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I like nice people and good music. Fortunately for all of us, Denver is absolutely brimming with both. In fact, you could spend your whole weekend stumbling from venue to venue and never run out of potential makeout partners.

As much as I love good music, the joy I take in catching some of my favorite Denver bands comes as much from who they are as what they play. Looking through this year’s Westword Music Showcase ballot, I can’t help thinking of all the great people behind all this great music.

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I've got news for you. Hot Topic didn’t invent poseurs. A lot of us like to think that we’re “authentic” or “old school” or some other euphemism that implies both allegiance and entrenchment. But, in all likelihood, we all started off as poseurs. I know I did. And, in some aspects of your life, I’m willing to bet that you’re still a poseur. I know I am.

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I know it’s not an original sentiment and I’m the millionth person to make this observation, but I feel compelled to go on record with a bastardization of Mark Twain’s famous words: the reports of the death of music have been greatly exaggerated.

As I observed in a past column, the intersection of art and commerce can, indeed, be a messy place. The music business is, without a doubt, at a point of crisis. People who’ve been making a killing for decades on the backs of hard-working creatives appear shell-shocked and confused in the face of a rapidly changing and, dare I say, evolving marketplace...

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Smiling feels really good. Laughter feels even better. I think you’d have a hard time finding anyone who disagrees – except, perhaps, the misanthropic person who left the gratuitously vitriolic comment last week. But he probably just needs a hug.

So we all agree that smiling and laughter are good, and yet, music connoisseurs tend to be unreasonably wary of humor in music. Whenever a song or a musician is deemed funny, he or she is almost immediately taken down an artistic tier. We’re happy to laugh, but we’re not sure we can call it music. After all, music is supposed to be serious, isn’t it?

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Look, we’ve been friends a long time, right? We’ve made out, braided each other’s hair, played putt-putt, danced until all hours of the night, made each other mix tapes, talked politics and religion, and commiserated about largely innocuous childhood traumas. In short, we’ve bonded. So I’m not gonna bullshit you. Things aren’t going so well right now.

Mind you, I haven’t lost perspective. I know how lucky I am. I know things are going to be OK. I know I have a good life. When I read the blog of a buddy of mine who is going through violent biochemical therapy to beat the cancer that is ravaging his too-young body, I know how good I have it. When I think about my other friend whose life was sent into a spin after a nagging headache turned out to be a brain tumor, I’m grateful for my petty issues.

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A famous quote from Shakespeare’s Henry VI says, “First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” This sums up a pretty popular – and largely ignorant - attitude that folks have about the legal field. Those folks obviously haven’t made out with Beth Patterson, one of the most caring and compassionate attorneys you could ever know.

With local clients including Born in the Flood, Swayback, Gregory Alan Isakov, Angie Stevens, Bela Karoli, Chris Eagleton and many more, Beth is one of the best friends a musician could have. She was instrumental in getting the Fray their deal, and was also involved in the Photo Atlas deal between Morning After Records and Island.
“I always look at record deals as starting with a divorce, and then negotiating the settlement,” she chuckles.

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An out-of-state friend of mine just asked me to pull together some recommendations of good music that has emerged from colorful Colorado in recent years. I’m looking at the playlist in iTunes right now and can’t believe my eyes.

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Sometimes, things happen that make you question all of your assumptions. We all operate within a framework of misunderstood half-truths and well-understood falsehoods. We know what we know, and we can extrapolate from what we know to understand things we don’t really know, if only within the limited confines of our own experience and knowledge.

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Just when I think I really know the Denver music scene, something happens to humble me and make me realize how much I have to learn. As Depeche Mode said, it’s a lot like life.

Last weekend, I had the honor of participating on a panel at the third annual Building Creative Businesses Expo, an extremely valuable event thrown by the Denver Office of Cultural Affairs. The purpose of the event is to provide creative types with opportunities to learn a bit more about how to run their creative “businesses” more successfully. There were workshops and panels about marketing, legal issues, networking, finances and much more. The mere existence of this happening further proves that it’s a great time to be an artist here. It felt like making out with the City of Denver, and that’s not a bad thing, as it turns out.

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They say you can’t put a price on happiness. In fact, MasterCard – in an effort to brand itself as the hip, friendly credit card with waggish wit – created a whole campaign around the very notion that certain experiences are essentially outside the realms of economics and commerce. For the bloodsuckers at MasterCard, these experiences are things like seeing your child take her first steps, getting revenge on a cheating ex-boyfriend and losing your virginity – an experience that actually can be bought, but rarely with a credit card.

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Sometimes, all that stands between a mundane, quotidian existence and an ecstatic assumption into the heavens is a sneeze guard. Such was the case for Hearts of Palm’s set at Artopia last Saturday night. Though it was probably the only space large enough to hold the band – normally nine people, but only eight strong that night – the dingy, ill-equipped stage in the basement of Vinyl was the least likely place you’d expect to catch one of Denver’s best, brightest and biggest bands. But there it was.

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I hate winter.

Yes, I know. Colorado winters are remarkably mild and sunny, and we’re blessed with the occasional 60-degree day to break up the season. But I still hate it. And I say that every year, right about this time. Like many people I know, the middle of winter sends me into a hibernation mode that makes leaving my apartment a chore, socializing a challenge and even going out to see live music somewhat unappealing. The lack of fresh air seems to bring with it a paralyzing lack of hope and an overwhelming sense of dread.

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One of the most beautiful things about the Denver music scene is the cross-pollination that occurs among bands. It seems as though every musician worth his or her salt has at least two musical projects going on at any given time. The word “incestuous” gets thrown around a lot, affectionately.

A couple of weeks ago, I was at the Skylark Lounge to catch some singer-songwriters. The Skylark recently engaged Gregory Dolan of Kissing Party to book “Underground Thursday” shows that are a little different from the psychobilly stuff usually associated with the club. It’s an exciting development, but it remains to be seen whether the historic bar’s modest sound system will be able to keep up.

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Doing It Together, Part One

The memory of my first Lion’s Lair experience has grown fuzzy with time. Like one of those crappy, colorized classics that Ted Turner nearly ruined in the '80s, the details won’t quite settle down, the flesh tones are way off and even the sound seems somehow distorted.

I think it was 1995. Some friends of mine from college had a band called Sick Little Monkey – how '90s! – that played loud, aggressive, hooky rock that brought together Soul Side’s DC hardcore, the Stooges’ dirty boogie and Sonic Youth’s artful noisiness. Though they were based in Austin, they rolled through Denver on their first real tour and managed to score a gig at the Lair. At that point, as a northern Colorado farm boy, that part of Colfax was only legend to me, and a scary legend at that. Nevertheless, my loyalty dragged me, as well as my Boulder-dwelling girlfriend, to the legendary dive.

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Ever since, let’s say 1968, people in the music world have just loved talking about DIY – Do It Yourself. If you use the term in the UK, people will think you’re talking about home improvement projects, but here in the colonies, that phrase carries a deep, complex and emotionally hefty connotation for independence-minded musicians and other artists.

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