstruction of Life
Andy Miller: A Deconstruction of Life knocked everyone out when it was shown at Pirate last spring. The show featured four monumental steel and neon sculptures that depicted simplified images of men committing suicide. One was hanging by a noose...

Best Sculpture Show -- Group
Three Dimensions
The William Havu Gallery pays as much attention to sculpture as any place in town. There's always a piece on the sidewalk, and there's a proper sculpture garden in back. For Three Dimensions , a great indoor show, owner Bill Havu gathered work by...

Best Sculptor in a Group Show -- Emerging Artist
Morgan Barnes
The rambunctious Group Show 2 was the latest version of Studio Aiello's biennial. This time around, Kathy Andrews, director of Metro State's Center for Visual Art, served as a single juror, selecting all of the pieces herself. Among the dozens...

Best Installation
"Second Hand Smoke"
Justin Beard went all out to create his funny, smart and somewhat politically incorrect installation "Second Hand Smoke" at Capsule@Pod. The meticulously crafted piece was also interactive. Beard placed a black table in front of a...

Best Photography Solo -- Deceased Artist
Ron Wohlauer memorial
Ron Wohlauer was a legend among Colorado photographers, with a style best exemplified by his majestic black-and-white landscapes. Sadly, he died last year after battling repeated bouts of cancer. In a truth-is-stranger-than-fiction moment,...

Best Photography Solo -- Established Artist
David Sharpe
For his self-titled show at the Robischon Gallery, photographer David Sharpe focused on unfocused shots of the Western landscape taken with primitive, homemade cameras -- the kind of thing he's done for years. His pinhole cameras are made from...

Best Photography Solo -- Emerging Artist
Conor King: Sentience
Sometimes shows in Pirate's cramped and awkwardly shaped Associates' Space outshine the main attractions up front. That was surely the case when Conor King's Sentience was on view there. The twenty-something King, a recent University of Colorado...

Best Print Show
Open Press LTD
Open Press LTD: A 15-Year Anniversary was a short course in the recent history of printmaking in Denver. The show, presented at the Gallery of Contemporary Art at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, was an enormous survey of the...

Best Computer-Art Show
Quintin Gonzalez
Computers have had a big effect on the visual arts, especially photography: Digital cameras and digital printing are now the standards. And though the pieces in Quintin Gonzalez: digital images resembled digital photos, they were actually...

Best Political Show
Unstitched: A Voyeur's Idiom
Unstitched: A Voyeur's Idiom , displayed at weilworks, was both confrontational and beautiful, an outlandish and hard-to-achieve combination. Photographer Jimmy Sellers used his childhood interest in G.I. Joes to create political works that...

Best Religious-Art Show
Susan Goldstein: POLI VESTURE
Susan Goldstein's POLI VESTURE lent the Edge Gallery a creepy, haunted-house mood last spring -- not surprising, considering that Goldstein's photos were shot in an abandoned factory where religious articles were once produced. The title of the...

Best Class Project
IN LIMBO
Under the direction of Gwen Chanzit, a professor at the University of Denver and a curator at the Denver Art Museum, a group of DU students organized IN LIMBO , a terrific show at the school's Victoria H. Myhren Gallery. The exhibition featured...

Best Western Landscape Show
The Painter's Eye
The West has inspired artists for over a century, and LoDo's David Cook Fine Art is one of the best places in Denver to check out some of the genre's older creations. The gallery rarely presents exhibits, so The Painter's Eye , on display last...

Best Latin American Duet
Painting a New World and Tiwanaku
The Denver Art Museum's New World department includes both pre-and post-Columbian sections, and patrons Jan and Fred Mayer were principal sponsors of two relevant shows designed to showcase both. First was the post-Columbian offering, Painting a...

Best Architecture Salute
Poetry and Stone
In the early '90s, architect Cab Childress designed a mountain home for University of Denver chancellor Daniel Ritchie. The imposing stone structure was done in an unusual neo-traditional style, with a copper roof called "Granny's Castle." Though...

Best Wall Art
"Womb"
Assembly art gallery is know for showing more controversial, cutting-edge works than some of its neighbors on Santa Fe Drive. But it wasn't an exhibit that got director Jared Anderson in trouble with the City of Denver. No, it was his yard art,...

Best Tribute to Old Denver
Tilt-a-Whirl World
Lakeside Amusement Park creaks on year after year, slowly sliding down the path toward historical oddity. It's Colorado's very own Coney Island, and that's exactly what makes the place so charming. Local photographer Christina Ianni captured the...

Best African-American Treasure Chest
Stiles African American Heritage Center
Retired teacher and Colorado Preservation, Inc. State Honor Award-winner Grace Stiles rescued a once-dilapidated Victorian frame house in Five Points and reshaped it for the greater good. The Stiles African American Heritage Center is stuffed with...

Best Museum Outreach Using a Virgin
Denver Art Museum
For several Decembers now, the Denver Art Museum has hyped an exhibition on Our Lady of Guadalupe by offering free Southwest Santos family backpacks, which include special games designed to encourage interaction with the artwork. Families can play...

Best National Appearance by a Colorado Treasure
Navajo Weaving Stamp
Last August, a selection from the Denver Art Museum was reduced to a tiny canvas, but it reached a global audience. An intricate 1940s Navajo weaving by master artisan Daisy Taugelchee was one of ten artifacts depicted in "The Art of the American...

Best Development for Western Playwrights
Playwrights Showcase of the Western Region
Organized by Pamela Jamruszka of the Red Rocks Community College theater faculty, and with the support of the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, the first Playwrights Showcase of the Western Region featured three intense days of panels,...

