Martin Banks fell in love with records through DJing. More than two decades later, the 44-year-old computer programmer from Birmingham, England, opened his tiny Vinyl Café record shop in Longmont last October, selling a mix of new and used LPs.
He says the location on Main Street is temporary as he looks for a bigger space to provide Longmont with a combination record and coffee shop, with hopes for a rooftop patio and lots of live music.
“It’s a really up-and-coming town. There are a lot of people moving here in the demographic that are into the things we’re selling,” Banks says of his shop’s new home. “I considered Denver, but Longmont is a growing community, and the businesses don’t seem to be keeping up with the changes in demographic. People are coming in, like, ‘Wow, we’ve been waiting for something like this.’”
At a recent show at the Crypt in Denver opening for Fast Eddy, Ian Ehrhart — frontman for the punk-rock band Jesus Christ Taxi Driver — leaped off the stage to do his best Chuck Berry duck walk in the middle of the crowd before his band’s first song was even halfway over. Ehrhart’s wild stage presence, influenced greatly by the late, great Cramps singer Lux Interior, is a charming and electrifying habit, but it’s also inspired by anxiety.
“That’s why I started putting the microphone in my mouth, and I love doing that for some reason,” says Ehrhart. “I accepted some Indie 102.3 award once, and I didn’t know I had to go on stage and have Bruce [Trujillo] ask me questions. I didn’t know I was going to have to say something, and I was like, ‘I don’t know how to do this.’ I was so nervous. The second I get on stage, she asks me a question, and I can’t think of anything, so I just put the microphone in my mouth and spank myself. That’s how I deal with anxiety.”
Helios Public Art House Breathes New Life Into Longmont by Adam Perry for Boulder Weekly 4/3/2024
Jamée Lucas Loeffler might not look like your typical artist, sculptor or gallery owner, but he’s actually all three. The burly and bearded 51-year-old definitely looks the part of his other life, though.
“I build,” says the New Jersey native who has lived in Colorado most of his life. “If you want me to come out and dig a foundation and build you a house, I could do it from the ground up. Whatever you want. I’m a builder, but I was a mason first.”
From the sound of Fast Eddy‘s music, which falls somewhere between hard-driving metal and the swaggering ’70s rock of the New York Dolls, you would think the brash Denver band must have gotten its name from the late, great Motörhead guitarist “Fast” Eddie Clarke. However, Fast Eddy drummer Arj Narayan, an Albuquerque native firmly planted in Colorado since transferring to Fairview High School as a teenager, paints a more colorful picture of the moniker’s origin.
“It was kind of a nod to an old friend who was a cab driver who used to pick up my bandmates,” Narayan explains. “He used to sell them…illicit substances.”
Porno for Pyros lands in Denver to play the Fillmore Auditorium on Thursday, February 22, for its reunion as well as farewell tour, and drummer Stephen Perkins — who also plays with Porno for Pyros singer Perry Farrell in the legendary Los Angeles rock group Jane’s Addiction — is fondly reminiscing on the quirky, psychedelic-rock band’s early-’90s formation.
“Think what the environment was in the music scene in ’93,” Perkins says from behind a drum kit at an L.A. rehearsal space. “Jane’s Addiction obviously broke up in ’91, and I had a year with Infectious Grooves before we started Porno. I met a whole group of musicians more on the metal side, and that fine-tuned some of my drum skills away from where Jane’s Addiction was, which was very groovy and tribal at the essence.”
North Carolina native Doug Gaddy opened Absolute Vinyl Records & Stereo in a tiny, spartan space in then-quiet North Boulder in 2009 with the help of his wife, Annie. The shop made fast fans, finding its niche by cleaning and grading every record it sells and boasting shelves full of vintage but near-mint, turntables, speakers and receivers. Doug and Annie weren’t in that location for long.
“The fire department came by to inspect that building every four or five months, because it should have been condemned. I couldn’t wait to get out of there,” Gaddy says. “It was part of a remnant of an entire world that existed in North Boulder when it was a home for the disaffected, disadvantaged and disgruntled. I was there in the last days of that.”
On Tuesday evening, I took my 14-year-old daughter to a Boulder Planning Board meeting in the municipal building. We were both mortified. Two representatives of Morgan Creek Ventures (the developer hell-bent on tearing down the iconic, beloved Dark Horse bar and restaurant on Baseline Road) presented plans to demolish the 50-year-old Boulder institution and everything around it to erect a combined commercial/residential village featuring six five-story buildings, with restaurants, shops and 600 apartment units.
“The area around the Dark Horse is broken,” one of the men said a few times. He and his colleague touted the benefits of a gigantic new development at Williams Village, including accessibility for students passing through from nearby student housing. Along with six five-story buildings that would greatly alter that part of town, and the mountain views for some residents in that neighborhood, the developers want to eventually get a pass from the city to build a 70,000-square-foot hotel on the site. They also plan to provide parking, including underground, for 800 vehicles.
