George Cessna Upholds an Historic Denver Lineage
Local heroes The Red Tack and Blindrunner supported the local progeny at Lion’s Lair Local music – and love of…
Weaving through Denver Music, Art, Culture, and Life
Local heroes The Red Tack and Blindrunner supported the local progeny at Lion’s Lair Local music – and love of…
One of Denver’s most popular New Year’s Eve parties is about to change. For the first time in about a…
Judging from the sounds that burst from the Larimer Lounge stage last Saturday night, Colorado is no longer landlocked, and Denver now sports beachfront property.
Those sounds came from local instrumental legends Maraca Five-0, who have reunited after six years to debut as opener for Slim Cessna’s Auto Club — one of a short list of shows this summer.
Actually, it’s far less than fair to classify Maraca Five-0 as a mere “surf band.” While they echo the sound of the Ventures, Laika & the Cosmonauts, Link Wray and Dick Dale, their interpretation of it evokes much more.
Leave it to Slim Cessna’s Auto Club, who have put on one of Denver’s best live shows for more than a decade, to be the only band that could outdo their own reputation. That’s what happened last Wednesday at the Bluebird in the first of two New Year’s Eve celebratory shows. The six-piece not only proved their consummate showmanship, often sardonically tongue-in-cheek, but also a grasp of drama, playing as the cast of the classic cartoon Popeye. And they added some new tunes to their set — the first in more than three years.
“Just like Slim!” “Just Like Munly!” The two centers of the cyclone that is the live performance of Slim Cessna’s Auto Club hollered these lines again and again at each other during their anthemic “He, Roger Williams” at Bender’s last Saturday night.
. . . the fervor, the excitement, the downright religious intensity Slim Cessna’s Auto Club brings to the stage never seems to fade, though I, like hundreds of other natives, have seen it regularly since they started out in 1992. . .