EDITOR’S NOTE: This weekend, organizers say, brings the 25th and final Underground Music Showcase “in its current form.” To mark the occasion, Denver Gazette Senior Arts Journalist John Moore – who started The UMS in 2001 – is bringing back the poll that started it all.

In 2001, Moore surveyed local music experts about the underground bands and artists they felt were most worthy of more mainstream recognition. The results became the basis for an annual live showcase of local bands that grew into The UMS, which this weekend will feature 200 bands across 12 indoor venues and four outdoor stages along a 1-mile stretch of Broadway in the Baker neighborhood.

Moore stopped conducting the annual poll in 2010. But with the festival now coming to a probable end, here’s one final introduction to 10 local bands and artists our panel of industry insiders recommend you check out. In all, nearly 100 bands received votes. All this week we are counting down the top 10.

4. AMERICAN CULTURE

It’s ironic that Denver-based indie rocker Chris Adolf is perhaps the only longtime, entrenched figure in the local music scene who seems to have no definitive opinion on the coming end of the Underground Music Showcase after this weekend.

Which is ironic for a couple of reasons. First, because Adolf has always been a proud contrarian and outspoken critic of the status quo.

“I did used to have more opinions back in the day,” he said now with a laugh.

Also because Adolf and his various bands have been a fixture along south Broadway pretty much since the festival began as a multi-day affair back in 2006. 

Like several of his own bands he has fronted over the lifespan of the festival, Adolf said, “There comes a time when things should end.”

“To me,” Adolf said of the 25-year-old celebration of the local underground, “it left the underground a long time ago.” 

Then there was “the poll.” In the early days of the UMS, an annual survey was conducted asking local music experts to name those local bands most deserving of more mainstream recognition, and Adolf’s revered Bad Weather California finished in the top 25 for seven straight years.

And yet, no one was more consistently vocal at the time in questioning the value of ranking bands by numbers. 

Adolf, who has proudly walked the hard walk of a DIY outsider for 20 years, still very much believes that statement. But when he learned that, after a 15-year absence, the poll was coming back one final time as a sentimental sendoff to the UMS, he chuckled. And took with humor the news that his latest, equally revered band American Culture has finished at No. 4 in the voting.

He just can’t get away from the adoration this community continues to hold for his renegade musical spirit.

“I do appreciate whoever voted for us,” he said. “I can’t believe people still have heard of us.”

Adolf’s uncommon ambivalence about news of the festival’s end is also a tad ironic given that he was a central figure in one of the festival’s most indelible moments.

The year was 2009. The rain was pelting. The time was midnight. Bad Weather California was headlining the Saturday set at the hi-dive. Suddenly, a huge flash-mob marching-band collective called Boba Fett & the Americans materialized straight out of Bad Weather Denver.

When they entered the hi-dive, Adolf seized the opportunity and asked the renegades to join him on his opening song. As Adolf and his band began to play, Boba band members meandered through the crowd of crazies playing their drums, horns and other assorted instruments. It was a sweaty, silly love-fest. Boba then took the party back outside, swirling everywhere from a porn arcade to pubs and clubs all along South Broadway.

Adolf is a musician who himself proudly sprung from Denver’s DIY subculture (a collective called Rhinoceropolis). This was his kind of anarchy.

When BWC ran its course in 2013, Adolf started American Culture as a solo home-recording project. Over time, it evolved into a full band now loved for its eclectic mix of what Adolf calls “scuffed-up indie rock, lo-fi punk, psychedelic influences, and hints of dub and Afrobeat.” American embraces a raw, gritty sound that draws from influences like The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Replacements and The Meat Puppets. Their song lyrics often explore themes of alienation, nostalgia, and personal struggle.

Adolf cares what the crazies think about his songs. What he does not care about is what the larger music industry thinks of him.

“I don’t consider industry success to be a measure of anything,” he said. “I’ve been in bands before, and we’ve tried for that. I have nothing against that. I would hope to have industry success if only to create a sustainable thing financially. That would be awesome, in fact.

“But as far as industry success making the art real, that’s not how it goes. As soon as you make it, it’s real.”

• Web site: instagram.com/americancultureofficial

• Year started: 2013

• Members: Chris Adolf (guitar and vocals); Lucas Johannes (bass, synthesizers and loops); and Michael Stein (guitar and vocals). “It’s a polyamorous drummer relationship,” Adolf says of Seth Saunar, James Barone and Jack Oberkirsch, who alternate depending on schedules.

• What makes you local: Adolf grew up in Grand Junction, attended Fruita Monument High School and moved to Denver 20 years ago. Johannes moved here from Nebraska to go to college. Stein, who is from California, moved to Boulder for college. Barone grew up in Evergreen. Sonar grew up in Aurora. Oberkirsch grew up in Highlands Ranch. 

• Seminal single: Off the last record, our biggest hit was “Let It Go.”

• Describe your music: “We’re a punk band, but we consider ourselves part of the arty side of the SST Records lineage because while we are on a hardcore label – Convulse – we are not a hardcore band. It’s like how Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. and the Meat Puppets were on SST. The simple answer is, we’re the Black Sheep Band on a hardcore label.”

• Musical influences: Robert Smith from the Cure. Fugazi as a band, Crass as a band and as an operation. The Grateful Dead as an operation. Meat Puppets, Sonic Youth.

• Watch it! “Body Double”

• One favorite Colorado band: One of the Colorado bands that I am listen to currently is Primitive Man. They’re extremely heavy, but you don’t have to be in heavy music for primitive man. It’s like Shoegaze music too. It’s just, to me, the most incredible sonic thing I’ve heard in years.

• When did you know your band was for real? “When we finished the first song from the first cassette, ‘The Olympia Sessions,’ we were like, ‘There’s a real song. Some of the stuff  It picked up pretty easy.” 

• Catch us live: Aug. 1 at The Marquee, opening for MSPaint.

• Next music drop: New record “Hey Brother, It’s Been a While” was released May 3 on Convulse Records 

• Our live shows are like “… seeing four people who shouldn’t be alive, being, like, very alive.”