Hello from Colorado. My apologies for the lack of posts over the past few months, but between working 9 to 5 as a veteran’s law paralegal, being a papa and playing drums full-time again, there just hasn’t been any space in my life for writing.

This morning, I leave for Colorado Springs to continue work on the debut CD by my new band, The Yawpers. We’ve been headlining midsize venues in Boulder all summer (as detailed in a recent Boulder Weekly feature) nd have a national tour in the works for late November and early December. The music is country-infused indie-rock, somewhere along the lines of Deer Tick, Wilco and early Elvis.

When you get a minute, “like” The Yawpers on Facebook and let me know what you think of the demos we’ve recorded so far.

Tidelands If…
CD Review
by Adam Perry
for the East Bay Express, July 2011

Though The Love X Nowhere, the San Francisco dream-rock band he co-fronted for a half-dozen years, never achieved breakout success, Gabriel Leis has been a mainstay on the Bay Area scene for a long time. Besides his four releases and many gigs with TLXN, the India-born, Marin-raised singer-songwriter-guitarist has also notably collaborated with Dan the Automator, members of Rondo Brothers, Dredg, and his wife Summer. Surprisingly, his most cohesive project, the brand-new Tidelands, features just Leis (on vocals, guitar and flugelhorn) and drummer-percussionst Mie Araki.

On the duo’s self-released debut If…, Leis’ deep, thick voice (which transverses everything from soft and calm to frantic) spins tales of woe and desire while the classically trained Araki’s tasteful drums play with subtle dynamics, and complement stunning contributions from cellist Sam Bass and trumpeter Ara Anderson, among others.

The result is a captivating series of tunes as world-weary as they are romantic. On “Letter to a Young Solder I Love,” Leis groans, It’s not your war/won’t you leave those poor folks alone? And on “Holy Grail” (featuring the Magik*Magik Orchestra) he pays tribute to the friends who have darkened the gardens of night/I salute you and give you my voice. The underlying theme of If…, as in most of Leis’ previous work, is an effort to slow down our high-velocity culture and appreciate the small things, like lying entwined with a lover, reconnecting with troubled friends, or the prospect of peace.

The incredible animated video for “Holy Grail,” created from more than 1,000 watercolor paintings by Ami Kutata, has been a YouTube sensation lately and is well worth a look or twenty.

So I’m involved with a few notable musical projects in Colorado right now, but my longtime friendship with former Ego vs. Id frontman Nate Cook makes my addition, on drums, to a new alt-country rock group The Yawpers especially exciting. To boot, after woodshedding the past few months at an underground bar called The Speakeasy, The Yawpers are about to have a more formal (yet raucous) Boulder debut on Saturday, July 16 at Shug’s Low Country Cuisine, which used to be the b.Side Lounge, and Trilogy before that.

The Yawpers (named after Walt Whitman’s promise to “sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world”) recall a grittier version of Wilco, with as much raw country sensibility as twisted indie imagination. Without seeing us live, the rollicking demo of “Heart On a String” on Facebook is the only taste the Yawpers can give you at the moment, but shades of the Yawpers’ down-home rock were previously heard on Nate’s (and guitarist/bassist Jesse Parmet’s) contributions to the now-defunct Ego vs. Id’s 2010 LP Taste, such as “Hey Sarah” and “National Disaster.”

Equally akin to Deer Tick, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan and Elvis, the Yawpers’ fresh blend of alt-country rock ’n’ roll is definitely something you won’t hear elsewhere in Boulder, and hopefully we’ll infecting the rest of the nation soon. Anyway, hope to see you at the Shug’s gig if you’re around, and either way: Please “Like” us on the Yawpers’ Facebook page.

The Poetry of Cinema
CU and Naropa explore the links between film and the written word
by Adam Perry for Boulder Weekly, 6-23-2011

Though an obscure class or two on film studies or screenwriting sometimes appears on the course list at Naropa University, the Buddhist-inspired Boulder school has no film studies major. However, since 1999, Naropa has enjoyed the presence of the novelist, singer-songwriter and screenwriter Junior Burke, who is on the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics faculty and was formerly its chair. Burke has also taught film studies at the University of Colorado Boulder for the past half-dozen years, and he was an integral part of bringing this weekend’s Moving Images poetry and film conference to Naropa’s Summer Writing Program (SWP) in conjunction with CU’s film studies and creative writing programs.

