New Denver Music Fall 2009

As has been our blessing for the last five/six years in Denver – new bands are constantly surfacing. 2009 is no exception. Here are our picks for up and coming and new talent in town that has floored us:

(Please click on band name to visit their site)

Churchill

The Outfit

O’Holloran

Paean

Lifeboat Etiquette

Victor Grimm

Green Typewriters

Petals of Spain

Josephine and the Mousepeople

Ever laughed and danced and cried at the same time?

www.myspace.com/josephineandthemousepeople

Photography courtesy of the amazing Brian Carney:

josephine & the mousepeople

My Ghost Has a Name

Since my adolescence there has been a ghost in my house. Even stranger than this possible delusion is the dizzying, but altogether, real fact that this ghost committed suicide last week.

Really, this ghost wasn’t a literal and ethereal wisp of an apparition so much as she was a thing, an object, an abstract construction. But really, and to be completely honest: more than any conceptual amalgamation of the mind my ghost was a real person – existing somewhere out-there, in the world. What’s more, she had a name. She will always have a name: Laurel.

Laurel was my high school girlfriend. And like so many that came into contact with me as a youth, I handled her with the most profound sense of irresponsibility. For my adolescent infirmities were pronounced – the pockets of greatness in my growing body, yet-unrealized.

As any reasonable human would do: Laurel broke-up with my high school self. She dumped me into the education of deserved emotional turmoil. And then, as quickly as it came: high school ended. I left. She left. And so it has been that, for the last fifteen years this girl I once knew as Laurel simply became an apparition. An airy wisp that stood as a testament that I existed at all; proof that I was as horrible as I really was. Laurel’s ghost was something that followed me. Something that hovered. A cloud of intelligence that I secretly looked up to.

Once her actual human form had completely dissipated from the reality of my life, she grew large; and lived in the unreality of my life – in the dreamstate of my waking life. She became an idea. A drive. An impetus. She became that thing which I measured much of my growing sense of everything against. She became my silent, unrelenting inner turmoil: That puzzle which, if I somehow solved – I always knew that I would, in-turn, solve myself.

And if the truth needs to be told: I am no different than you, dear reader. We all have our ghosts that push us onward. Forward. If we listen to them, or see them at all…

Now, the sad and true fact is that: Laurel is an official ghost. Beyond the land of the living. Last week, Laurel killed her self. She committed suicide. She passed-on. She died. She’s not with us anymore…

It has been nearly, exactly – fifteen years since I last saw Laurel’s human face. Sure, she has visited me in dreams – the only place I’ve really seen her at all. And after years and years of this; she has lost her face to the ghostly apparitions of ideas and abstract concepts. Still, I know our time was real as my proof resides in a couple of photographs still held in the annals of my youth.

For most of these fifteen years, Laurel lived in the same world that I did. And really, not very far from me. There were reported sightings in public. We may have even stood in the same room without knowing it.

Then, in one mysterious twist of technological fate, I saw her face on my computer – on a social networking site. My breath ceased. And for many moments, my body stopped altogether. Her face, once again, for the first time in fifteen years, was before me. I couldn’t resist, and so: I wrote. Only much after my greeting did I even realize what I was saying; the complications of making this kind of unsolicited contact at all.

After staring at my words for many laborious minutes – I sent the email off. And then a near-eternity passed wherein she did not respond. Really, and as I knew: I did not expect a response. I did not deserve a response.

Then, a couple of months later and, for some strange reason, she responded. She said that we had both attended the same social engagement the week before. From what I was told, we missed one another by mere minutes. Again, she moved by me in the winds of life. Yet more proof that she existed at all. Yet more proof that she was, in fact, the ghost of my life: Her breeze left in the summer night as a wake to the possibility of ever seeing her face again.

Laurel’s correspondence was mixed with a height of emotion and the lack therein. Where she pronounced her successes in life, she also muddled them with the void of lacking, of wanting, of desiring, of unrequited ambition. Her words struck me to be such a puzzle that I actually shared them with a friend. I was begging for the deciphering code; another perspective. And what I was told by my friend: that it appeared there was some kind of backhanded invitation to meet. In the least, to bump into one another. To this end, I smiled. I wished nothing more than to complete my profound apologies with a handshake, an actual sighting. A hug.

But this wasn’t to be.

And now, I’m afraid that, more than any future hauntings or this supreme sadness that has washed over me in the heaviest of manners – I’m afraid that I’ve lost a piece of the identity that I’ve known for all these years. For it was she, Laurel, that has always been that kind of presence which has served as a mirror for all my life’s pursuits, dreams and functions. For it was her that I would have my secret conversations with: About my worth, my progress, how far I had come; and also about my retribution, my penance, my struggles that I knew something like karma had afforded me.