My daughter and I heard promises of “open space” on top of a few of the proposed buildings, a small amphitheater for music, and a plaza for food trucks and community hangouts to juxtapose the six gigantic buildings and accompanying 800 parking spots. We also heard the developers’ suggestion that they’re “open to” throwing upset locals a bone by allowing the Dark Horse to move some of its famous decorations into a much smaller new space somewhere amid the new five-story buildings, creating what they called “The Dark Horse 2.0.”
If the area around the Dark Horse is indeed “broken,” why was this public meeting not about fixing it, rather than razing it and building a money-making behemoth on top of it? I have been living in the Boulder area for 16 years. My child has spent only one year of her life anywhere else. The Dark Horse, the Trident and the Boulderado are a few of the places I can now count on just one hand that truly feel like Boulder the moment you walk in the door. Admitting that most of what’s around the Dark Horse is a parking lot that could be made into something wonderful for the community is just fine; in fact, it’s inspiring to imagine Boulder’s residents and government coming together to save the Dark Horse and make Williams Village into a welcoming, even bustling—and green, in foliage and energy—little townlet around it.
The Dark Horse does not qualify as historic, despite its rich 50-year history, so it’s susceptible to “development,” i.e. being torn down and—if we’re lucky, as these developers say—scrapped for parts. Still, anyone who’s lived in Boulder over the last half century knows the Dark Horse’s charm, its tasty food and colorful staff, its pool tables and other games, its karaoke nights and tricycle races, sometimes even live music. The Dark Horse’s layout is strange and vast, including an upstairs and an outdoor patio that some people have never visited even if they’ve been to the Dark Horse dozens of times. And the antique-store decorations? You could visit the Dark Horse every day for 50 years and still smile at something on the walls you’d never noticed.
Doesn’t all that qualify a business as “historic” and worth saving?
I agree with Boulder Planning Board member ML Robles, who said on Tuesday night, “This project is not meeting the intent of a neighborhood center” after the representatives of the developer had spoken. I also agree with Sarah Silver, who said “I would suggest that it be a smaller development.”
Businesses in Williams Village such as Sprouts have already volunteered to close for years and then reopen after construction of the proposed commercial/residential behemoth. If there is to be redevelopment of the area, Sprouts and Cosmo’s and the adjacent liquor store can survive, although it would be far better for the city of Boulder to ensure that they survive in a new Williams Village that is community oriented, beautiful, sparse and green, and overall not aimed at making as much money as humanly possible by cramming as many apartment units, parking spots, businesses and hotel rooms as the developers can convince Boulder to allow.
Does this supposedly creative, unique, funky college town that’s become one of the most expensive places to live in the United States really need one of its few remaining truly iconic, special establishments torn down in order to create even more brand-new, expensive shops and restaurants and brand-new, expensive apartments? If their plan moves forward, the developers, as most of us know, will have the choice to either make a percentage of the 600 apartment units permanently affordable or just pay the city a fee; it’s no mystery how that would go, as Morgan Creek Ventures has already indicated it will pay the city the required fees instead of including affordable housing.
Unfortunately, we cannot portray the Dark Horse like the old man in the movie Up, staying put in a special place, trying to save it while developers crush everything around him, because the owner does not own the building. However, it’s within the city of Boulder’s power to preserve something special, that has been a vital community center for 50 years, and—if Williams Village is to be redeveloped, which obviously it should—build a tasteful, uplifting, and small set of combined commercial/residential buildings around the Dark Horse while leaving it intact, as-is.
I’d like to be able to show my daughter not to fear change but to be a part of it, and make sure it serves her community. I urge people who care about the Dark Horse to attend City of Boulder meetings to speak up publicity about saving it, and also send emails to city council — as many as possible. Lastly, I urge City Council and the Planning Board to let people who care about the Dark Horse, and don’t want six five-story buildings aimed at making some very wealthy people even more wealthy rather than improving the community, can do to either stop the development or have a real voice in it.
Murder By Death Doesn’t Miss Twice Band and Fans Unite at Annual Stanley Shows by Adam Perry
Live music at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park is an institution. Colorado newcomers, and there are many more every day, probably think it’s always been that way, but rock concerts at the Stanley really date back to just 2014, when the gothic-Americana band Murder By Death began its 11-year run at the purportedly haunted hotel. The band’s cult following comes from all over the United States, and even overseas, to fill the Stanley’s music hall every January (2021’s edition took place in August, and outside) to raise hell, and restless spirits, and this year was even more memorable than usual.
Murder By Death originally played the Stanley (which inspired Stephen King’s The Shining) one January weekend a year, but the success of the shows and the year-round music events that’ve popped up in their wake helped ballooned Murder By Death’s annual Estes Park residency to five gigs over two weekends. Part of the charm is that singer-songwriter Adam Turla and company are known to hang in the hotel whiskey bar after each concert, but this year was different—starting with Friday night.