Billed as “the first symposium of its kind, bringing scholars, filmmakers and poets together to explore the intersection of film and poetry,” Moving Images is the product of Burke’s introduction to University of Chicago heavyweight Tom Gunning (director of the school’s Department of Cinema and Media Studies) two years ago.

“Tom was coming out here and doing some teaching at CU, and I met him through [former CU film studies chair] Dan Boord,” Burke tells Boulder Weekly. “He had just received a Mellon grant and was going to be able to put on several events around the country, so we decided to put on a film/poetics event at Naropa, and it’s been two years of planning.

“It came about through the history between CU film studies and the Kerouac School, in terms of strengthening the relationship between film and poetics,” Burke says. “In some ways it’s an interesting fit because of Stan Brakhage [who taught at CU until his death in 2003] being the founding spirit of the film studies department over at CU and his experimental mode and his stature in that little alternative film world. In many ways that is a good fit in terms of the Kerouac School being an ‘outrider’ lineage and experimental for its time.”

Over three days at Naropa and CU, approximately 20 speakers — including academics, writers and filmmakers — will use Moving Images’ platform to explore the relationship between poetry and moving pictures since the era of silent film. According to Lisa Birman, director of Naropa’s Summer Writing program, the fact that Moving Pictures coincides with the second week of SWP wasn’t planned at all.

“Funnily enough, we already had a film/poetics theme for week two of the Summer Writing Program before we knew this was gonna happen. So when Junior came and said, ‘What do you think about this idea?’ the timing was actually just phenomenal,” Birman says.

CU film studies Professor Phil Solomon, who considers himself a “poetic filmmaker” and whose own filmmaking strives for “poetic overtones,” is also participating in Moving Images and calls it “a perfect storm.”

“I am interested in promoting a stronger relationship between [CU] film studies and Naropa,” he says. “I’m not particularly interested in the literal juxtaposition of poetry and film. In point of fact, I have rarely seen it done successfully — that is, images accompanying a poem being read on the soundtrack. For me, poetry lives in blessed silence on the written page. More often than not, I prefer to read it than hear it read aloud — so what interests me are what I would call ‘poetic films’ and what I would call ‘cinematic poetry,’ poems which evoke a cinematic sense or evoke a cinematic sense of place or atmosphere and create uncanny juxtapositions — like film editing or dissolves — as you scan over the words.”

During Moving Images, Solomon will be analyzing Brakhage’s notable 1980 film, Murder Psalm, as it relates to “the crucial differences between image metaphor and language metaphor.” Solomon stresses that he was “thrilled” at the news that Gunning, whom he calls “the premiere film scholar in the U.S.,” is coming to Boulder to talk about the relationship between film and poetry. Unfortunately, Gunning turned down Boulder Weekly’s interview request because of three dissertation defenses due in the past week, but perhaps his involvement in this weekend’s conference will speak for itself.

“I know his fine critical writing,” Kerouac School founder and internationally renowned poet Anne Waldman says of Gunning, “and it will be a great honor and pleasure to encounter him live and addressing the creative community in Boulder. We welcome this unprecedented collaboration.”

Naropa’s faculty has included such legendary film-interested literary icons as William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and the wild-eyed archivist Harry Smith. Still, perhaps no one in Naropa’s colorful history of revered underground icons has been so involved with the juxtaposition of film and poetry as Waldman, whose interest in film began in her youth and who has been collaborating with her husband, the filmmaker Ed Bowes, for the past decade.

“I grew up in Manhattan and saw a lot of experimental films as a young per son, which opened and illuminated the dark cave of my brain,” Waldman tells Boulder Weekly. “Montage and jumpcuts and syncretic layering have always been important in my own writing. Manatee/Humanity [Penguin, 2009] has a section mimicking a film narrative. I’ve worked with filmmakers over the years, and appeared in an early Adolphus Mekas film [and] also in an early film by Robert Kramer.”

Waldman, who just finished working with Bowes on a short film tribute to Akilah Oliver (the beloved poet and Naropa teacher who tragically passed away in February), says she often finds “extraordinary rhythm in the movement of film, in its quick transitions, in its gestures in time and space, much like the unexpected moves of poetry and like our own metabolism.”

Moving Images will be a welcome celebration of ideas, passions and connections between CU and Naropa, but also a rare high point in the recent history of the Kerouac School, which was rumored to be on the chopping block amid the ongoing “reorganization” of Naropa, which confirmed in May that it is contemplating a move out of Boulder.