Best Theater Production
The Goat or, Who Is Sylvia?
Edward Albee's play about a man in love with a goat makes you question every assumption about sexual mores you've ever made. Just where are the boundaries between the permissible and the impermissible, and what do they mean in the lives of actual...

Best Dramatic Script
Inventing Van Gogh
Steven Dietz
Inventing Van Gogh unleashes a torrent of ideas about art -- possibly enough for a dozen plays. But its primary achievement is illuminating the artist's struggle to wrench meaning from a recalcitrant world, and to ransom his own soul. Steven...

Best Actor in a Drama
Brett Aune
Inventing Van Gogh
In a luminous portrayal, Brett Aune made Vincent van Gogh an essentially gentle and guileless man, a little uncomfortable in his own body. Aune possessed an arrogance that stemmed from the artist's bone-deep understanding of the rightness of his...

Best Actress in a Drama
Laura Norman
Angels in America
Angels in America 's Harper is a pill-popping young Mormon wife who spends half her time yearning for her faithless husband and the other half in a fantasy. She could easily seem fey or just plain irritating. But Laura Norman moderated Harper's...

Best Supporting Actor in a Drama
Christopher Leo
Inventing Van Gogh
Christopher Leo gave two confident star turns in Inventing van Gogh -- as an unscrupulous art authenticator named Bouchard, and as the painter Paul Gauguin. Bouchard was self-mockingly mannered, effete in the most amusing way, while Gauguin was...

Best Supporting Actress in a Drama
Denise Perry-Olson
Old Times
Harold Pinter's Old Times is a bleak, enigmatic play, but Denise Perry-Olson's sensual energy and radiant smile animated it. Her Kate -- sophisticated, sexy and well-traveled -- flirted equally with onetime best friend Anna, and with Anna's...

Best Musical
Cabaret
Many regular customers of Boulder's Dinner Theatre stayed away from Cabaret . The show's seedy settings, writhing dance numbers and uncomfortable focus on fascism clearly set it apart from most BDT fare. But in a just world, it would have...

Best Actor in a Musical
Nicholas Sugar
Bat Boy: The Musical
Bat Boy: The Musical is based on a character in the Weekly World News , a bat-human creature found in a cave. In this musical, he's discovered by some teenagers, one of whom he bites. Nicholas Sugar -- an actor we should be seeing a lot more of...

Best Actress in a Musical
Shelley Cox-Robie
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Dulcet-voiced and warm, Shelley Cox-Robie is always a joy to watch. As Joseph 's narrator, she was the constant presence that stitched together all of the jokes and wild goings-on in the Boulder's Dinner Theatre reading of this early Andrew Lloyd...

Best Supporting Actress in a Musical
Lucy Roucis
Guys and Dolls
Most people remember Guys and Dolls ' Adelaide as the chanteuse (or chantoosie) who sings "Take Back Your Mink" and "A Bushel and a Peck." PHAMALy's Lucy Roucis delivered these songs with sass and sang the famous "Adelaide's Lament" so feelingly...

Best Singing in a Musical
Sheryl Renee
Hi-Hat Hattie
Hi-Hat Hattie was a sentimental, one-dimensional piece of theater, but Sheryl Renee made it work. She's a fine actress, but it was her vocal abilities that transfixed us as she sang a mix of blues, funk and show music. At times, Renee's voice...

Best Actor in a Comedy
Randy Moore
A Christmas Carol
Randy Moore's Scrooge was pinch-mouthed and mean, but he was also an aging child, with a child's unconcern for decency and politeness, as well as a vulnerability. Although Moore has played the role for several years, this was his most joyous and...

Best Actress in a Comedy
Annette Helde
Boston Marriage
Anna is one-half of a prickly lesbian couple that forms the heart of Boston Marriage , David Mamet's first play to feature female protagonists. She likes falling dramatically onto the chaise lounge, having the vapors, exploring flights of...

Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy
Rhonda Lee Brown
The Fourth Wall
The Fourth Wall featured a housewife so distressed by contemporary politics that she arranged the furniture to create an invisible fourth wall in her living room. Rhonda Lee Brown played Julia, a brittle interior decorator from New York, brought...

Best Performance by a Child
Brittany Heileman
Tongue of a Bird
Tongue of a Bird is a pretentious, forgettable play about a woman pilot searching the mountains for a lost child. But it had a bright spot in teenage actor Brittany Heileman. She appeared to the protagonist in visions, her face bloodied, in a...

Best Actress in an Experimental Production
Erin Rollman
Kafka on Ice
In one of the funniest, sweetest scenes in Kafka on Ice , Erin Rollman skated on a floor of artificial ice, skidding, gliding and falling cutely about as a Chaplinesque Kafka (played by Gary Culig) sped to her rescue again and again. Rollman is...

Best Speaking Voice
Trina O'Neil
Metamorphoses
Playwright Mary Zimmerman incorporated large segments of poetry into Metamorphoses , including passages from Ovid and Rilke's extraordinary "Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes." The poems lend the script much of its power, but they can also be a mouthful....

Best Guide From Death to Life
Todd Coulter
Angels in America
The dying Prior in Angels in America is often whiny, snappish or unreasonable, but he has intellect and dignity, too. In the Bas Bleu/OpenStage Theatre and Company production, Todd Coulter gave all these characteristics their due. Late in the...

Best Tribute to a Performer
Frank Gorshin as George Burns
Say Goodnight Gracie
Good impressionists don't just mimic their subjects, they become them -- and Frank Gorshin simply was George Burns in this production. He had the man's walk and mannerisms, and also seemed to possess his spirit.

