TVHH Q&A pt.6

the very hush hush

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identifying what it is about Colorado that irks me, and it's one of the things about the indie scene that keeps it from being nationally important, too. And that is the cow town, gunslinger mentality. Whether it's Pinhead Circus, or some psychobilly concoction that infests the Lion's Lair, you can't escape the nonchalant machismo associated with 'Where the West Lives.' For a place that prides itself on a heritage of breaking new ground and making your own life apart from the ideals of others, it is painfully ironic that the support and community needed to nurture a successful and culturally important movement is watery at best. That's not to say that no one is trying; it's less the musicians that are the problem, and more the audience. I mean, come on, if all it really takes for the audiences of Denver to enjoy themselves are guys in full body costumes playing video game music on keyboard guitars, you can't really call that a music scene unless you are prepared to acknowledge your own self-parody.

So we created our own positive environment in which to compose and perform. Our supportive label, and fellow like-minded bands (Bear vs. Larger Bear, Drop the Fear, ::tin tin::) helped to offset the established scene. But being very self-sufficient in the creation and composition of our songs, we decided to move near the ocean and leave Denver to those who don't feel so turned off by it.

PETER:

To begin with, we are a product of the Denver music scene, though more reactionary than anything else. We grew up around Pinhead Circus, and saw Blue Ontario open up for Built to Spill. We've seen the Apples in Stereo too many times and watched as the Procussions moved on. But instead of taking these standards of the Denver scene, and retelling them for another generation, we decided to try and break off and show our peers something different. How successful that ultimately was will only be revealed through time. The promoters and the scene behind the 'scene' were very encouraging and open-minded. The audience was a different matter though. Sometimes hot, sometimes cold. I won't go into the details, but here is a tip: never ever play for an electro-clash crowd. In any case, we would like to think that we left Denver in good intentions, and not because we only thought that we could be successful in another state.

It is most easy for me to sum up our past in Denver with two examples.

1 - Electric Summer. This band was an outside source that came and invaded Denver. When these guys took the stage, it was like watching an alien give birth to some strange outer space music that you weren't ever supposed to hear. I mean, Electric Summer was something that never could have wholly originated from the Denver underground. Instead, it was the displacement of another culture within our 'cow town' that helped spawn what came to be Electric Summer.

Grant and I got really excited about playing out after seeing the potential a live show could carry. Like Electric Summer, we wanted to bring something different to the mix. We didn't want to destroy our shit and play the bass behind our head, but we did want to branch out and do something really different that couldn't be easily imagined, or hastily thrown together.

The metro scene is too wrapped up in teenage angst, and novelty bands. Well, most cities large and small will never run the well of teenage angst dry. But I also notice that the larger metro areas tend to have an over abundance of ironic novelty bands. Hopefully, this will die out very soon. People eventually have to realize that these bands are not really making music you would listen to more than a few times; only providing a cheap fix for the grown-up ADD set and a few good laughs, but nothing else, nothing substantial.

Some people thought Electric Summer was a novelty band, and they certainly walked the line between parody, and genuine emotion. But most of the time, I saw them in the latter. Electric Summer really blew Pinhead Circus and everyone else in the Denver scene out of the fucking water. After they came along, it kind of made the Golden faux-punk-thrash scene obsolete. We grew up around guys like Scooter, in Golden, and they were really nice in person, but on stage... Ugh. It was like these guys couldn't see but thirty feet in front of them. That is, they were very near sighted, and their spirit eventually died out from that.

Seeing an outside force makes you really start to want to venture out and see other places. When the Dismemberment Plan came to town for the first time, I was like- "Why doesn't Denver have anything like this?" Well, was it the old-western mentality that is etched so deep into the mold of Denver's identity? Or maybe people are really more conservative in Denver than they would like to have everyone else think.

My point is that Denver has great things that come through, but they are never permanent. Electric Summer gets deported back to Japan; a great band materializes out of thin air, and disbands just as suddenly; the Elephant Six leave for greener pastures. Why can't Denver keep anything but a burgeoning scene? Why doesn't it ever blossom into something bigger, or something better? It would take a novel to really explain it.

2 - The Fox Theatre. Here is a great, independently owned venue that has so much potential with its great sound system and prime location. Then why does it primarily book jam bands and mediocre hip-hop acts? The short and long of it comes down to this: the businesses are only giving the people what they want. Really, the Fox would probably stop booking jam/blue grass acts if they stopped...

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