According to Burke, the elimination of the graduate and undergraduate writing programs at Naropa in favor of keeping just the 37-year-old Summer Writing Program (probably the most well-known and well-respected part of Naropa outside of Boulder) “was never going to happen, and we weren’t going to let it happen.”

As for the recent anger over Naropa President Stuart Lord’s controversial declaration a few weeks ago that he intends to relocate the school’s historic Allen Ginsberg Library to the basement of Naropa’s administration building, Burke said simply, “I feel that the Allen Ginsberg library is a tangible manifestation of everything that’s been built here, in terms of the Kerouac School, and I feel it has to be preserved.”

When asked about Naropa’s future, and the future of the Kerouac School in particular, Burke was a bit more cryptic.

“There’s been a lot of changes, but I feel pretty positive about the present. I don’t know about the bigger picture, but I know the level of commitment of the people I work with here, and I think that we’re gonna be able to continue doing what we’ve been doing.”

With Moving Images descending on Boulder this weekend, the Kerouac School’s present looks bright.

UPDATE (June 25): I’d like to report a necessary correction to my article. Apparently it was an error to say that Dr. Lord “intends” to move the Allen Ginsberg library, as sources have reported there was an unsuccessful plan in place to move the library by July and, while he has been aware of talks about moving the library, Dr. Lord was not aware of the plan to take action so fast. There will be more open discussion at Naropa about the library’s “expansion” in the fall.

Saturday night at Cervantes in Denver, I played drums with a great new 9-piece co-ed afrobeat band called Afronauts. Our one-hour set was part of a two-night indoor festival dubbed Summer Celebration 2011, featuring Dead Floyd and many others. Judging from the reaction we got, it seems Saturday was the first of many rollicking Afronauts gigs in Colorado and beyond. The next one is an atypically small affair at the Laughing Goat in Boulder on Wednesday, June 29. Hope to see you there.

Adam Perry with Afronauts, Cervantes 6-11-2011

From Naropa’s Sherri Pauli:

Respectfully, To Whom It May Concern: June 1, 2011

It has come to my attention that there is talk and planning in the Naropa administration to potentially move the Allen Ginsberg Library from its current home, the building built as The Allen Ginsberg Library on the Naropa Arapahoe Campus (the one with the plaque that says “Allen Ginsberg Library August 1993”), to the basement of the administration building on that campus, aka- the student center. This is very sad and frustrating, and it also just doesn’t make any sense. The Allen Ginsberg Library is already at full capacity as far as books and print materials go, with loads of donations that are piled high in boxes, just waiting for the space to be catalogued and shelved. If anything, the library building should be amended with an annex, not reduced in size.
As a long time library work-study and student I know how useful the library in its current physical manifestation is to professors, students, and staff alike. Moving the library to a place without any natural light and less space would inhibit the students’ studying, learning, and working needs and potentials. If this were to take place, it should be guided by a complete study based on circulation numbers, gate count numbers, and surveys, with full community cooperation and involvement.

The library is one of the finest gifts the students have, flanked by vining rose bushes and other glorious plants, sun as liquid gold falls through windows as the small reading room at the other side of the library building lobby is often full to capacity, as are all of the study desks in the library. Students who pay tens of thousands of dollars a year to procure an education at Naropa deserve an environment that is pleasing to the senses on every level from which to glean information and supplement the myriad projects, creative endeavors, papers, and dissertations that must be completed every semester.

Though there is often talk of books being outdated in our contemporary culture, this is not a cut and dry topic. Studies show that the information of printed media is absorbed by readers more readily, and that readers prefer reading print versus digital when reading for extended periods of time. Also, the Allen Ginsberg Library has amazing books that are collected and relevant to the different academic programs at Naropa University; they should be preserved, used, and loved to their fullest extent before being discarded or given up. Most books we have do not exist in digital format. A healthy balance of print and digital media is the sure way to academic success, and delight. Also, the administration building basement lies beneath the floodplain, and would be flooded in the event of the 100 year flood that is expected to occur, any time now. The books would be ruined.