Best Representation of a Great American
Russell Costen
Paul Robeson
In Paul Robeson , a one-man show detailing the life of the scholar/athlete/performer of its title, Russell Costen held the stage for over two hours on his own. Robeson was a tall, powerful man with a rumbling bass voice, while Costen is shorter...

Best Work Against Type
Alicia Dunfee
Cabaret
Alicia Dunfee wasn't the obvious choice to play Sally Bowles, Cabaret 's immature heroine; Dunfee is a grown-up woman who takes the stage with authority. Nonetheless, the interpretation worked. As always, Dunfee gave herself fully to each musical...

Best Performance in a Literary Adaptation
Terry Burnsed
Circe
Casting Terry Burnsed as Bloom in Circe , a staged chapter from Ulysses , was a stretch. Burnsed is slender and small, closer in body type to James Joyce himself than to such traditional Blooms as Zero Mostel. But his performance in the role was...

Best Display of Literacy in a Family Drama
The Retreat From Moscow
William Nicholson's The Retreat From Moscow was a real find for the Aurora Fox -- the best production staged there in several years. The play details the breakdown of a highly civilized marriage, unfurling in low-key, logical increments. It's...

Best Crossover Performer
Leonard Barrett Jr.
In PHAMALy's Guys and Dolls -- and with a nod to Marlon Brando -- Leonard Barrett Jr. shone as the seductive conman Sky Masterson. In Angels in America , he played a completely different role: that of Belize, a former drag queen. Here his...

Best Couple in a Musical
Susan Dawn Carson and Marcus Waterman
Gypsy
Gypsy 's Rose is usually played as an iron-sided belter, but Susan Dawn Carson made her warm and sympathetic. This interpretation brought out interesting nuances in the role, actually highlighting the character's narcissism. Marcus Waterman gave...

Best Cabaret
Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris
Jacques Brel is about roses and wine, nostalgia, love, and bright, toe-tapping songs. But there is also a sense of bitter world-weariness to Jacques Brel's music, which was brought to life by three talented musicians and four superb...

Best Ballsy Production
Dirty Story
Some observers speculated that Dirty Story represented departing artistic director Donovan Marley's raised middle finger to the Denver Center Theatre Company. Others viewed it as an intelligently provocative selection. Either way, it was a...

Best Treatment of a Touchy Subject
Yellowman
Racism is a common enough topic in theater, but Dael Orlandersmith's Yellowman explored a different kind of bigotry: the contempt felt by some lighter-skinned African-Americans toward their darker-skinned brethren, and the reciprocal rage it...

Best Shaking Up of Shakespeare
Comedy of Errors
Director Stephanie Shine set her Comedy of Errors in nineteenth-century New Orleans and gave the actors a lot of freedom to improvise, resulting in many hilarious bits. But she also reined them in when necessary and protected the music of the...

Best Remounting of an Old Chestnut
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Andrew Lloyd Webber's Dreamcoat is a mishmash of silly jokes and pulsing tunes. For his first show as artistic director at Boulder's Dinner Theatre, Michael J. Duran energized the company's talented actors, including a group of delightfully...

Best Spectacle
Varekai
Cirque du Soleil
True, it's hard to continue loving an outfit that started cheeky and small but is now a multimillion-dollar endeavor that becomes more expensive by the year. But these folks keep delivering. Where does Cirque du Soleil find these extraordinary...

Best Boulder Production
The Fourth Wall
The Fourth Wall gave pleasure on many levels. It was erudite without a trace of pomposity, forceful without ever becoming mean-spirited. Well cast and directed by Billie McBride, the production had audience members snorting with surprised...

Best On-Stage Feast of Language
Circe
What kind of director would think of staging chapter fifteen of James Joyce's Ulysses , with its stream-of-consciousness representation of one man's mental processes during a single day? Who'd want to tackle all those puns, metaphors, allegorical...

Best Experimental Play
Kafka on Ice
Buntport is known for wacky, iconoclastic humor, but the group is also highly literate. So it makes sense that this ice-skating version of Franz Kafka's life (along with an exposition of his most famous story, "The Metamorphosis") would be both...

Best Revival of a Forgotten Play
A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur
In A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur , set during the Depression years, Tennessee Williams was exploring less poetic lives than in his earlier work. He used caricature, slapstick, even diarrhea jokes, and maintained a fine balance between humor and...

Best Theatrical Collaboration
Angels in America
Last year, Bas Bleu, which has been presenting theater in Fort Collins for over a decade, moved from its exquisite small theater building to a roomier location. For the first event in the new space, the group staged a two-evening production of...

Best Direction
Jeremy Cole
Metamorphoses
Jeremy Cole assembled an excellent group of actors, each of whom played several roles, to bring Ovid's fables into the twentieth century in Metamorphoses . He balanced the tone of the production comfortably between comedy and tragedy, mythic...

Best All-Around Woman of the Theater
Wendy Ishii
Wendy Ishii is the artistic director and co-founder of Bas Bleu, a major theatrical force in Fort Collins. She has also gained attention for her work on the plays of Samuel Beckett with faculty from Colorado State University. Ishi's energy and...

Best All-Around Man of the Theater
Ed Baierlein
Where would Denver theater be without Ed Baierlein? He and his talented wife, Sallie Diamond, started Germinal Stage thirty years ago, back when there was very little theater of any kind in town. He has produced a roster of challenging, hilarious...

Best Season for an Actress
Mare Trevathan
Mare Trevathan brings a combination of subtlety, conviction and luminosity to every role she undertakes. In Harold Pinter's Old Times for Bas Bleu, she was the mysterious Kate, whose husband and onetime best friend spent the evening vying for...

