Death Cab for Cutie and Andrew Bird at Red Rocks

A dazzling night at Red Rocks July 14. Andrew Bird opened with a full band and plenty of whistles, and Death Cab for Cutie played a majestic and surprising set with plenty of very old songs from 1990s albums, as well as brand-new songs from The Open Door EP. A friend from Florida got to see Red Rocks for the first time, and was greeted by a double rainbow.

(As usual, there are many more videos at the YouTube library.

A Denver Opportunity to Wake the Dead

Good friend Maureen Brennan has played Celtic harp for the last few years in a Celtic/Grateful Dead tribute band called Wake the Dead. I'll admit to never being a huge Deadhead, and to having my sensibility lean more toward Mars Hotel than American Beauty or Workingman's Dead, but hearing a couple studio recordings convinced me this band would be great. They came to Denver this past weekend to play to Colorado Irish Festival. (The festival was immediately adjacent to the infamous Columbine High School, next to the memorial site for 1999.) We met for dinner Friday night in torrential rain, came to Denver Saturday in torrential rain for the first day's set, spent the evening poolside with sippin' whiskey, and came back to the fest Sunday (this time in only occasional rain) for more WtD. I recorded a couple dozen tunes, which I won't try to sample here, just point you to the YouTube library.

But I will show a song that meant a lot to Maureen, which Wake the Dead does not often do:



...And show a Saturday night acoustic free-for-all jam with more than 30 aspiring Irish musicians:

Beyond the Gun?

The biggest story in Honduras July 5 may not have been the numbers of people that surrounded the Tegucigalpa Airport, but the fact that so many of them left their guns at home. The situation in Urumqi, Xinjiang province in China may have been more violent, but the Uighur protesters were not idolizing their terrorist comrades who were recently sent to Bermuda from Guantanamo.

For several decades now, followers of Gandhi have been hoping and wishing for a turn from revolutionary armed struggle to nonviolent mass movements. The global shift in favor of immovable bodies over guns was masked somewhat by the rise of catastrophist terrorists, beginning with Tamil suicide bombers and leading inevitably to September 11. But meanwhile, in the background, people on all continents seemed to be rejecting the effectiveness of armed struggle against an oppressive state. Part of the shift may have little to do with people seeing nonviolent methods as being effective, but with realizing that armed struggle in conditions of modern "asymmetric" warfare is as close to hopeless as one could imagine. And there seems to be fewer radicals outside the catastrophists who "celebrate the bullet."

I am not suggesting that this movement operates in all times at all places, nor am I saying that mass nonviolent struggle is always a romantic unconditional good. We will still see plenty of rebel movements arise in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, though many more in the 21st century seem to be financed by an opposing state, rather than rising indigenously from a group in the mountains espousing some kind of radical ideology. And if we look at Thailand, where two sides both employ relatively nonviolent mass-movement methods, each side is guilty of corruption and using the language of Thomas Paine to enrich themselves. Half the folks hollering "Power to the People!" may be hoping for a payoff or a date with Flo from Progressive Insurance.

But the fact that a movement in the heart of Central America, defined by its armed-struggle rebel groups in the 1980s, chose to operate in a way that emphasized nonviolent mass movements, is a positive sign that we are slowly moving beyond the gun in populist movements worldwide. This kind of trend was far more interesting in Iran (and probably will continue to be) than counting the number of protesters using Twitter or SMS. Now comes the hard part: sticking to the nonviolent principles while trying to disarm the people in power.

Paul Baribeau's Denver Booya Hootenanny

Paul Baribeau is a bona-fide hobo rail-rider folk singer, the kind I would expect to own a guitar e that says, "This machine kills fascists." But his songs are intensely personal , and he hails from my town of Grand Ledge, Michigan. Even produced a ten-song EP in 2007 called Grand Ledge. And toured the east with Ginger Alford in 2006 and 2009 singing Springsteen covers. So of course a visit to Denver turned into a profound event. This summer, he's wandering the west with a fascinating singer from Columbus, Ohio, Kari Jorgensen, who records under the name The Boy Who Could Fly.

Kevin and I headed up north, sure from the advance publicity that "Booya Beaugeau" was bound to be a house-concert venue, and we weren't disappointed. In fact, this house was a sustainable-energy, local-food-growing ambitious-hippie house, the kind of place where Baribeau said too many residents get up at 6:30 in the morning. Eat your medicine, it's good for you.

What blew us away was the remarkable quality of even the local Denver singer-songwriters, led off by our home-host Mark, who records under the name Papa Bear. Below is his song "Photographs of Spring," and you can hear two other songs here and here.