The Allen Ginsberg Library is a monument to Allen Ginsberg, one of Naropa University’s original and most revered teachers, and a world-renowned visionary mind. Deconstructing the library as it stands now seems to be another step toward annihilating certain ever important founding values and spirits embedded in the Naropa culture– values that should be prompted to flourish at this time rather than disintegrate. The fact that there has been deliberations about whether or not the library is going to move seems surreptitious and unfair to people who care about Naropa, as faculty, student, staff, or alumni– simply for the fact that hardly anyone knows about it. As happened last summer, after the school clears of students, things are revealed and actions are taken in ways that seem more hierarchical and less community based. There is a notion of “community” that goes out in many emails and messages throughout the school, but the Naropa community at large still seems to be the last to find out about (let alone make decisions about) important actions and deliberations that go on in the ethers, presumably at the administrative level.

This message is an attempt to connect in a positive manner. My wishes are not to talk negatively about people and their decisions, but to find others who care about Naropa, The Allen Ginsberg Library, and the future of said institutions. There has been talk about the entire Naropa campus moving at some point in the future. Until Naropa moves locations, the students and hard working faculty, as well as the incredibly hard working and under appreciated Allen Ginsberg Library staff deserve the space originally intended for the library.
Since I work in the library, I would like to make it clear that I did not learn of this from any member of the library staff, but from another source who wishes to remain anonymous.

If you feel the same way, and are willing to make totally peaceful and informed motions toward securing the vital future of The Allen Ginsberg Library, the healthy education of Naropa Students, and the legacy of our amazing school, please let me know you feel that way, and I will add your name to a copy of this message that I will give to people who make decisions, so perhaps we might be in on that process.

If you do not want your name on any list, but have anything you would like to share, please do.

Also, let others who might be interested know.

Thank You,
Sherri Pauli
Current Naropa Student
spauli@students.naropa.edu
sherrimarilena@gmail.com

Slip ‘n Slides and Chocolate Milk: Bolder Boulder Does Boulder Proud
by Adam Perry for Boulder Weekly
5/31/2011

I’ve long been more a biker and hiker than a runner, and I grew up in a family that considered mowing the lawn heavy exercise, so the 33rd annual Bolder Boulder 10k was my first “road race”—only yesterday did I learn that a marathon is 26 miles. So with a bum ankle, sprained last week in a basketball game, added to my inexperience, I was definitely a little apprehensive when the starting gun for my humble wave fired at 9:18am yesterday morning.

Helped by a little Advil and Arnica, along with two days of couch confinement, I was able to run the first and last miles of the Bolder Boulder, “power walking” the rest. And what a fantastic time it was, making my way north on 30th St. from Walnut to Valmont, ending up as far north as Ideal Market, winding through downtown and then sprinting around the track inside a packed Folsom Field, which brought back memories of witnessing Colorado’s dramatic 35-34 comeback win against Texas A&M two years ago.

Featuring more than 56,000 runners this year, the Bolder Boulder is the 5th largest road race in the world, and the largest in the U.S. in which all participants are timed. But one wonders how many other similar-sized road races can match the sight of a beer-soaked Slip ’n Slide halfway through, runners dressed as yellow Lego men, or a mother dressed as a gorilla hugging a daughter in a banana costume as they strode down Pine St. in the rain.

Sure, San Francisco’s Bay to Breakers (which features over 100,000 runners, walkers and highly inebriated stumblers) is a whole lot of crazy fun, but throughout the 2011 Bolder Boulder I found myself attracted to the juxtaposition of quaint, breathtaking and hip that is Boulder. Of the few thousand people I passed as I picked up my pace here and there, starting as a W and finishing among the N’s, no one—not even the several partiers along the raceway trying to give beer and hugs to runners—seemed more than a tiny bit drunk, and the rain clouds that intermittently surrounded the town, hovering over the Flatirons, gave the entire day a calming freshness that kept everyone nice and cool.

Two complaints, however: Of the roughly two dozen fully electric bands lining the Bolder Boulder, not one was playing a song that fit into the marathon theme, or even had the words “run” or “running” in the title. No “Running Down a Dream,” “Run Like Hell,” “Keep the Car Running,” “Run, Run Rudolph,” “Run For Your Life” or even “Born to Run”? The closest any of the musical acts along the 2011 Bolder Boulder came to nailing the proper theme was a female-fronted rock group at Folsom and Canyon performing “I Think We’re Alone Now,” with an emphasis on the line “running just as fast as we can.” And I’m not even sure that counts.

Come on, people – you can do better in 2012. I even promise to beat my pathetic hour-and-a-half net time by 20 minutes next year if someone plays Iron Maiden’s “Run to the Hills.”

