Unit-E’s Blacktop Music & Art Festival promises to be anything but normal

The upcoming Blacktop Music and Art Festival put on by Denver DIY (Do It Yourself) underground venue and creative collective Unit-E promises to be something, well, different. Taking place at the Denver Performing Arts Center, it’s a pretty impressive departure from the usual DIY event spaces of cleared out warehouses and garages.

This means two things: 1) With the extra space, Unit-E should be able to perform at its full potential without holding anything back and 2) The DIY message will reach a much bigger audience because while it’s all still technically “underground,” the event is in the center Denver.

As the website states that you can literally do whatever you want during the festival, it’s difficult to pin down whether it even is a “Music & Art” festival at all. From what I can tell its purpose is to be all things DIY and sustainable, a force for good in this ever-darkening world of corporate, controlled music and art.

The words “eclectic,” “diverse” and “experimental” are the only way to attempt to describe the running theme behind the whole “Music and Art” creative collection taking place tomorrow. A diverse (there’s one already) musical lineup toeing the line between rock and roll, pop and neo-soul, the music would be one reason to check out the festival. Another would be the bizarre, even “experimental” (there’s another one) art.

If these aren’t reasons to attend, you can also go to get your vegetables for the week, run wild in the grass, play tetherball, listen to opera, get your tarot read or, really, whatever else you can imagine that someone would be able set up in or around the Performing Arts Center. Perhaps the most appealing reason, though? It’s totally free.

Blacktop Music and Art Festival starts at 2:00 p.m. and runs until 10:30.

Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Jacob Spetzler at Jacob.spetzler@colorado.edu.

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