This story was originally published in The Denver Post on October 28, 2006.
“Welcome to the most ghetto Fray show ever,” said Isaac Slade, skirting the thin apron fronting the Mayan Theatre’s main screen. “It’s so secret that half the band didn’t show up.”
Pianist Slade and guitarist Joe King of The Fray, local favorites and Epic Records signees, played an intimate acoustic gig at this art house movie theater on Oct. 20 to celebrate the documentary on the band made by Slade’s production house noise:floor. Everything about the gig proved The Fray’s immense showmanship.
Less than a couple of measures into the opener “Look After You,” Slade stopped and shouted, “Is that fast enough, Ben?” Laughs spread as the band’s drummer, Ben Wysocki, was sitting in the audience. “Seriously,” Slade pleaded, eventually asking for a verbal count-off.
Slade beat-boxed in “Look After You” and scatted in “Cable Car,” and King engaged in an impromptu Q&A and admitted he never had been to Red Rocks until the band played it this summer. And since they both hinted that it may be March until the band plays Denver again, the modest crowd of mostly teenagers felt a certain level of smugness at being there.
– Ricardo Baca
The Photo Atlas
You know a band skews young when a crowd-surfer jumps onstage and has to stop and offer charades-styles instructions to the neophyte teens swaying below before having enough confidence to take the plunge on top of them. That was just one moment that made The Photo Atlas’ first CD-release party at Rock Island such fresh, sweaty, clap-along fun. With infectious dance tunes like “All the Walls Have Eyes” and “Cutback,” the boys in black T’s had all the bouncy girly-girls putting Jane Fonda to shame.
Lead wailer Alan Andrews, he of the young Paul Simon face, “one-eye-blind” haircut and doleful yowl, implored the frenzied faithful, “So is everyone all hot and sweaty? I want everybody hot and sweaty!” Check, Al. The days of Photo Atlas (nee Atlas) playing to 10 people at the 15th Street Tavern already seem long behind them – and that was just four months ago.
– John Moore
Mishka Shubaly
Thank goodness Mishka Shubaly’s coarse, druggy poetry outweighs his love for dimestore comedy. Between bad jokes, the troubador and one-time Denver resident serenaded the meager audience at the Hi-Dive on Oct. 20 while jacking singer-songwriter cliches and revealing his ridiculous penchant for booze and devastating songs.
“Home” is a brilliant heartbreaker of an alley waltz. And it’s proof of this New York songwriter’s fierce sense of self and love of poetry, which has evolved gracefully since his days contemplating the “Washington Ballet.”
– Ricardo Baca
Hott Roxxx
Clad in a 3-sizes-too-small purple unitard, Avery Rains (aka Mr. Pacman) unleashed his new side project Hott Roxxx to the heterosexual world Oct. 19 at the Hi-Dive. The two-piece cheerleader shout-rock band had debuted at gay bars.
It wasn’t long before Rains was wearing only a zebra-striped g-string and shouting indecipherable lyrics along to something sounding eerily like the late-’90s electronic music of “Mortal Kombat” – and yet it was comfortable territory for the video game-obsessed Rains.
– Ricardo Baca