Oh, and the other complaint? As Will Ferrell said in Anchorman, “Milk was a bad choice.”

I don’t know about the more than 56,000 other participants in this year’s Bolder Boulder, but when I finish a 6.2-mile race I don’t find the idea of drinking chocolate milk and Pepsi, or eating potato chips, appealing. However, the Bolder Boulder organizers gave away those three strangely chosen snacks to all participants after we’d made our way through Folsom Field yesterday, snuggled into red giveaway bags made in China.

Here’s an idea for Bolder Boulder in 2012: use the money spent on made-in-China goodie bags to instead hire a great made-in-America band (I dunno, Wilco?) to perform in the center of Folsom Field while participants make their way around the track and runners who’ve already finished enjoy a seat and a beer.

Wishful thinking, I know. Time to rest my ankle again. Thank you, Bolder Boulder.

Without Our Consent: Bernie Sanders’ The Speech and Telling Conversations with Wells Fargo Employees
by Adam Perry for Boulder Weekly
5/26/2011

I don’t drive, but every time I bike or walk past a gas station I can’t help reflecting on the fact that the price Americans pay for one gallon of gas is literally more than Exxon Mobil pays in taxes. In fact, due to federal subsidies—as Jim Hightower reported in Boulder Weekly on May 12—Exxon, which made over $10 billion in profits during the first three months of 2011 alone, received a $156 million income tax rebate last year.

Vermont’s Bernie Sanders, the lone independent senator in America and author of the new book The Speech [Nation Books, $13], thinks it’s a crime to pass bills that ease tax rates for the most fortunate among us, especially when Congress doesn’t seem to be so much as proposing job-creation bills. Plus, the U.S. currently has the highest rate of child poverty in the industrialized world—we’re at 20 percent, Sanders notes, while the Netherlands is in second place at 9.8 percent—and more than 40,000 U.S. factories have closed in the past decade, so you’d think the focus would be on helping those in need.

“When we try to understand why we have a such a huge national debt [currently over $14 trillion] and a $1.3 trillion deficit, it is also important to understand that many large and profitable corporations avoid virtually all of their tax responsibility,” Sanders says in The Speech.

Famously, on December 10, 2010, Sanders stalled a vote on the deal President Obama had made with Republicans to extend tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of Americans. One can see why the senator would be angry about Congress agreeing to extend these tax cuts: passed by President Bush in 2001, they helped a $230-billion-per-year budget surplus under President Clinton become the growing trillions-a-year deficit Bush left Obama.

For eight hours, Sanders, the longest-serving Independent in the history of the U.S. Congress, filibustered the extension of the tax cuts—which are taking place at a time when the richest 1% in our nation owns more wealth than the bottom 90%—by standing on the Senate floor and telling the sad truth about our country’s current fiscal situation. The Speech is the text of that historic filibuster, the live streaming video of which crashed the Senate television website because of the worldwide rush to watch it, and Exxon was one the targets the senator fired at the most.

“People say: ‘Oh my word, in order to deal with our deficit, we are going to have to cut back on Medicare and Medicaid and education. We cannot afford it,’” Sanders says. “I guess we can afford to allow Exxon Mobil, the most profitable corporation in the history of the world, to make huge sums of money and pay nothing in federal taxes. We can afford to do that, but we cannot afford to protect working families and the middle class.”

Alas, last week a vote on ending nonsensical tax breaks for oil companies, whose profits are at an all-time high, was blocked by the Senate (ending the tax breaks would reportedly have saved $21 billion over the next 10 years). Yes, at a time when the middle class is quickly disappearing while the rich get richer and, as Larry Summers (former Director of the White House National Economic Council) said in the New York Times last week, “One in five men between 25 and 54 is not working…it was one in 20 in the 1960s,” America is blatantly giving special treatment to those who need the least help.

On that point, Sanders saved his most heated rhetoric in The Speech for the architects and beneficiaries of the American tax-payer-funded bailout of financial institutions (everyone from Wells Fargo to, somehow, banks in Bahrain and Japan) back in 2008.

“What they did to the American people is so horrible,” Sanders says. “I will never forget [former Treasury Secretary] Hank Paulson coming before the Democratic caucus saying that within a few days he needed $700 billion or the entire world’s financial system would collapse. My suggestion to him at that meeting was: Why don’t you go to all your banker friends and millionaire and billionaire friends and get some of that money, and don’t go to the middle class of this country that has already been harmed?”

