mid to late March, 09

D rallygators,

Hope your season of all things Irish is as green as the grass on the moors of Cork. We are going to stretch our season out at least until this coming Saturday with our first Colcannon show. A few of our friends, Brian Mullins and Mike Fitzmaurice, play in this lush and inventive Irish band, but it took us six years to convince them to come play the D Note. Help us show them a warm welcome. $12 advance tickets/ $15 at the door. 7:30pm.

After Colcannon Saturday night is Confunkcious w/ Giannina Ashe at 10pm, a solid funk band we discovered on New Band Night. $5.

During the day on Saturday, 4pm, we have more good St. Patrick tidings with Gobs 'O Phun, this month's installment of The Music Train Family Concert Series. $7 adults/$3 kids. We've had this band in a few times in the past and not only do they live up to their name, they're good.

Friday night we have a band new to the D Note, Tequila Mockingbird at 9pm. We've been hearing about this band for awhile and are proud to welcome them to the D. Playing at 8pm is a band formerly known as 10% Genius. This will be their first gig with their new moniker...Without Trees. Playing at 10:30pm is a humble sleeper band called 2:10 special. $5. Opening the night on Friday at 6pm there is an art opening showcasing the talents of D Note staffers Adam Ferrill, Carissa Rhodes and Matt Dougherty. The amazing Robert Eldridge will be providing musical accompaniment. A good eclectic home grown night

This last month of trivia with Geeks Who Drink at 6:30pm on Thursday nights has been a blast. If you haven't had a chance yet, come check it out.

Next weekend: Hazel and Hafla, Hafla and Hazel, Hazel and Hafla.

Love,

D fibberlooter

Extra Credit: Since we are stretching the celtic cheer, here's a poem by George Mackay Brown from a book we found in a used bookstore in Louisville, Co, "Poems for Every Day Life", editied by the poet Robert Hass. This poem would be hard to find if you were looking for it, which makes it a kind of fragile and tenuous thing, a found secret. The poem has traveled a long way to be here, passed on with care, bookstore to bookstore, reader to reader. We'll include Hass' introduction.

"I spent some time in August in the west of Scotland, on the Isle of Skye in the Inner Hebrides, and in the west of Ireland, in Galway and the Aran Islands. And I haunted bookstores aftewards in Dublin because the whole experience made me hungry for the language of those places. On the long flight home I read the poems of George Mackay Brown, a Scottish poet of the remote Orkney Islands in the far north. Brown was born in Stromness in the Orkneys in 1921 and lived for 70 years on those islands."

PEAT CUTTING

And we left our beds in the dark
And we drove a cart to the hill
And we buried the jar of ale in the bog
And our small blades glittered in the dayspring
And we tore dark squares, thick pages
From the Book of Fire
And we spread them wet on the heather
And horseflies, poisonous hooks,
Stuck in our arms
And we laid off our coats
And our blades sank deep into water
And the lord of the bog, the kestrel
Paces round the sun
And at noon we leaned on our tuskars
--The cold unburied jar
Touched, like a girl, a circle of burning mouths
And the boy found a wild bees' comb
And his mouth was a sudden brightness
And the kestrel fell
And a lark flashed a needle across the west
And we spread a thousand peats
Between one summer star
And the black chaos of fire at the earth's centre.

middle March, 09

D nuts,

We woke up this morning and checked The Daily What (a blog worth checking out daily). We came across an item entitled "17 Hottest Irish Maidens" and, of course, we clicked. The list that showed up is as follows. 17. Lucy Lawless 16. Jojo 15. Drew Barrymore 14. Mariah Carey 13. Bridget Moynahan. 12. Mandy Moore 11. Laura Prepon 10. Jenny McCarthy 9. Jennifer Connellly 8. Heather Graham 7. Kristen Bell 6. Katherine Heigl 5. Lindsey Lohan 4. Rosario Dawson 3. Vanessa Hudgens 2. Rose McGowan 1. Anne Hathaway. We can't say why, exactly, but looking over this list got us in the mood for the St. Patrick festivities. For those of you looking for 17 Irish dudes to think about, make your list. Bono, Colin Farrell, Liam Neeson?