For me, personally, Friday night started out strangely because it was the first time in my nine years attending Murder By Death’s Stanley shows that I missed two things—the first song (the romantic “Foxglove”) and being in photographer Lisa Siciliano’s annual Shining-style ballroom photo. My partner, Mikayla, made us late getting her amazing 1920’s-style outfit all ready, but she looked so beautiful, and we had so much fun together, that it was worth it.
It was Mikayla’s fourth year seeing Murder By Death at the Stanley with me, and she was surprised how many times during the concert, and the next morning, I commented that the band was better than ever. I thought the searing version of “Straight at the Sun,” a hard-rocker from the group’s 2012 masterpiece Bitter Drink, Bitter Moon, was the highlight of a 22-song set that had something for everyone, but the band was just on all night.
Murder By Death almost always fits in the punky early-era song “Brother” and the hard-charging “Comin’ Home,” two songs that can get its devoted audience singing and stomping alone, sometimes even moshing, but I was impressed with how Friday night included a lot of the best songs from the band’s 20-plus years together, from the cinematic poetry of “Last Night on Earth” (from 2018’s The Other Shore) and the slow-burning fan-favorite “Riders” (from 2022’s Spell/Bound) to the 20-year-old rarity “A Master’s In Reverse Psychology.”
The deep-voiced Turla even had a blast leading a jubilant, hilarious extended version of the “secret” song “Pizza Party (at Gloria Estefan’s House)” complete with a baritone-sax solo. The night was also enhanced by impressive video projection, with psychedelic lights and fitting clips from movies, that was a major change from Murder By Death’s spartan, or non-existent, light show for many years at the Stanley.
The big surprise to me, though, was that my girlfriend and I didn’t see Turla in the whiskey bar after the Friday show. I thought something must be wrong, but then honestly I drank too much to dwell on it. The next day, however, the band announced on social media that for the first time in its 11-year run at the Stanley there would be no Murder By Death show as scheduled; Turla was sick, and couldn’t possibly play.
Amazingly, Turla’s bandmates saved the day on Saturday night, throwing a party in the Stanley’s concert hall including impromptu alternate performances of Murder By Death songs and all kinds of inspiring revelry.
Turla took to social media Sunday morning to show his thanks, writing “Last night was so moving. In my medicated haze I wept with gratitude for this community and the kind people that I have been so lucky to be surrounded by.”
With Turla back on stage, Murder By Death threw in a “trial mini-show” early Sunday afternoon and then proceeded as usual, just not with a typically sprawling set, on Sunday night for its 43rd show overall at the Stanley.
Murder By Death’s music has been a huge part of my life since I first saw them at the Stanley in 2015, and conducted my first of a half-dozen interviews with Turla over the years. “No Oath, No Spell,” in particular, is a song I sing to nobody at all while riding my bike in the Rocky Mountains every summer, and I even have those words tattooed on my right arm. The Indiana-born band, which today finds its bandmembers living in various parts of the U.S., has a legacy that’s about so much more than incredible songs and shows, though. The way fans dress up for the Stanley shows, befriend each other in the hotel before and after each gig, keep in touch throughout the year, and even visit the Italian restaurant (Pizza Lupo) Turla and wife/bandmate Sarah Balliet own and operate in Louisville, Kentucky, embodies songs like “I Came Around” in a big way.
At one point on Friday night, I locked eyes with a guy I’d never met and high-fived as we sang along to “Brother,” and after the show Mikayla and I found it totally natural to end our night at the hotel bar taking a group selfie with two couples who traveled from Montana for the shows. It makes total sense that a group of fans so connected to the band, the songs, and each other would support Turla so fervently through his illness.
I’ll never hear his lyric “You must’ve been doing something right to move the company you kept” the same way after this weekend.
Six of the year’s best music books for your last-minute gifting by Adam Perry for Boulder Weekly 12/18/2023
It was a great year for new books on music. I was able to get through a giant stack of them in the last few months in order to choose half a dozen that would make great picks as gifts for yourself, your loved ones, or — if you’re that kind of geeky couple — to share with your partner.
The Bookworm (3175 28th St., Boulder) is my favorite place to find tomes of all kinds, and their music section is fantastic. Boulder Book Store(1107 Pearl St.) is obviously another great option. But when it comes to the best recent literature on music, my pick is the stealthy Boulder zine Sweet Tooth. An anonymous writer and publisher is intermittently putting out this “love letter to music” at locations around Boulder. Filled with poetic, romantic and thoughtful words on how songs make you feel, consider yourself lucky if you find a copy around town.
Boulder Blues Legend Makes Rare Appearance at Dazzle by Adam Perry for Westword 12/21/2023
Colorado bluesman Otis Taylor, a Chicago native, remembers being at the Rolling Stones’ legendary Hyde Park concert in London back in 1969, but it wasn’t the music he found particularly interesting.
“I didn’t care — I was just chasing girls at the time. I was just doing my miniskirt tour,” he admits. “I didn’t really care that the Rolling Stones were on stage. Thousands of people and all these hot chicks, and I’m, like, ‘Fuck.’ I just had a different attitude about it, but I always had an attitude about that until I got married.”
Adam Perry 