Best Season for an Actor
Jamie Horton
Jamie Horton, one of the earliest members of the Denver Center Theatre Company, is a local treasure. He proved it again this year with his performance as Dalton Trumbo in Curious's Trumbo: Red, White and Blacklisted , making the man eccentric,...

Best Season for a Director
Nagle Jackson
Nagle Jackson is known as a classical kind of guy -- an intelligent translator and a witty and incisive playwright. So it wasn't a surprise when he staged a lucid production of Molière's The Misanthrope for the Denver Center Theater Company. But...

Best Theater Season
Curious Theatre Company
Okay, so we weren't knocked out by The Tricky Part , and we found some fault with The Long Christmas Ride Home and Yellowman . But Inventing Van Gogh and The Goat Or, Who Is Sylvia? represented theater at its best. And even though some...

Best Chance for Change in the Theater Scene
Kent Thompson
The winds of change are blowing through the Denver Center Theatre Company. New artistic director Kent Thompson has announced that the upcoming season will include two more plays than usual and feature female, black and Latino voices. Thompson...

Best Tribute to the West Side
Westside Oratorio
El Centro Su Teatro's Tony Garcia combined with composer Daniel Valdez to turn the saga of the Chicano community into a moving presentation about Denver's Mexican-American population. But Westside Oratorio wasn't just about Denver; it chronicled...

Best Drag Troupe
The Alterboys
Drag queens? Please . When it comes to gender-bent entertainment, boys who dress as girls are as worn out as an old pair of pantyhose. Fortunately, Denver is home to the Alterboys, a troupe of six women who love grrrls and look like bois. The...

Best Instigators of an Impromptu Conga Line
Log
LoDo Music Festival
Joan Jett, Sonia Dada and Karl Denson's Tiny Universe were the major draws of last year's LoDo Music Festival. But tucked away from the main stage, quarantined in the dirt like some flea-infested sideshow, the funky members of Log held court for...

Best Elvis Impersonator
Chris Barber
Although calling Chris Barber a renaissance man may not be fair to Leonardo da Vinci, there's no question that he's got plenty on his plate. He leads Spiv, an enjoyable power-pop band, oversees Pop Sweatshop, a label whose catalogue brims with...

Best Ambidextrous Scene Kid
Sara T
Sara T -- aka Sara Thurston -- is 100 percent freaky fly. The notorious "No Bullshit" DJ and glamour gal of groove -- host of the monthly booty-shaker Danceotron, co-owner of the south Broadway boutique Chielle, and timekeeper for bands Hot House...

Best Underground Parties
White Girl Lust
Bringing the hipster indie-rock set and the dance-music contingent together may seem like an impossible feat, but the DJ duo of Eric Kozak and Clay Meador, otherwise known as White Girl Lust, have done just that. WGL has almost single-handedly...

Best Club DJ
Nutmeg
A Sunday-night institution in Denver since the late '90s, DJ Nutmeg pumps house music in clubs like the Snake Pit, Lime, Rise and ROX with a verve that comes from years of experience and dedication. Turning each club he plays into an essential...

Best House DJ
DJ Foxx
DJ Foxx is one of the key DJs who've put Denver house music on the map. From holding down residencies at some of the city's top clubs to playing throughout the United States to producing tracks and releasing records under the alias...

Best Progressive/ Trance DJ
DJ Dragon
DJ Dragon and his crew, the Triad Dragons, are key forces keeping the rave scene alive in Colorado. The Triad's Global Dance Festival at Red Rocks and the Caffeine Festival are the two biggest electronic-music events to go down each year. Dragon...

Best Down-Tempo DJ
DJ Idiom
DJ Idiom could easily be considered the most creative and eclectic DJ In Denver. Typically sticking to mellower, groovier down-tempo and hip-hop beats, Idiom moves around to incorporate tunes by Björk, Sigur Ros, and even Guns N' Roses in a way...

Best MC
The Black Pegasus
The best MC in Denver isn't really even from here. In fact, if you ask the Black Pegasus, aka Robert Houston II, he'll tell you he's straight outta Colorado Springs. No matter, though. Black P is up here so often warming up stages for everyone...

Best Online Equivalent of Peyton Place
www.denvermessageboard.com
Ever wonder what your favorite local musicians are doing during the week? Presumably, the majority of them are working at jobs, like normal people. At least that's what you'd think until you stopped by the Denver Message Board and sorted through...

Best Place to See Live Music From Home
www.rockdenver.com
Too late for the mountains? Too early for the bars? Too drunk to drive? Kick back at home and log on to rockdenver.com , where, for the price of a dumb look, you can enjoy live monthly webcasts from Herman's Hideaway. The shows feature many of...

Best Website for Bands to Find e-Groupies
www.myspace.com
Take the computer flirting scene between Molly Ringwald and Andrew McCarthy in Pretty in Pink , multiply it by a few bazillion gigabytes, and you've got myspace.com . With millions of profiles of computer-addicted geeks around the world, it's...

Best Place to Find Blackmail Pictures of Local Musicians
www.rockoncolorado.com
Founded by longtime local-music champions Tommy Nahulu and David Barber, rockoncolorado.com is more than just a collection of snapshots. The site also contains music-related articles and reviews, as well as a calendar and message board. But the...

Best Place for Vinyl Junkies to Defect
www.beatport.com
Although some dyed-in-the-wool vinyl-lovers cling to the romance of crate-digging, more and more jocks are embracing digital technology. They're also embracing Beatport. Led by lauded DJ Jonas Tempel, the site is helping to revolutionize the way...

