Thursday, February 16, 2012

D Note love letter 2/16/12

D Base

Our friend Wendy Woo is playing Friday night with her friend Jeff Brinkman, starting at 7pm. We've been watching Wendy rock out for 15 years now! Cool to see the evolution from girl to woman (with 3 kids), not to mention the musical evolution. $10. After Wendy, at 10pm, is a blues rock reggae band called Thanks To Philo. $5.

Saturday at 4pm Music Train Family Concert Series presents The Heavy Cats for a special Mardi Gras edition. Heavy Cats features Lionel Young, one of our all time favorite people and musicians. Should be wildly entertaining. $7 adults/$3 kids.

Saturday at 7pm we have a benefit for Music International. Here's the scoop from their event page.

"Join us for an evening of friendship, fundraising, great food, and, of course, music! Music International was founded as a 501(c)3 organization in 2009 for the purpose of helping musicians outside the United States who are talented and passionate, but who lack the resources they need to fully pursue their passion. We have been able to provide guitars, strings, and teaching materials for musicians in Albania and India in our short history, and have received requests from musicians in Angola, Haiti, and more requests from Albania and India. This evening will feature the goods and services from various small businesses in the Denver metro area, great live music with the Barry Shapiro Band." $15 (includes one drink)

At 9:30pm on Saturday we have Zzyzzyx Band. Good old rock and roll. $5.

Sunday night we have the 9 year anniversary of our Salsa night! Going strong for 9 years, that's a lot of dancing. To commemorate this occasion there will be a salsa dance contest with a $500 prize! Come check out the amazing dancers. $8 (includes lesson and band).

Yours,

D ploy

Extra Credit: To celebrate 9 years of salsa at the D Note here is one of our favorite poems by one of our favorite poets, Elizabeth Bishop. The poem mentions the "dry perfectly off-beat claves" which can be heard in all salsa music.


The Bight




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At low tide like this how sheer the water is.
White, crumbling ribs of marl protrude and glare
and the boats are dry, the pilings dry as matches.
Absorbing, rather than being absorbed,
the water in the bight doesn't wet anything,
the color of the gas flame turned as low as possible.
One can smell it turning to gas; if one were Baudelaire
one could probably hear it turning to marimba music.
The little ocher dredge at work off the end of the dock
already plays the dry perfectly off-beat claves.
The birds are outsize. Pelicans crash
into this peculiar gas unnecessarily hard,
it seems to me, like pickaxes,
rarely coming up with anything to show for it,
and going off with humorous elbowings.
Black-and-white man-of-war birds soar
on impalpable drafts
and open their tails like scissors on the curves
or tense them like wishbones, till they tremble.
The frowsy sponge boats keep coming in
with the obliging air of retrievers,
bristling with jackstraw gaffs and hooks
and decorated with bobbles of sponges.
There is a fence of chicken wire along the dock
where, glinting like little plowshares,
the blue-gray shark tails are hung up to dry
for the Chinese-restaurant trade.
Some of the little white boats are still piled up
against each other, or lie on their sides, stove in,
and not yet salvaged, if they ever will be, from the last bad storm,
like torn-open, unanswered letters.
The bight is littered with old correspondences.
Click. Click. Goes the dredge,
and brings up a dripping jawful of marl.
All the untidy activity continues,
awful but cheerful.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

D Note 9 year anniversary weekend!

D portmanteau,

We have two outstanding evenings of music planned for you this weekend.

Friday night is extra special because it is our 9 year anniversary party. 9 years! Just shy of a decade. 9% of a century. Whodathunkit? We have asked some good friends to play for our party. We start off with Wonderlic at 6:30, who will be joined by The DeGraff Brothers Adam and Jeremy at 7:30pm playing a suite of songs about the D Note itself. Then at 8:30pm we have Matt Kowal (of The Reals) and friends. Some of you have been around long enough to remember The Reals, one of our all time favorite D Note bands with beautiful and memorable songs and a super fun rootsy Americana break-down for dancing. The evening ends with Stonebraker, another favorite local Americana band with great energy. $5. We really hope you can make it down to help us celebrate number 9, number 9, number 9.

Saturday night we have an embarrassment of riches, three stellar world-music bands, starting with the Latin Reggae of Mono Verde at 7pm (another of our all time favorite dance bands), followed by the African reggae of Irie Still at 9p and ending with Pink Hawks. Pink Hawks is a Fela Kuti inspired Afrobeat band. We heard them on KGNU and were WOWED. We feel super lucky to have them coming to the D Note on Saturday. $10

We can't tell you how excited we are for both of these shows. It is going to be one of those magical D Note weekends.

Next Tuesday, Valentine's Day, we have Bob's Big Band at 7pm. Free! Come early for a seat. This should be a very romantic evening and a great way to impress a date.

Okay you lovely people, see you here

D part

Extra Credit: A poem by Ross Gay...


Overheard

It's a beautiful day
the small man said from behind me
and I could tell he had a slight limp
from the rasp of his boot against the sidewalk
and I was slow to look at him
because I've learned to close my ears
against the voices of passersby, which is easier than closing
them to my own mind,
and although he said it I did not hear it
until he said it a second or third time
but he did, he said It's a beautiful day and something
in the way he pointed to the sun unfolding
between two oaks overhanging a basketball court
on 10th Street made me, too
catch hold of that light, opening my hands
to the dream of the soon blooming
and never did he say forget the crick in your neck
nor your bloody dreams; he did not say forget
the multiple shades of your mother's heartbreak,
nor the father in your city
kneeling over his bloody child,
nor the five species of bird this second become memory,
no, he said only, It's a beautiful day,
this tiny man
limping past me
with upturned palms
shaking his head
in disbelief.

Friday, February 3, 2012

Best fiends,

The snow is piling high, but that won't stop us. We'll be at the D Note tonight drinking a hot toddy and listening to some great music. At 6pm we have Ironwood Rain (think CSN&Y) followed by the twisty rock of Hazardous Matthew. $5.

Tomorrow we have our semi-annual Mid-winter Bluegrass Festival at 7pm w/ Hayward Stranger, The Blue Canyon Boys and The Statue of Liberty Band. And only $5. Check out Matt Dougherty's brilliant poster for this show here, a snow covered banjo!

Next Friday we have the D Note 9 year anniversary party with The Reals (most of them), Wonderlic, Stonebraker and DeGraff Brothers. And next Saturday we have Irie Still and Pink Hawks. Pink Hawks is a band that plays the music of Fela Kuti and they are awesome.

Hope to see you tonight and every night!

D light

Extra Credit: A fraction of a poem from our friend Peter Gizzi's new book "Threshold Songs", talking about the other side. An analemma is a figure-eight pattern formed by plotting the position of the sun every day at the same time for a year. We get our symbol for infinity from it.


Analemma

I know why I came here
to be back here
where my parents went
I know I'll be there
to join them soon
it's okay to think like this
whose gonna say I shouldn't
a doctor, some friend
I have no wife in this
at night, late, the dark
myself at the ceiling
the arguments continue
I'm with it, it's with me
I am quelque chose
something with birds in it
a storm high above Albany
I am ghost brain I
sister to all things cruelty