Back In The Saddle Again

RRRRRAAAAAAARRRRRRRR, I’m back from hibernation. The days were short and the nights long this winter providing the time to capitalize on gumdrops, lasers, and ragers. I won’t bore you on all the lame things that happened in between my last post and now like Chromeo and A-Trak for Halloween, Savoy’s debut of their awesome new lasers at The Ogden, STS9’s mind blowing NYE light show and new songs, the Winter X Games with Big Boi, Umphrey’s McGee, Ghostland Observatory, Snow Ball Music Festival, or String Cheese Incident’s Winter Carnival, but like I said I won’t bore you with that.

Speaking of SCI, Michael Travis and Jason Hann’s side project EOTO is playing Saturday at The Ogden. They create a unique experience with their live, improvised, dub-jam style that always brings an energy only they produce. I’ve seen them at Rothbury, Three20South, and Wakarusa and at each incident they’ve produced banger jams that are one of a kind. If you go expect to get sweaty because the crowd will be getting hot and heavy just like the bass.

Skrillex is playing a sold out show tomorrow at Beta in Denver. He has been a well known producer who is now is making a name for himself. He has acquired quite the following but for whatever reason I can’t jump on board with his tunes.

Robotic Pirate Monkey is a DJ group from Boulder that has really been gaining momentum. They opened Snow Ball Music Festival with the first show of the Groove tent and are playing in Eagle County again at the Samana Lounge in Vail tonight. I saw them last Saturday at Beauty Bar and they killed it, there will be more to come on here about them shortly. It’s good to be back, keep your peepers out for my next post and stay fresh kids.

Joyful Sound

I had a lot of different ways I was thinking about going with this piece. While jotting ideas down it came to me. Why bother explaining how great this weekend was? I was already told that I can’t say, “You had to be there,” any longer. I can try to describe the guys parachuting over the crowd while having sparklers fly off of them, the huge led board behind the band, the red rocks exploding toward the sky but I know I would never do it complete justice.

It was while listening to their set from Rothbury where Billy says how the crowd was making them want to play, how it had been a couple years since they played last, and what a great time they were all having together again. This made me start to think is it such a bad thing that the group only gets together for special events? This keeps all of their classics fresh because as much as I love String Cheese they just don’t have the depth of songs Phish or Widespread Panic have. If they were touring non-stop at this point hearing classics such as Black Clouds, MLT, and Restless Wind would seem uninspired and like they’re going through the motions to give the crowd what it wants. Through their three nights the band managed to cover all of their classics, covers, and a never before seen cover of MGMT’s Time to Pretend. They were sharp start to finish and genuinely seemed happy to be back home in Colorado playing their joyful sounds.

I already know that by writing about the String Cheese Incident general consensus is that I’m talking about hippy jam band music. Sure maybe I am, but what happened to the days when rock’n’roll was “jam band” music instead of this 3 minute American Idol produced garbage? Is America’s attention span no longer capable of a 7-minute song? Good music doesn’t believe so but the radio does so in my next post I’m going to showcase a band you won’t hear on the radio but will bring some deep jams your way. I know that sounds really heady but just wait for the next post and it’ll make sense. Stay tuned.