Best Online Music Store
www.milehighmusicstore.com
Looking for the latest disc from P-Nuckle, GasHead, Lisa Bell or Drag the River -- but don't feel like scouring the bins of your nearest independent retailer? How 'bout a DVD of Xiren's live set at Red Rocks? Billie Tolles's hard-to-find...

Best Online Music Magazine
Kaffeine Buzz
With all the energy its name implies, Kaffeine Buzz is a scattershot, ADD-fueled cornucopia of music journalism. Covering local as well as national punk, indie and hip-hop, the site features interviews, club listings, weekly show picks and CD and...

Best Musical Professor
Stephen Scott
A professor at Colorado College, Scott does more than just teach about music. He also makes it in a very singular way. Rather than play the piano using the instrument's keys, he and his assistants physically pluck and manipulate its strings with...

Best Musical Advice
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Starting a Band
Mark Bliesener and Steve Knopper
The authors of this tome draw from a wealth of experience. Bliesener once drummed with ? and the Mysterians, a group remembered for the garage-rock hit "96 Tears," and went on to become a successful promoter and manager of bands such as Big Head...

Best Avant-Garde Composer
Michael Andrew Doherty
Ironically, many creators of contemporary experimental music are too stuck in academia and orthodoxy to truly forge their own voice. But Michael Andrew Doherty, after earning a bachelor's degree in philosophy and religious studies at CSU, ditched...

Best Concert (Since March 2004)
The Killers
April 20, 2004
Before they appeared on Saturday Night Live and The O.C. and were lionized by damn near every music scribe in the free world, the Killers were just another out-of-town act performing at the Larimer Lounge on a Tuesday night. Although the...

Best Event for Dancing in 9/8 Time
Colorado Prog Music Fest
For anyone who cuts the rug like Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis or Elaine from Seinfeld , the Colorado Prog Music Fest offered the perfect excuse to boogaloo like you just didn't care. Area musical acts committed to precision and unusual time...

Best Recording
How It Ends
DeVotchKa
In a year of exceptional local releases, DeVotchKa's How It Ends stood out like a peacock at sunrise. A dizzying feast of neo-classical strings, south-of the-border tango flirtations and punk-informed polka, the fourteen-song cycle finds...

Best Audio Alternative to a Handful of Vaseline
The Total Wanker
Wanker
Woody Allen once said, "Don't knock masturbation -- it's sex with someone I love." In the cocksure hands of Wanker however, love means never having to say you're anything but horny and alone. Then again, damn near every song by these nostalgic,...

Best Long-Winded Metal Album Title
Stormbringer: Conjuration of the Nighthorde
Throcult
Metal bands usually get straight to the point when it comes to naming their albums: Morbid Angel had Domination ; Kreator issued Endless Pain ; Venom put out Welcome to Hell . Then there's Throcult's second full-length, Stormbringer:...

Best Side Project
Wovenhand
Denver Gentlemen alum David Eugene Edwards hasn't left 16 Horsepower behind, but as an extremely prolific songwriter, he needed another venue for his efforts. Wovenhand fills this particular bill very well, and on Consider the Birds , Edwards's...

Best Swan Song
Antidote
The Gamits
Area artists always try to make their discs sound as professional and high-quality as those put out by major record labels, but very few succeed. With Antidote , pressed by Suburban Home Records, the Gamits joined this rarefied company, exciting...

Best Spoken-Word Disc
Love, Death and Poetry
Art Compost and the Word Mechanics
With the occasional exception of standup comics, most people who use common speech as their main form of creative expression don't fare well when it comes to compact discs. So give veteran wordsmith SETH credit for combining poetry and music in a...

Best Toga-Party Soundtrack
Pledge Kappa Epsilon Gamma
The Orangu-Tones
CU's sex-and-booze scandals make Animal House look like Romper Room . Still, the 1978 John Belushi film popularized a relatively raucous time in American pop culture: the era of frat rock, that surf-drenched bastardization of R&B; that blared...

Best Music DVD
Drop the Fear
Drop the Fear
It's hard enough finding bandmates who are in the same musical headspace as you. But when Ryan Policky formed the shoegazing Drop the Fear, he discovered that not only were his cohorts -- Gabriel Ratliffe and Sarah Marcogliese -- sympathetic sonic...

Best Blues CD
Rise
Eddie Turner
Blues aficionados from Colorado and beyond know Eddie Turner best for his contributions to many of Otis Taylor's recordings. Yet as Rise demonstrates, he's also a fine frontman, with an expressive voice and guitar skills that blast through genre...

Best Free Music Project
52 Songs
Tyler Potts
The year 2004 was a very good one for electronic composer Tyler Potts. Beginning in January, he set out to record a new song every week, and not only did he stick to his Sisyphean schedule all the way through December, but the music he made over...

Best Formerly Free Music Project
The Denver Gentlemen
The Denver Gentlemen
Last December, this very publication saluted the new self-titled full-length by the Denver Gentlemen for several very good reasons. The group, led by the enigmatic Jeffrey-Paul Norlander, helped establish the gothic-roots sound that distinguished...

Best Compilation Dedicated to a Demonic Dachshund
Halloweiner Dog
Forget vampires, mummies and werewolves. Last Halloween's most frightening spectacle was an evil dachshund flying on oversized bat wings, shooting death rays from a pair of black, lifeless eyes, transforming the Front Range into a smoking crater....