Ah yes, middle March, the time of year we give over to Irish debauchery. And you can't ask for a better local Irish band than The Indulgers with which to debauch. We are proud to have them back rocking the D Note this Friday night, March 13. We're catching them on the beginning of their St. Patty run, so they should be wild and bucking. Ladies, you should put Damien of The Indulgers on your hot 17 list. Opening up for the Indulgers is Liz Clark, playing with Tessa Perry, all the way from Cork, Ireland. Liz used to be a staple around these parts until she moved to NYC. Check out her sweet website. It will be a rare treat to hear her with Tessa. $10.

You could also put Martin Gilmore on your hot 17 Irish dudes list. Gilmore, a good friend of ours, is playing his beautiful songs and others at 6pm on Friday before Liz and Tessa.

Saturday night we take a hop and a skip over to reggae. But hey, wasn't Bob Marley half Irish? We have The Desciples playing at 7pm and Lion Vibes at 9:30pm. $7. Both bands are great and this is going to be yet another epic and spectacular night of music.

Saturday day at 3pm we have an acoustic rock group from Westminster, Ironwood Rain. Free. Bring the family.

Also for you Irish music lovers out there we'll have more with the magnificent Colcannon next Saturday, the 21st.

Hope to see you. If you got a second it is time for Best Of Westword 2009 voting. Have fun voting. Keep us in mind.

Later,

D nut butter

Extra Credit: Time once again to dip into the endlessly deep wells of Irish poetry, way way down into some Yeats.

THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS

WENT out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

early March, 09

D notables,

We've got a swell D noty weekend lined up for you. What is so D Noty about it? Read on.

Today, Thursday, March 5, we've got Geeks Who Drink trivia at 6:30pm (click the link for the intensive blog) followed by a set of electro dance music by DJ Thrill at 8:30pm. Thrill is the DJ alias of our web designer Sean Wolter and he puts together a great set.

Friday night is our first annual Pisces Party. Chef Amy, a pisces, natch, asked us to bring in music for her birthday, so we did, and we asked some other D Note Pisces for their picks too. Matt Dougherty chose DJ DbL tRbL to spin at 7pm. Chef Amy chose Reverb and The Verse and Basheba Earth at 8pm and Genevieve George chose Mono Verde at 10pm. Wow, killer night of music lined up for the Pisces lovers out there. $5. Check out the poster Dougherty put together for this one on the D Note Facebook page and become a friend while your at it.

Saturday at 3pm we have our second Kani Ka Pila (Hawaiin Jam) at 3pm. Free. Last time these guys packed the house and gave us some really beautiful island vibes. We love that they've found a home here.

Then Saturday night beginning at 8pm we have an evening of acoustic art rock put together by DARC (Denver Art Rock Collective) featuring Yerkish, 19ADD and The Inactivists. Yes! Check out Yerkish myspace page to check out the beautiful poster for this show.

All very D Noty, no?

Next weekend we have the Indulgers on Friday the 13th (St. Pats fever) and Lion Vibes on Saturday the 14th.

Hope to see you always,

D scribe

Extra credit: Even though we love poetry and we love the New Yorker we almost never like the poems in the New Yorker. Go figure. But in this week's issue we liked both poems. The first is a poem by Leonard Cohen called A Street, and you can hear an audiolized version of that poem here. The second is a meditation by Jack Gilbert, which we shall now retype for you.

WAITING AND FINDING

While he was in kindergarten, everybody wanted to play
the tomtoms when it came time for that. You had to
run in order to get there first, and he would not.
So he always had a triangle. He does not remember
how they played the tomtoms, but he sees clearly
their Chinese look. Red with dragons front and back
and gold studs around that held the drumhead tight.
If you had a triangle, you didn't really make music.
You mostly waited while the tambourines and tomtoms
went on a long time. Until there was a signal for all
triangle people to hit them the right way. Usually once.
Then it was tomtoms and waiting some more. But what
he remember is the sound of the triangle. A perfect,
shimmering sound that has lasted all his long life.
Fading out and coming again after a while. Getting lost
and the waiting for it to come again. Waiting meaning
without things. Meaning love sometimes dying out,
sometimes being taken away. Meaning that often he lives
silent in the middle of the world's music. Waiting
for the best to come again. Beginning to hear the silence
as he waits. Beginning to like the silence maybe too much.