Even harsher words were saved for the financial institutions who are “lending out money to desperate Americans at 25 or 30 percent interest rates” while making record profits in part from the tax-payer funded 2008 government loans they took for less than 1%.

“That, my friends, is called usury,” Sanders (who calls the CEOs of these companies “gangsters”) adds, “and according to every religion on Earth, that is immoral.”

Perhaps our preferential treatment of the wealthy is why Jesus, who said it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven, disappointed so many Americans by skipping the scheduled Rapture last weekend. In all serious, whether politicians who proudly identify themselves as Christians and then propose eliminating healthcare and other services for the elderly, sick and poor while calling a mere return to the tax rates under President Clinton “un-American” are hypocritical is a topic worthy of an entire book of its own. But what’s absolutely certain is that banks like Wells Fargo, which is omnipresent in Boulder, will not offer citizens whose taxes went to keep their business afloat a few years ago the same interest rate we gave them.

How do I know? I went in and asked.

First, a little back story: just after purchasing Wachovia Bank for $12.7 billion and reaping gigantic tax-code benefits estimated at $25 billion dollars, the bank (our nation’s second largest) was given $25 billion in direct funds from the federal government with the use of our tax dollars. Two weeks after the controversial $700 billion bailout of financial institutions was passed by Congress, Wells Fargo released a statement explaining that funds accumulated by issuing stock and “the capital investment from the government…will enable us to finance the Wachovia acquisition.”

Though eight of the biggest banks—including Wells Fargo—fully repaid their government loans by the summer of 2009, neither Congress nor the treasury department required the banks to divulge specifics on how the San Francisco-based bank used the bailout funds. And it will be years before we know how much the government earns in interest from these financial institutions or what happens with those profits. Still, I found it fascinating to walk into the Wells Fargo on 28th St. last week and ask for a loan with an interest rate of less than 1%.

The “personal banker” I spoke with initially seemed confused by my request.

“Less than 1%? To tell you the truth, I don’t know if Wells Fargo offers loans at less than 1%,” she told me. “The only form of credit where we offer an interest rate of less than 1% would be on a credit card, and it would probably be an introductory rate, not a rate you would have for the length of the account.”

“Would you consider a rate of less than 1% unfair?” I asked.

“I guess if it was a straight rule across the board then yes, because that’s the main tool that we use for making money.”

This was my chance.

“If the bank ended up in debt and needed a loan, and asked for it from the taxpayers, do you think they would get it at less than 1%?”

“It’s possible,” she replied.

When I asked why she thinks Wells Fargo enjoyed an interest rate of less than 1% from the government, the personal banker said, “I don’t think Wells Fargo needed the money. I think the reason that they took it was because Wells Fargo was purchasing Wachovia Bank, which was in trouble. I don’t know if I could say if it was right or wrong that it happened, but Wells Fargo is a strong company.”

I also casually asked a teller her opinion of the bailout on my way out of the bank.

“I don’t know. Was that recent, like this week?” she asked.

“No, a few years ago,” I said. “It was about $25 billion paid to Wells Fargo with taxpayer money during the financial crisis, without our consent.”

“Oh, the one we’ve already paid off? Eh, it’s business. I’m a business-standpoint person.”

“But if a person who owns a business wants a loan at less than 1%, they can’t get it from Wells Fargo,” I said.

“You can’t get a loan of 1% really anywhere.”

“Unless it comes from the tax payers.”

“Yeah, the money the government gave,” she shot back. “They did it for all the banks. We paid ours back. Everyone else still owes money”—untrue; see above—“and we don’t. I like that. It’s smart. The bank will still make money, because it’s a business. You do what you do.”

“The taxpayers, of course, pay the government,” the teller concluded, “but the government did the bailout. Taxpayers aren’t really involved.”

I agreed to disagree with her on that one, and then canceled my account with Wells Fargo in favor of opening one at a credit union (none of which needed a bailout, even though, unlike banks, their interest rates are virtually always legally capped at 15%) but clearly at least one taxpayer was involved in the financial crisis.

Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf has benefited from the callous policies Bernie Sanders decries in The Speech. Due to the extension of the Bush-era tax cuts Sanders opposed, Stumpf will receive a $318,000 tax break this year.

photos by Adam Perry

The Black Angels with Sleepy Sun
Fox Theatre, Boulder
Thursday, May 5, 2011
by Adam Perry for Westword

Better Than: A Black Angels show in Pittsburgh a few weeks ago, which my brother, Jeff, told me found several members of the band appearing too inebriated to perform.

REVIEW: Earlier this week at the Boulder Theater, Glenn Danzig came to town, ostensibly to show Colorado that dark, heavy rock ’n’ roll used to be relevant, exciting and, well, awesome. And last night at the Fox Theatre, as Austin’s Black Angels shrieked, stomped, thrashed and pounded, my mind kept curiously dragging me back to the old-school AC/DC anthem, “Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be.” Yes, the Devil’s music—as American as apple pie, baseball and (apparently) dancing with smiles on our faces after our enemies are shot through the head—is still very much alive.

And yet, unlike Danzig—who I saw knocking smart-phones out of fans’ hands and swiping expensive cameras from journalists who’d come to cover the show Tuesday—the Black Angels are nice guys (and a fierce drummer gal) who happen to play sinister, explosive music. Music that simultaneously makes you smile and worry a few evil notes might actually rip your heart out Temple of Doom-style.

The co-ed psych-rockers’ walk-on music was the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations,” which made their opener, Phosphene Dream’s “Bad Vibrations,” even more pleasing to the celebratory audience, high on Cinco de Mayo partying and pre-graduation exhilaration (guitarist/singer Christian Bland was sure to mention both).

“What a cool town you guys live in,” scruffy singer Alex Maas told the capacity crowd before his group broke into “Young Men Dead,” from the Black Angels’ sizzling 2006 debut album, Passover. The tribal sludge that made the band famous a few years ago is just getting better with time, juxtaposing the Velvet Underground, Black Sabbath, the 13th Floor Elevators and the Doors. Songs like “Prodigal Son” energize fans of heavy music while setting the bodies of young psychedelia lovers in frantic motion; they also somehow make sense of Maas’ comment to me an interview three years ago that his biggest creative inspiration is “the unknown.” In a town like Boulder it’s always good to be shaken awake by lyrics that don’t just tell you everything’s gonna be alright.

Phosphene Dream, the quintet’s latest LP, marks a low point in its career, with only a few highlights, including the title track and “Bad Vibrations.” The lyrics often seem drugged-out rather than enlightened and cutting; even the aforementioned standouts are just too derivative at times—occasionally parroting “Not to Touch the Earth” and “The End”—and mixing almost whimsical ’60s surf music with the dark stuff is hit-or-miss. But in concert, although the Cinco de Mayo performance was the least impressive of the three Colorado Black Angels shows I’ve seen since 2008, barely a moment was dull.

The new songs made it obvious that, like Broken Social Scene and Arcade Fire, everyone in the Black Angels can—and often does—play any instrument on the stage, which brings a sense of togetherness off of which delighted audiences hungrily feed. Plus, the whimsy of Phosphene numbers like “Yellow Elevator #2” seemed to make sense in the razor-sharp wilderness of mischievous bombast that makes Black Angels concerts special; and the focused violence of Stephanie Bailey’s Bonham-meets-Moe Tucker drumming kept the Crazy Train snug on the rails—even when a fan hit her square in the chest with a full water bottle. I’d like to see Glenn Danzig’s reaction to that one.

CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK

Personal Bias: Sleepy Sun, whose frontman Bret Constantino told me after the Fox show that talented co-lead-singer Rachel Williams quit the band recently because “she was sick of being in a band with a bunch of dudes,” played a gig with my old group The Love X Nowhere in Los Angeles about five years ago. Back then they were a smattering of UC Santa Cruz kids known as Mania.

Random Detail: Judging from the Fox’s concert calendar for the rest of May, it looks like sparse times for rock shows if you’re actually spending the summer in Boulder like I am.

By The Way: The Black Angels’ encore—“Bloodhounds On My Trail,” “You On the Run” and “Phosphene Dream”— was a flawless mini-set to itself, showcasing menacing Southern Rock with a hint of the Stooges, a swirling ceremonial dirge for 21st Century paranoids, and a truly inventive, dynamic existential buildup that, in my humble opinion, probably rivaled anything the Doors ever played. The long encore boasted some of the best material from the group’s three albums—here’s hoping someone recorded it. Where’s the “Taper’s Section” at non-jamband concerts anyway?

photos by Dane Cronin

Danzig
Boulder Theater
Saturday May 3, 2011
by Adam Perry for Westword

Better Than: Watching Jerry Only, bassist for the original Misfits—the seminal punk band fronted by Glenn Danzig, who wrote all their songs—trudge through laser-quick versions of Danzig’s classic songs while dressed like a professional wrestler. Sadly that’s what’s passed for “The Misfits” for many years.

