In July, the organizers of The Underground Music Showcase (aka The UMS) announced that the festival’s twenty-fifth year would be its last. Founded in 2001 by music and culture journalists at The Denver Post, including Ricardo Baca and John Moore, the event was held at one venue for one night with a handful of bands representing a swath of the Denver underground. The paper held a poll of the best local bands, and in 2001 the top of that voting was gothic Americana legends 16 Horsepower.
But as the years went by, the poll emphasized what came to be called indie rock, with recognizable names from that first decade of Denver’s underground indie scene, like DeVotchKa, Planes Mistaken For Stars, Matson Jones, Munly & Lee Lewis Harlots, Born in the Flood (Nathaniel Rateliff’s early band), Hearts of Palm, Ian Cooke, and Snake Rattle Snake.
Strictly speaking, “indie” is short for “independent,” but it has come to encompass a kind of rock or pop music with roots in various underground experimenta…