A remarkable woman known only as Bonnie followed, and I can't decide whether her writing, singing, or song-styling is best. Click on the song titles for "Be My Husband," "Arrow," or "Jezebel," and I've embedded "Driftwood Husband" below. Abe Abraham followed Bonnie with a wonderful set of concise and passionate songs - I didn't get any titles, but there are samples of his work here and here.



Kari "Boy Who Could Fly" Jorgensen began her set with some Nirvana bass lines, then did haunting pieces that used an electric guitar as an underlying foundation for some wonderful poetry. Here are "Here Together" and "Homesick," though my favorite was the song "Trash", below, with its brilliant re-purposing of Brian Wilson's "Don't Worry Baby."




Paul has some new songs! He performed "If I Knew" and "The Mall" from a new Demo Tape EP he has (on cassette, of course). Familiar favorites included "Only Babies Cry," "I Thought I Could Find You," "Brown Brown Brown," and "Strawberry." And I'll leave you with his ode to mid-Michigan holidays from the Grand Ledge EP, "Christmas Lights." Thanks, Booya hosts and patrons!

"Crowdsourcing Killed Punk Rock"

Click To Play

Look at that! I'm excerpting a talk from 140 Character conference despite my deep annoyance with Jeff Pulver. Consider this Chris Weingarten speech a follow-on to the "You Can't Tweet Science" post. Call him a grumpy aging Twitter-hater, except most of his points are correct. Crowdsourcing kills most intelligent art appreciation, including music. Crowdsourcing is LCD because most members of crowds are idiots.

Sound elitist? You betcha. To Twitter-paters who insist that "Anything that can't be said in 140 characters isn't worth saying," I have dozens of two-word responses for you: James Joyce. Thomas Pynchon. Lester Bangs. I'd even go so far as to posit the opposite, "Anything that CAN be said in 140 characters probably isn't worth saying," and its corrolary, "Brevity is the soul of superficiality, so go long."

Memo to Musicians from Timothy Geithner

Attenzione Artists:

It has come to our attention that failure to address the balance between 2009 releases and available lines of corporate credit has led to a useful creativity surplus, but a significant distribution and current-account deficit. Therefore, following the June 30 releases from Wilco and Tortoise, calendar year music releases will be limited to those pre-approved through RIAA-NSA-Treasury Department advance notices. These currently include, but are not limted to:

Son Volt, Arctic Monkeys, Shirley Manson, Pere Ubu, Robert Pollard (permanent trade exemption per GbV Central Dayton Free Trade Agreement), Flaming Lips (subject to irony quotient testing), Susan Cowsill, Built to Spill, Wrens, and Roxy Music if Andy Mackay participates (Eno on at-will basis). Retro acts with new works in preparation, including but not limited to Devo and Gang of Four, are urged to hibernate. Acts known to fail to meet fiscal deadlines, including but not limited to Built to Spill and The Shins, should slack off until 2010 numbers are prepared. Sunburned Hand and Ashtray Navigations are free to release at will, since no one cares and we can't catch them. Everyone else, go home.

This temporary restraining order applies to iTunes digital files, though eMusic and Rhapsody can apply for exemptions. It does not apply to limited-supply works sold through Web sites, fan tables at concerts, and trunks/truck beds/back doors of vans. Any secretly-Canadian attempts at foreign pressings will be stopped at the border.

If you are not on the pre-approved list and feel the government is taking too active a role in setting trade limits, keep in mind that the music community has been far too prolific and creative in a year pre-anticipated to be a crisis period, when all good U.S. citizens were urged to feel sorry for themselves, stick their thumbs up their butts, and whine. Your government is prepared to make good on delays by taking a majority ownership in U.S. labels prior to 2010 releases. That is all.

Timothy Geithner
Department of Redundancy Department
U.S. Treasury

Very Rainy Juneteenth

We get told endlessly by the geniuses with Doppler radar that we're just about at the end of this endless cycle of rain, but it didn't stop in time for the start of Juneteenth. Above, Rose Harris Lytle, president of Colorado Springs NAACP, introduced Max Hale of Pastors for Peace. Below, 13-year-old Aarun Anderson gives us a history of the declaration of Juneteenth in Texas.



This was a young Juneteenth. Two more 13-year-olds were the backbone of the blues band that played all day long, Young Austin and No Difference:



Also, plenty of middle-school and high-school dancers in David's Generation:



Follow the link here to hear Blair Smith sing Beyonce's "Listen." And there were a few old folks with some talent, such as the gospel group Rev. Dennis Mose pulled together for the afternoon.

I made sure to pull off a quick interview with Brianna Frenchmore, who won the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission's Peace Scholarship in 2009 for her work with PeaceJam:



The sun had almost come out by the time I started interviewing Brianna, and the Doppler-gangers swear to us that a sunny and warm trend will begin on Father's Day. Really. Seriously.