Sunny skies and hot weather greeted Day 3 of The Denver Post’s 11th annual Underground Music Showcase, which launched its raft of bands, DJs and comedians just after 3 p.m. Saturday.
Compared with the relatively modest offerings of the first two days of the UMS, Saturday was a monster. Twenty stages hosted nearly 150 acts, from local dixie-punk band A. Tom Collins and hip-hop group The Pirate Signal to national indie bands Bear Hands and The Black Heart Procession at music venues, coffee shops and even a movie theater.
The UMS, as it has become known, also was lighting up Facebook and Twitter, with reactions ranging from rapturous to skeptical. Some quibbled with the “underground” designation, given the corporate sponsorship and massive scale of the four-day event, which takes place along Denver’s boutique- and bar-choked stretch of South Broadway.
Bands got paid, but all profits are going to charity, according to event director Kendall Smith.
And despite the requisite festival sights — fashion parades of beer-swilling hipsters, inevitable lines at sweaty venues — the UMS felt simultaneously bigger and more integrated this year. Most people outside of Denver would have a hard time recognizing the majority of bands playing, even if the number of Front Range groups garnering national attention has risen sharply the past few years (think the Fray, DeVotchKa, Tennis, etc.).
Early highlights on Saturday included the jagged post-punk of Denver’s Accordion Crimes at the Hi-Dive, the gathering-storm atmospherics of Mom bi at the Illiterate Gallery and Afrobeat outfit Pink Hawks, which steeled an Indy Ink crowd with its propulsive percussion and blasting horns. On its first song, the band’s horn trio snaked its way through the crowd to briefly play on the sidewalk before returning to the eye-level stage.
Local rockers the Knew entertained a small but appreciative outdoor crowd with a mix of original songs and a horn-driven cover of “My Baby Wrote Me a Letter.”
Across the street at 3 Kings Tavern, Appleseed Cast side-project Old Canes delivered songs reminiscent of Neutral Milk Hotel’s seminal folk-punk, bearded singer Christopher Crisci squeezing his eyes as he attacked his distorted acoustic guitar.
Late Saturday, Denver band Snake Rattle Rattle Snake was courting a large crowd at the outdoor main stage behind the South Broadway Goodwill store. The band, led by the hair-swinging Hayley Helmericks, pounded out a trancelike set of 1980s-indebted synth-rock that provided a satisfying coda to the day’s sweaty performances — with dozens more bands to come.
