Well, folks, it’s almost time for another lovely evening of music and free meatballs at Blue Lucy Takeout, Colorado Spring’s hippest and furthest underground DIY {but D Wh Y, exactly?} music venue, cleverly disguised as the Law Offices of Cross and Associates on Colorado Avenue, right across the street from Downtown Spirits.
This is the Sixth Third Friday, although the first two were accidentally placed on the First Friday, even though that is horribly uncool. But don’t worry. Those were the Third Fridays from the next to the last Fridays of those months. See what we did there? Anyway, the Sixth Third Friday is brought to you triads of the first inversion.
This month’s bill includes the inimitable and reclusive Harriett Landrum, whom I have frequently described as “the only musician with a loop pedal who doesn’t drive me morbid.” Don’t bother googling Harriett. The loop pedal and the violin are the only pieces of technology she has mastered so far.
Stay tuned for an extended commentary on this lovely installation at the abandoned Denny’s:
This thing has changed names, and will probably do so a couple more times. But it’s a great space and you really should check it out, friends. It’s across the street from Downtown Spirits, in an building that declares itself to be the law offices of Cross & Associates. I guess it’s still that, except that not of Cross’s associates seem to be lawyers. They’re all seedy musician types, like me.
In fact, I would say that the Black Rose Acoustic Society is the world’s listeningest room. It is, after all, a subscription-based group dedicated exclusively to the curation and presentation of the best possible music based on traditional acoustic string instruments. Electric bass is sometimes allowed, but no electric guitars and no drums. You can have an electric lap steel. Now that I think about it, I guess it’s really styles-associated-with-acoustic-string-instruments that set the bar. But that’s fine with me. I’m no purist.
It’s a wonderful experience to have a great an like that. It’s easier to play well when you know the ears you’re falling on aren’t deaf. In fact, there is a distinct sensation that way in which the crowd is listening constitutes its force that contributes to the execution of the music. One might even call it a vibe. Active listening — that’s what it is.
Here are some photos by official BRAS photographer Todd Ryan:
Every once in a while, you meet a lawyer who a owns a weird-looking building in Downtown Colorado Springs. This lawyer still runs his practice out of the building, but that only takes one room. The rest of the building is filled with paintings and antique vending machines; one room is set up as a listening room, complete with a small stage and chairs that don’t match one another, probably from a thrift store. The lawyer wants to turn his space into Downtown’s hippest music venue and gallery, hosting only the best in regional art. So you agree to play a show there, knowing only that there’s also a guy on the bill who plays “rock cello” and there might be free food. The show is BYOB, and the weird building is right across the street from Downtown Spirits.
Every year, sometime in May, I think that I will record John Elwood Cook’s “Memorial Day” and publish it on Memorial Day. This year I made a sincere effort at the last minute. I failed to meet the deadline, but wound up with a different Cook song, plus a redo of my own “Ayahuasca” from a couple of years ago. I’d been wanting to redo that one, since there had previously been a dangling, unfinished verse, poking fun at the class-specific aspect of the psychedelic-healing renaissance.
Here’s the words to both:
Ayahuasca
by Boor
Well there’s a girl I know from work
And I suppose you know her too.
And there’s the guy who’s into crypto
In the A-frame next to you.
And there’s your lesbian ex-girlfriend
Whom you haven’t seen since college.
They’ve all become the bearers
Of some esoteric knowledge.
Cause they’re all takin Ayahuasca.
These days seems like everybody
Feels like something’s missing,
Like their chakras need aligning
And their boo-boos all need kissing.
And so they go online and find themselves
A shaman or a wizard.
And they drink some shit that makes ’em puke
And then they see a lizard.
Cause they’re all takin Ayahuasca.
They’re not your standard stoners
And they ain’t your basic ballers.
You can tell these frequent friars
By the colors of their collars.
Honey, this ain’t no white lightnin
Like they cook down in the hollers.
You can get a hit of this shit
For about a thousand dollars.
If you want to take ayahuasca,
Just like they’re all takin ayahuasca.