For the last fifteen years, I have always looked to her visage, her ghostly image, her airy wisp, her as the idea (THE idea) – for confirmation that I was not alone. That something like God was watching over me afterall. The simple fact that I knew she was out there, somewhere provided that kind of solace which shouted: you are being looked after. You have a judge. This call said: care for yourself. Grow. Bellow. Exalt. Know Thy Self. Care for your self and for everyone else in all the ways that you never cared for her; couldn’t care for her.

In all honesty, maybe I am a bit terrified that the time has come where Laurel truly can perform all of these mystical functions that I have probably only imagined, hitherto. Maybe the time has come – maybe the time always was going to come where she could really and truly – alas! Look over my shoulder and appear in the dead of night, around the corner of my closets. For fate is always determined in the end times; the history of everything is determined by its past and those which gaze upon it.

R.I.P. Jeff Hanson

We have terribly sad news to report:

Kill Rock Stars singer/songwriter Jeff Hanson was found dead on Friday, June 5 in what his label calls “a terrible accident.” He was 31.

It has been widely reported that Hanson most likely died from a fall onto the concrete floor of his new apartment, which he had just moved into days earlier. His parents found him in his apartment. It appears he fell and hit his head.

Portia Sabin, president of Hanson’s label Kill Rock Stars, said, “Jeff was only one of two people we have ever signed from an unsolicited demo tape. We get hundreds and hundreds of tapes, and for us to have been so captivated by him is pretty impressive. He was a terrific songwriter with beautiful melodies. The icing on the cake was his incredible voice.”

A 2005 Paste magazine review wrote that Hanson’s idiosyncratic voice was an “angelic falsetto, a cross between Alison Krauss and Art Garfunkel that is often (understandably) mistaken for a female contralto.”

Hanson recorded three albums under Kill Rock Stars (2003 Son, 2005 Jeff Hanson, 2008 Madam Owl), the label that also supported Elliot Smith.

On May 15, Hanson opened our Meadowlark outdoor stage for the summer, here in Denver. As with most of the venues Jeff played on his last tour, he held the audience in his grasp for the entire set.

Jack Kerouac’s Fantasy Baseball Leagues

Unbeknownst to his close friends, one of my literary heroes – Jack Kerouac invented a fantasy baseball game and played it for most of his life.

[Kerouac's game charted] the exploits of made-up players like Wino Love, Warby Pepper, Heinie Twiett, Phegus Cody and Zagg Parker, who toiled on imaginary teams named either for cars (the Pittsburgh Plymouths and New York Chevvies, for example) or for colors (the Boston Grays and Cincinnati Blacks).

He collected their stats, analyzed their performances and, as a teenager, when he played most ardently, wrote about them in homemade newsletters and broadsides. He even covered financial news and imaginary contract disputes. During those same teenage years, he also ran a fantasy horse-racing circuit, complete with illustrated tout sheets and racing reports. He created imaginary owners, imaginary jockeys, imaginary track conditions.

Don’t miss the slideshow of some of Kerouac’s notebooks and publications related to his imaginary sports.

Denver Music. New. 2009.

Here are some new tracks from Denver artists that have caught our attention:

Alan Alda: “Red Sky Morning (A Sailing Song)”

Tyler Despres: “Paradigm”

Speakeasy Tiger: “Speak Long, Dream On”

A Mouthful of Thunder: “From on High”

Cody Crump: “I’ll Be There”

Jesse Nesbitt: “015 Gracious Fact Check”

Victor Grimm: “Gary New Duluth”

Six Months to Live: “Spin a Top”

Dirt Circle Dogs: “Autobahn Pub”

The Don’ts & Be Carefuls: “Color TV (demo)”

The Build-Up: “The Violin Song”

(click on names to listen to songs)

Goodbye, my love.

“Fires run through my body — the pain of loving you. Pain runs through my body with the fires of my love for you. Sickness wanders my body with my love for you. Pain like a boil about to burst with my love for you. Consumed by fire with my love for you. I remember what you said to me. I am thinking of your love for me. I am torn by your love for me. Pain and more pain. Where are you going with my love? I’m told you will go from here. I am told you will leave me here. My body is numb with grief. Remember what I’ve said, my love. Goodbye, my love, goodbye.”

- Anonymous Kwakiutl Indian of southern Alaska
Transcribed from the native tongue in 1896

Please Find This.

