Whereas Oscar and Emmy statuettes are produced by huge high-end manufacturers, John Billings and his small team handcraft Grammy awards in the little town of Ridgway, Colorado.
John supervised Caribou and the staggering list of stars that recorded at the historic studio north of Nederland.
birthdays
A symposium at Fiske Planetarium convened members of Spontanuity, whose psychedelic light show provided visual background for the Dead’s 1969 concert in Boulder.
The Rolling Stones put their talent on stage in Colorado for the first time on Nov. 29, 1965, when they were still a pop group. Nicholas DeSciose, 19, took on the assignment of shooting the concert.
The hit “Barely Breathing” made an unlikely pop star out of Duncan Sheik, who went on to compose the Tony Award-winning musical Spring Awakening. He died September 17, 2026, at age 56.
Janis Joplin, with her band Big Brother & the Holding Company, popularized a style of music recalling the days of great black soul singers such as Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday—only with a much harder edge. In Boulder, a feisty little singer named Candy Givens, a Golden High School graduate, and her husband, bassist David Givens, recruited drummer Robbie Chamberlin, keyboardist John Faris and a special young Iowa guitar player named Tommy Bolin to play this same style in a band called Zephyr.
John Massaro
John Hazlett grew up in east Boulder County and formed a garage band, Jefferson, in the late ’70s with Centaurus High School classmates. He joined local bands Soft Punk and the School Boys and studied communications at Community College of Denver before moving to California with musician and producer Gerard McMahon to launch the band Kid… more ≫
On Record book series
Each volume of the award-winning On Record series gathers over 200 limited and extraordinary images and 100 interview-based profiles spotlighting an array of musical artists.
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Explore the Colorado Music Experience’s store, stocked with stylish products and gifts for music fans.
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A non-profit organization established to preserve the legacies of Colorado music, CoME serves as a repository for informational and archival resources.