Best Recording Made at Einstein Bros. Bagels
Eclectic and Mental Guitar Music
Robert Eldridge
When Robert Eldridge decided to commit his acoustic wizardry to disc, he didn't bother with pricey studios. No, Eldridge simply went to an Einstein Bros. Bagel outlet, plugged a pick-up into his six-string and let 'er rip. Recorded live and...

Best Debut Release by a Label
An Argument Between the Brain and the Feet
Morning After Records
Denver's underground rock scene is boiling over right now -- and one of the individuals who's been dutifully stoking the fires is Dan Rutherford of Morning After Records ( www.morningafterrecords.com ). He envisioned the label while attending...

Best Experimental Noise Label
Backwards Records
Champions of unstructured sound collage and homemade instruments, Backwards Records is home to an array of adventurous laptop jockeys and electronically minded noise artists: Page 27, Blackcell, Robot Mandala, Haunted Sound Lab, Sporadik,...

Best North-of-the-Border Label for Colorado Blues
NorthernBlues Music
Yes, NorthernBlues Music is based in Toronto, but it's got a soft spot for Colorado blues talent. The imprint has put out a number of Otis Taylor's finest efforts, including White African and Respect the Dead , and recently reached out to two...

Best One-Stop Record Label
Hapi Skratch Entertainment
Since launching Hapi Skratch Entertainment ten years ago, Morris Beegle has shaped his label into a hub that supports musicians at all levels. Celebrating a decade of operations this year, this Fort Collins-based company is one of Colorado's...

Best Jazz CD
Crossed Paths
The Fred Hess Quartet
Saxophonist Hess has been a part of Denver-area jazz for so long that it's tempting to take him for granted. Crossed Paths , on Tapestry Records, shows how unwise that would be. The disc, which features bassist Ken Filiano, drummer Matt Wilson...

Best Mix CD
DJ Quote
This past year, when DJ Quote wasn't mixing things up on the air with Troubleshooter Tom Martino, he was issuing CDs at a frenzied pace. Taking the game to a whole new level, Quote's discs have been hosted by an assortment of noteworthy guests,...

Best Worth-the-Wait Release
Trample the Weak, Hurdle the Dead
Cost of Living
Cost of Living, a Denver supergroup featuring ex-members of Qualm, the Departure and Shogun, completed production on its debut in the spring of 2004. But Trample the Weak, Hurdle the Dead wasn't released until last month -- an excruciating...

Best Compilation
PS 2
As a showcase of new Colorado music, PS 2 isn't perfect. But it's closer than anyone's ever come before. Ranging from humble to heavy-hitting, the disc amply displays the passion and attention to detail that Ben De-soto and Tim Garvey of Public...

Best Metal Label
Infexious Recordz
Co-founded by Rogue frontman Bill Terrell and Voodoo Productions owner Dave Zaharia, Infexious Recordz is a headbanger's nightmare sprung gloriously to life. In addition to luring national acts like L.A. Guns, Exodus and Pissing Razors to town,...

Best Metal Promoter
Big Q Productions
No one has worked as hard to promote the Denver metal scene as Wayne Quigley, the man behind Big Q Productions. From frequently booking shows at the Ogden, Gothic and Bluebird theaters to putting together smaller gigs at Iliff Park and Eck's...

Best Soundman
Chris Steele
Ever been down to the Soiled Dove and experienced anything other than flawless sound? Yeah, didn't think so. In the extremely rare event that you did, chances are someone other than Chris Steele was sitting behind the mixing board. Although it...

Best Nationally Renowned Producer You've Never Heard Of
Dave Otero
Tucked away in a small warehouse studio just south of downtown, producer Dave Otero has captured some of the most ferocious music ever to be recorded -- not just in Colorado, but anywhere. Anomalies , Cephalic Carnage's release for Relapse...

Best Absinthe-Minded Sound Professor
Bob Ferbrache
Producer Bob Ferbrache has been the studio ace behind many of the truly exceptional releases to emanate from the Front Range over the last decade. Working from the unlikely confines of his mother's basement in Westminster (Absinthe Studios is...

Best Basement Recording Facility
Rudy's Studio
Rudy's Studio sits on the outer edge of north Denver, in the basement of Mark Obermeyer's suburban ranch home. Using two tracking rooms and a slew of gear, Obermeyer has recorded some of Denver's best-sounding records over the past few years. And...

Best Studio for Head-Expanding Music
helmet R00m
Randall Frazier not only fronts the moody, psychedelic outfit Orbit Service, but he's responsible for recording and mixing some of 2004's most engaging local releases, as well. After moving from a west Denver cellar to a space that currently...

Best Recording Studio on the Cheap
Globalsound Recording Studio
Tony and Lydia Fiore, a musician and artist, respectively, sensed that the local music community needed a high-quality, inexpensive place to record and mix music. They were right: Since opening last year, Globalsound Recording Studio has produced...

Best Place to Chill After Rehearsal
Walnut Room
The Walnut Room is a massive extension of Soundstructure Studios -- a popular, musician-friendly rehearsal space on a formerly barren fringe of the Ballpark neighborhood -- with its own restaurant, bar and performance venue. Since it opened, the...

Best Place to Feed Your Ears While Feeding Your Belly
Toad Tavern
It's no secret that the club market in Denver is oversaturated. And like crabgrass, for each spot that doesn't make it, two or three others sprout up in its place. Nowadays, folks need a reason to search a place out -- namely, cheap drinks, plenty...

Best Live Band
Call Sign Cobra
It's like a full-scale ninja battle on stage: eight sweaty freaks brandishing guitars, horns, tambourines, microphones, pheromones, feedback and blood as they eviscerate everything that is decent and respectable about rock and roll. The band is...