It’s no coincidence. I play that song around you so maybe you’ll actually listen to the lyrics for once and know how I feel.

I was wondering if you had a second. To talk about anything at all.

(text from: pleasefindthis.blogspot.com)

I am. (Already).

I am the Biggest Dick in the World

After learning that a couple I know actually met through a personal ad, I woke up on Valentine’s Day morning, decided to take a look at the ads – and then it came to me, slowly:

My personal ad.

So, I created it. And ran it.

The only response I received? From a Princeton graduate, current Ph.D. student that described herself as: insane, irresponsible optimist, impulsive, articulate. She said, “I am three standard deviations above the mean by most measures, including baggage and general fuck-up-ed-ness.”

This couldn’t have gone any better. Here’s the ad:

…so, the initial title of my post was to be: I HAVE the Biggest Dick in the World. Somehow, strangely, I mistakenly input AM for HAVE. And so, when I went to post my desperate plea to the world for some good lovin’ on this day of Saint Valentine, I found that it was oddly appropriate. And more than that, I’m the kind of dude that knows: Chicks love Bad Boys.

And I, dear reader, am ba-ad. I will strangle you and slap you upside the head with my awesome lexicographic badness. Really, you’d love to meet me.

Because really, once you get around the fact that I have a massive rooster and like to talk in dysphemisms to emphasize my awesome bad self, you should easily locate the fact that: I AM the Biggest Dick in the World.

Trust me: You’d love to meet me. I am such a Dick/Johnson (both are my birth names, but I won’t tell you which is my surname – if you even know what that means) that:

I will probably tell you things like: You can’t split an infinitive. Or, stranding prepositions is okay. But after that encouraging pat on the back, my true cockiness will become erect in some foul-lick state and I will say: An ellipsis consists of no more than 3 (read: three) periods. Idiot.

Caveat Emptor: I. Am. Bad.

(I am so bad, I actually wear all white – like J.C. or Colonel Sanders)

I am such a Dick/Johnson that at some point I will probably demonstrate my wealthy pedigree with some bedazzling gems including: My sesquipedalian lexicon. My aptitude for locating and destroying everybody’s grammatical and verbal solecisms.

I am such a Dick I can’t even tell you how many times in an evening I will brag about how badass I am at holding the door open for you. In fact, I may even give you a fat lip with my favorite of the antiquated words: chivalry (second place, “sepia”).

Caveat Emptor: I am a colossal, endowed, gigantic Dick. Er, Johnson (You bet your serf-like existence that I’m proud of my family’s name. Bow down and lick the hand that feeds you, please).

I am such a ginormous (yes, that’s a word, language serf – it was one of the top neologisms for 2007) Dick/Johnson that my bad biker self will probably always say things like: The word “irony” is not the same as the word “coincidence”. Geezus (I’m pretty bad, but I misspell on the fact that I don’t want to offend the top badman of the world, J.C.). I’ll have you know that “cliché” is not the same as “hackneyed”. And really, get it right: “notorious” is not synonymous with “famous”. Nor is “modern” synonymous with “contemporary”. Douche.

I will probably use contractions appropriately and you will probably become annoyed at my awesomeness and general adroitness with language. If you are lucky, I may even recite some of my favorite poems from poets like: Myself, Rilke, Neruda, Plath, Bukowski or even cummings. Yes, that’s right I am the kind of Dick that’s a pleonastic erudite. A giant Johnson in the ass.

Huh?

Anywho: You probably should know however that yes, I’m the kind of Dick that won’t capitalize anything in my emails because I believe in artistic liberty. And yes, by liberty I actually do mean: choice. And while there are multitudes of other fine, awesome-ass points that I could make on my behalf, I will simply leave you with these facts which support the fact that I’m NOT the kind of Dick/Johnson that:

Has any friends named Chad.

Owns even one baseball cap/wears it backwards and in public.

Visits LoDo’s scrumptious bars or grills (with or without that British “e”).

Says “delish”.

My favorite word, however, is: fucktard. And no, you can’t say it just because my gigantic Dick of a bad self uses it. I hate followers, but I do like to have my ass worshipped and rubbed. Kneeded (did you catch that word play. She-it. Be-otch.)

In the end I am the kind of big Dicked Johnson that does not enjoy the company of very fat, er check that – stupid – girls. You can be kind of fat as long as you’re not kind of stupid. For I wish not to diminish the fine pedigree of my family (this of course will happen after you see my massive Johnson and begin the worship ceremony which inevitably will lead to the dispersion of my coconut infused man juice).

What?

“Kim & Jesse”: by Jason Thielke for the 2009 Scope New York Art Fair