Stereogum: Area Codes: 303 - FaceMan video featured
Of all the Area Codes we’ve done so far, Denver is the biggest city, so it’s probably not a surprise that it has one of the richer histories of anything in the series. Before the jam band craze of the early-to-mid ’90s, Denver was long established as a friendly, scenic city conducive to folk acts (Judy Collins and John Denver) as well as jazz (Bill Frisell grew up there and Ron Miles is a mainstay). Now, the scene is kaleidoscopic and prolific, its components ranging from forward-thinking house music to exploratory psych-rock to jam to extremely left-field acts to straight-up garage and hardcore.