The first time I went out to see Danzig, over a decade ago as a teenager in the Pittsburgh, Pa., of my youth, the concert was inexplicably canceled minutes before show time and I returned to my ’89 Pontiac Sunbird to find it towed. Last night in Boulder, I feared some similar fate would follow me to Colorado, but, when doom appeared in the form of a dead camera battery, local photographer Dane Cronin tapped on my shoulder just before the Satanic cacophony began and offered to use my much-coveted photo pass to provide professional-quality pictures of his own. And he even bought me a beer.

Cronin proved talented, altruistic, and even courageous, as Danzig appeared onstage just after 10pm at the Boulder Theater—flanked by Spinal Tap-worthy statues of giant skull-octopi—and literally ripped an expensive camera out of a concertgoer’s hand mid-song before handing it to a roadie. The former Misfits frontman has been known to walk into record stores and snatch bootleg recordings of the Misfits and Danzig, but Tuesday night was the first time I’ve seen him, or any other artist, prowl the crowd for cameras. It’s hard to see the point—a true metal legend, Danzig looks fine for his age (55)—but at least the guy sticks to his convictions.

Musically, Danzig’s Boulder Theater performance was surprisingly impressive, considering the departure of Danzig’s bandmates from the group’s heyday (1987-1994). After a few incomprehensible newer songs that found the audience excited to see its longtime hero but puzzled by unexceptional and unfamiliar music and lyrics, Danzig plunged deep into his treasure chest of darkly themed classics and won the crowd, many dressed in just-purchased $35 t-shirts, over easily. With the muscle-bound vocalist’s booming, vengeful voice mostly intact, “Twist of Cain” and “Her Black Wings” energized the whole building, inspiring Danzig to repeatedly give the Boulder faithful a chance to sing into his microphone, and “How the Gods Kill” provided a reminder of just how powerful and enjoyable heavy music can be.

There’s a reason Danzig—who still sports long black hair, a massive skull and horns belt buckle and a skin-tight muscle t-shirt—influenced just about every relevant heavy American band from the mid-‘80s on, from Metallica to Korn. His huge voice, equal parts Elvis and Mephistopheles, is inimitable and startlingly compelling, even today, 35 years after his debut with the Misfits and 24 years after Danzig’s eponymous debut. And his best lyrics, from the psychosexual horror of “Bullet” to the somehow soulful murder-obsessed rage of “Long Way Back From Hell,” pique the primitive American intellect just enough to remain a guilty pleasure for decades after teenhood. At least for myself and the few hundred other headbangers surrounding me last night at a venue where considerably mellower acts, such as Jolie Holland, Nick Lowe and Broken Social Scene, have treated me to some magical performances in the recent past, it was metal heaven for a while. And man, Danzig and eTown would make for an incredibly interesting evening together.

CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK

Personal Bias: It was a fun show, but in reality watching Danzig perform forceful favorites he wrote and recorded 20-25 years ago is only marginally more significant than seeing one original member of the Misfits—Jerry Only—pounce on a bunch of songs he played bass on 30-35 years ago. But I was in the Boulder Theater bathroom when Danzig broke into “Mother,” the group’s 1993 MTV hit, so maybe I missed the high moment of the evening.

Random Detail: Danzig’s current backing band, which dons matching black wife-beaters and jet-black manes of shoulder-length hair, looks like it’d be equally comfortable giving the devil sign to audiences of weight-lifter automobile enthusiasts and excelling behind the counter at a pizza parlor at the gates in Hell.

By The Way: It’s unfortunate that Danzig, a New Jersey native and comic book enthusiast who reportedly turned down a chance to play Wolverine in the X-Men movie series, may end up being best remembered not for his impressive recorded works but for amateur footage of him getting knocked out by a rival band a few years ago, which ended up on YouTube and has been viewed a million times. I mean, Johnny Cash even recorded one of his songs, for God’s sake. Either way, both his classic music and the video below are all kinds of awesome.