Oh, but when they get done hurling,
Well, their senses get to reeling.
And it’s nothing like a notion,
And it surely ain’t a feeling.
And it takes eleven hours
Just to peel them off the ceiling.
We used to call this getting high,
But now we call it healing.
Cause we’re all takin Ayahuasca.
Waterloo Bridge
by J.E. Cook
From the Waterloo Bridge,
Spit down in the dirty water.
This is not what it seems.
It’s not your normal daydream.
The Waterloo Bridge
Goes higher and higher
And I seem to be hanging off the edge
Of the Waterloo Bridge.
Spit down in the dirty water.
Everybody loves jumpers
In their own pathetic way.
And I feel like I’ve let the crowd
Down today.
Crucified in checkered slacks.
I’m a man with no impact
Unless it’s smack
Off the Waterloo Bridge.
Spit down in the in the dirty water.
This is not what it seems,
Not your normal daydream.
The Waterloo Bridge
Goes higher and higher
And I seem to be hanging off the edge,
Of the Waterloo Bridge.
Wibble-wobble, wibble-wobble.
C’mon, if you’re gonna go.
We’ve been taking time out of our day
To see the show.
Teetering won’t do,
for you.
Now totter.
Wibble-wobble, wibble-wobble.
Spit down in the dirty water.
This is not what it seems.
Not your normal daydream.
Teetering won’t do,
for you.
Now totter.
Wibble-wobble, wibble-wobble.
Spit down in the dirty water.
From the Waterloo Bridge,
Spit down in the dirty water.
This is not what it seems.
It’s not your normal daydream.
The Waterloo Bridge
Goes higher and higher
And I seem to be hanging off the edge
Of the Waterloo Bridge
Spit down in the dirty water.
If you’re playing something and it starts to sound enough like “Shortnin Bread” to remind you of “Shortnin Bread,” then it’s going to wind up at “Shortnin Bread” before long. So you might as well just call it “Shortnin Bread” and let it happen. That’s what I did and I have no regrets.
The river flows and goes; it's on unceasingly.
Whatever water is, it's other than it's gonna be.
Bubbles on the surface disappear; they don't for long.
And all the nippers that I knew back in the day are gone.
Seen a tremor. Seen a fire. Seen a typhoon.
Pray to Amida, 'cause I know I'm gonna die soon.
Now did I hear a sucker nipper say "what"?
This is the record of the ten foot square hut.
Sucker Nippers buildin houses like there gonna last.
They don't know shit about the future; they forgot the past.
But I ain't stressin 'cause it's nothin that I wanna grab.
Pick my house and I can move it like a hermit crab.
Don't interrupt me when I'm flowin on my koto,
Inlfatin, imitatin the ways of Minamoto.
Live in the mountains, I don't never wanna own a gun;
Rock the evanescent like my girl Sei Shonagon.
Now did I hear a sucker nipper say "what"?
This is the record of the ten foot square hut.
In my declining years, I deign to live alone.
I drop the mic. I drop the brush. I drop the ink stone.
But the I pick em up again so I can write a rhyme.
You suckers hastin, but I'm wastin all your precious time.
Don't even matter, cause you know my flow is pleasant.
My mom and pop is out there cryin like a pheasant.
Ever present evanescence is my lesson, and it's funky.
I shed a tear when I'm wailin with a monkey.
But I pity sucker nippers cause they don't know how to rap at all.
Lose all their money every time they move the capital.
Did you hear the news? I never get the blues,
Chumpin sucker nippers with particular views.
I'm a lonely rajaputra. I don't have to pay no rent.
When I read the Lotus Sutra I'm about to pitch a tent.
Never harm a living creature; I don't wanna get bent.
Kick it with the Dharma cause my karma's all spent.
That's why I'm droppin all the servants and the loot, so
When I get tired of intoning the nembutso,
That's when I'm rollin with my homie, who is ten, yo.
We picking cogon grass; don't even need a hoe.
All you sicker nippers no my crib is so fly,
Cause I like small huts and I cannot lie.
