vincent comparetto.

So many major events undocumented on my blog, I have been seriously slacking! I apologize! Well this weekend was the Denver Post Underground Music Fest where one gets to see two days of purely Denver underground music. All the bands in this festival are pretty much unsigned which in the case of denver makes up 99 percent of all the bands. Pretty much every band except Flobots, Devotchka, and the Fray. And within all these bands there are musicians that float about playing in every other band. It kind of reminds me of the NY Bepop jazz movement in the 50s. Anyway it was really fun, I saw some great music. Friday night I witnessed Dust on the Breakers, Dbiddle, Bad Weather California, Bad Luck City, and Ian Cooke kill it.


On Saturday I watched Frieda sit in on Everything Absent and Distorted set which us a bunch of covers and a variety of friends lending their musical talents. It was great seeing Frieda on stage again even with these big hair dudes.





Then my friend Julie's band Bela Karoli played and they sounded great. I like it when they have these music fests because they have to turn a variety of places into music venues and in the case of this great folk set performed by Rachel Pollard, Gregory Allen Issacov, and Julie Davis, it was a Rug Warehouse. It was lit really great and had such a pleasant ambiance.









Actually Denver's music scene is a pretty awesome thing, I mean here we have a city that has probably received more recognition for it's brothels than it's music historically speaking but the music scene here thrives despite what little recognition it receives. It beyond thrives it's like an army covering every genre while inventing many of it's own tactics. Due to a lack of exposure and a lack of influence from the popular shores of America it evolves much like the Galapagos island spawning diversity and uniqueness that rivals anything I have ever heard. Mat and Kim we are not. We aren't sloppy untrained punk kids rehashing old ideas. We have completely developed our own musical sensibilities based on sharing ideas with our friends and in many cases some of the most interesting things in Denver come out our incorporation of classical instrumentation and mutli cultural interpretations of folk music.











Even that definition is far too narrow and one sided because we also have bands like Mr. Pacman which is more derivative of Voltron than Appalachian Folk. It seems they dug a hole from Japan and came out in Denver. The Highlight for me was seeing them play at Rule mainly because of the contrast of Rule Gallery and Mr. Pacman collaborating. Rule Gallery is a very high end "high art" establishment that doesn't cater to the first friday crowd at all, it caters to art collectors and established artists so rarely does my low brow crowd even stand outside the joint.












Seeing a sweaty Avery naked beyond the ever shrinking speedo rolling around on that sacred floor just feet from a fifteen thousand dollar Dale Chisman painting screaming "This is gonna be the best summer ever". I only wish Robin Rule was there to witness the collision of such distant aesthetics. All and all it was a great weekend of musical appreciation. Thank you Denver.