Best New Band
Matson Jones
Fort Collins-based Matson Jones has been around for a couple of years, but it's only in the last few months that the group has really started carving out its empire. Not that the coed quartet seems crassly ambitious; instead, it's wholly focused...

Best Jam Band
Harmonious Junk
While not entirely a straight-up ramen act (though lead guitarist Damon Wood can noodle with the best of them), Harmonious Junk pulls together savory parts funk, jazz, blues, psychedelic, soul and jam. The versatile outfit is equally comfortable...

Best Metal Band
Tyfoid Mary
In July 2001, Tyfoid Mary lost its frontman, Vince Stott, in a fatal car accident. While such a tragedy would cause most bands to hang it up for good, Tyfoid persevered and found a new voice in Jerry Harper. He had his work cut out for him, as...

Best Hip-Hop Act
Ground Zero Movement
Dow Jones, Sid Fly, Aseone, D.O. Da Fabulous Drifta and DJ C.Y. -- the five members of Ground Zero Movement -- have spent much of the past year teasing area hip-hop fans. A few copies of Writer's Square , the exceptional followup to the 2003...

Best One-Man Band
Ian Cooke
When not pulling duty in the veteran local outfit Uphollow, Ian Cooke writes and performs his own music. But instead of going the orthodox acoustic route, the flamboyantly coiffed artist employs electric cello, piano and a wireless microphone...

Best Tribute Band
Rocket Queen
Who would have thought that the 21st century would see a huge resurgence of interest in Guns N' Roses? Too bad Axl Rose is too messed up to capitalize on his own legacy. But picking up his Slash, er, slack is Rocket Queen. Begun as a one-off Guns...

Best Transplanted Band
Git Some
When Chuck French moved to Denver last year to play bass for Planes Mistaken for Stars, he was already playing guitar in a Chicago act called Git Some. Instead of breaking up, the band followed French to Colorado. With handmade demo tapes in hand,...

Best Band With the Worst Name
Machine Gun Blues
It's a rule of thumb: Never include a musical genre in the name of your band. Metal groups with "metal" in their monikers? Bad. Punk outfits called the Punk Rock something-or-others? Even worse. Machine Gun Blues, though, never got the memo. Which...

Best Band Name That Sounds Like a Pee-wee's Playhouse Character
Cowboy Curse
Way before The Matrix , a struggling actor named Laurence Fishburne donned Jheri curls and a ten-gallon hat to play a character called Cowboy Curtis on the Saturday-morning kids' show, Pee-wee's Playhouse . Today we have Cowboy Curse, a trio...

Best Band Name Change
The FlashBangs
Tobias Jupiter was a strong contender for this year's "Best Band With the Worst Name" award, but the quintet dodged that honor by changing its name last month to the FlashBangs. Where Tobias Jupiter stumbled clumsily off the tongue, the group's...

Best Band Name
Lyin' Bitch and the Restraining Orders
You say love has no boundaries? Tell it to the judge, fucker. Then back up a thousand feet.

Best Band Reunion
Rocket Ajax
January 29, 2005
When Rocket Ajax disbanded in early 2003, many scenesters were befuddled. Just a few months earlier, the band had picked up stakes and headed for the West Coast in search of fame and fortune -- or at least a record deal. At the time, Ajax was one...

Best On-Stage Conniptions
Luke Fairchild
White Dynamite
For two years, White Dynamite has been leveling stages and logic itself with its off-kilter, hardcore-spawned pandemonium. But the real show is singer/guitarist Luke Fairchild. A veteran of such Denver bands as Why Planes Go Down and Sparkles,...

Best Frontman
Brian Hagman
Black Lamb
Back in the day, Brian Hagman was the only real reason to watch local punk act Wretched Refuse. But when Black Lamb (né the Lambs) formed at the dawn of the millennium, the singer finally found a band that could keep up with his intensity....

Best Frontwoman
Marie Litton
Ghost Buffalo
Anyone who dismisses Ghost Buffalo as just a Planes Mistaken for Stars side project doesn't quite get it. While guitarist Matt Bellinger and drummer Mike Ricketts do indeed split shifts between the two bands, Ghost Buffalo is a full-time passion...

Best Unheralded Guitar Virtuoso
Dave Beegle
Artist, producer, teacher and one-man guitar battalion Dave Beegle remains an underground six-string phenom. After launching power trio Fourth Estate in the late '80s, the Fort Collins homeboy used his masterful tone -- something that mates Joe...

Best Bluegrass Band
Open Road
Bluegrass traditions may not be ancient by the standards of Greek mythology, but they have a proud history that Fort Collins-based Open Road limns with love and skill on its latest disc for Rounder Records, ...In the Life . The longer Bradford...

Best String Section
The Lee Lewis Harlots
Jay Munly might be the star, but cellist Rebecca Vera and violinists Elin Palmer and Frieda Stalhiem are the driving force behind the Canadian transplant's "thinkin' man's country music." Weaving together complex rhythms and sensuous melodic...

Best Band to Shoot Whiskey To
Out on Bail
Some bands are just made for booze. ZZ Top? Tequila. Black Flag? Why, a six-pack, of course. But when listening to the ragged country punk of Out on Bail, whiskey is the only real choice. The semi-acoustic coed quartet writes songs that burn on...

Best Band at the Worst Time
Detective Jabsco
Timing, they say, is everything. Which is why Detective Jabsco may be the most unfortunate band in Denver. The outfit's music is lacking absolutely nothing: Impassioned, concise, soulful and catchy as hell, it's a welcome lungful of fresh air. So...

Best Up-and-Coming Band
Constellations
As fitting at a basement show as it is under the disco ball, the music of Constellations is a protean thing. While clearly drawing from many of the same sources that fuel the current dance-punk lemming march, the group molds jarring guitars,...

Best Singer-Songwriter -- Male
Gann Matthews
A scant year and a half ago, Gann Matthews resembled nothing so much as an unplugged disciple of Thom Yorke and Isaac Brock. What a difference a few months make. The young troubadour has swiftly graduated from shaky-throated emulation to...

Best Singer-Songwriter -- Female
Judith Avers
Armed with just an acoustic guitar and a gorgeous, angelic voice that alternately recalls Gillian Welch, Rosie Thomas and Paula Cole, Judith Avers could literally sing the classified ads and still be positively riveting. Fortunately, that won't be...

Best Comedy Night
Squire Lounge
Comics that turn up for the Squire Lounge's Comedy Night want to win the $25 bar tab that's awarded for best performance each week. But it's not the booze they're after, and it ain't the glory; other venues are far more lucrative and offer way...

Best Karaoke Night
Bender's 13th Avenue Tavern
With an elevated stage surrounded by vintage vinyl, Bender's 13th Avenue Tavern is the best place to experience bar culture's most self-indulgent pastime. New Wave/Indie Karaoke Night -- hosted Tuesday and Thursday nights by ebullient wiseacre...

Best Salsa Night
La Rumba
On Saturday nights, salsa virgins and sexy pros go hand in hand on the dance floor at La Rumba, the stylish Golden Triangle staple that's become one of Latino Denver's top weekend destinations. Rookies can arrive early for a quick primer before...

Best Club Night
Lipgloss
Launched in June 2001 by DJs Michael Trundle, Tyler Jacobson and Tim Cook, aka the Denver 3, Lipgloss has grown from a once-a-month Monday-night shindig into the best club night in town. Since relocating from 60 South to La Rumba last Spring,...

Best Mid-Week Club Night
Off the Wall
hi-dive
Off the Wall is a glorious celebration of all things '80s, without the shlocky retreads that get played ad nauseam. The hump-day affair is helmed by Westword 's own Jason Heller and DJ Al from the Maybellines. The pair's deep old-school cuts will...

Best Club Comeback
Cherry Pit
The space at 60 S. Broadway has weathered many incarnations recently, including 60 South and the short-lived Southpark Tavern. Viable as neither a lesbian club nor a sports bar, it was transformed last year into the Cherry Pit. The format this...

Best Dance Club for Dancing
Vinyl
Not to be undone by some 31.8 inches of snow that collapsed its roof during the blizzard of 2003, Vinyl came back bigger and badder than ever last fall. Now boasting what is arguably the best sound system in Colorado, Vinyl is a four-story...

Best Dance Club for Hooking Up
Brewski's Pub
With Ted Nugent on the jukebox and silicon-injected blondes peddling trays of Red Bull and Jäger, Brewski's is the place to let loose your inner Swayze and grab one for the roadhouse. Damn, even the drunk jackass at the bar wearing fake...

Best Rock Club
hi-dive
What began as a humble new dive in November 2003 has quickly blossomed into the best room in town. Occupying the space once held by Quixote's True Blue and the legendary 7 South, the hi-dive offers everything: karaoke, movie screenings, some of...

Best Jazz Club
Dazzle Restaurant & Lounge
Combining elegance and hep, Dazzle Restaurant & Lounge refracts the elusive quality of Mingus, Monk or maybe even Parker in a soothing atmosphere. From classic to experimental, the joint swings seven days a week. Sheryl Renee pays tribute to the...

Best Place to Get Your Jam On
Dulcinea's 100th Monkey
Originally more of a jazz-oriented setup, Dulcinea's 100th Monkey has hopped branches and now embraces the jam nation with equal enthusiasm. Though images of Miles Davis and John Coltrane have been replaced by shots of Warren Haynes and Bob Weir,...

Best Gay Club
Club Evolution
Club Evolution opened last year in the building that was once home to Muddy's but looked wrecking-ball-worthy in recent years. Fresh from a floor-to-ceiling overhaul, the place is now a gorgeous, two-story jewel of a club with an intriguing split...

Best Large Venue
Fox Theatre
Sure, it's pain a for Denver dwellers to drive to Boulder to see a show. But the Fox Theatre makes it impossible not to. Over the past year, the venue has begun snagging a ridiculous amount of noteworthy acts from nearly every sliver of the...

Best Small Venue
Larimer Lounge
There's no doubt about it: When it comes to booking the best national acts, the Larimer Lounge consistently beats every venue in town. Sometimes, though, the club's intimacy has worked against it -- especially when bands are way too big, in terms...

Best All-Ages Venue
Rock Island
All-ages venues have had a spotty history in Denver -- mostly due to outmoded liquor laws that make it prohibitive for clubs to admit teens and still serve that rent-paying alcohol. Though Rock Island has long hosted sixteen-and-up dance nights,...

Best New Club (Since March 2004)
Bender's 13th Avenue Tavern
Before an enormous black-and-white mural of Johnny Cash graced the east-facing facade of Bender's 13th Avenue Tavern, the run-down, windowless structure was home to a string of short-lived hip-hop and goth-oriented night spots: Tongues Untied,...

Best Jukebox
Gabor's
Nothing sucks more than getting drunk to crappy music. But at Capitol Hill mainstay Gabor's, there are no worries: The bar's jukebox is stocked with a passel of discs that make the firewater slide down all the easier. From the twang of Patsy Cline...