Colorado gubernatorial candidate John Hickenlooper arrives at KBDI studios for a debate Thursday. (click to enlarge)

For anybody who watches politics, the 2010 Colorado gubernatorial race has everything. Just when you think it can’t get any juicer, it does.

This is mostly due to the Republicans, who voted for unknown Dan Maes in the primary after the original frontrunner, former Congressman Scott McGinnis, was found to have been paid $300,000 by a foundation for some articles on water rights, which McGinnis stole from a researcher and presented as his own work.

As Party leaders found out more about Maes – he called Denver’s bike-sharing program part of a U.N. conspiracy to take over our cities, for starters — they began to jump ship in droves. Just this week, after more stories that indicated Maes wasn’t being truthful about his past, prominent Repubs like former Sen. Hank Brown, and John Andrews took back their original endorsements.

Tom Tancredo, the infamous anti-immigration former Congressman, called for McGinnis and Maes to step down before the primary so the party would have a chance to win. If they didn’t, he threatened to run himself. Both declined to quit, so he’s running as a third-party candidate for the American Constitution Party, whatever that is.

This leaves most observers of the political scene here to believe that, beyond a sex or corruption scandal or a horrible miscue or gaffe, Hickenlooper, whose first TV campaign commercial show him fully clothed in the shower stating that he won’t run any negative ads, is a shoo-in to move from City Hall to the Governor’s office in two months.

Hickenlooper fans arrived early to greet motorists and light-rail riders.

By 11 a.m. Thursday, a spirited advance phalanx of supporters of Hickenlooper, was lined up below our offices along Welton and 29th streets, cheering and chanting their candidate’s name to passing motorists and light-rail trains. He was arriving early for a candidate’s forum at KBDI, which occupies the first-floor offices of our building.

At quarter to twelve, I came out of the back door and almost ran into Hickenlooper on the sidewalk, where he was approaching the cheering throngs gathered at the front door. There were TV cameras and Tancredo For Governor placards juggling amidst the sea of Hickenlooper signs. Hick was trying to not notice the man behind him with a microphone,  screaming at the mayor to acknowledge him because he was a candidate for governor and asking why he wasn’t being allowed to join the debate. This turned out to be Jason Clark, one of two unaffiliated candidates running.

I took a couple of photos as Hickenlooper took in the adulation of his army of supporters. As I turned the corner to catch the light rail, Hickenlooper was heading in for the debate, leaving Clark on the street with his loudspeaker.

If you missed services, you can still get a word in -- or park your bicycle. (click to enlarge)

I’m not a religious man myself, but I found this combination drive-by bike rack/drive-up prayer box irresistible. It is part of the Kingdom of Glory Christian Center at the corner of 25th and Welton streets.

The double use applies to the center itself, which is located in a former True Value hardware store. In a nice irony, the former tenant’s sign still sits above that of the current one.

The church and prayer box are a short walk from the 25th Street station of the D light-rail line.

For its members, the Kingdom of Glory Christian Center is a true value. (click to enlarge)

Luther Allison 1994: Feral intensity

When Luther Allison returned to American stages in 1994 after more than a decade playing in Europe and elsewhere outside the country, he was a lean blues machine, a charismatic, handsome figure in full blossom with an expressive, craggy voice, a sophisticated repertoire and a guitar style that made him easily the best performer on the U.S. festival circuit until his death in 1997.

Joining the raw power of his tutelage in Chicago with the rich experience of playing alongside jazz and popular musicians in Europe, Allison returned with an emotional intensity and command of the stage that reminded me of Bruce Springsteen. Difficult to describe unless you actually saw him perform during this time – you just let the music sweep over you.

Ruf Records has released a package that captures one night during that period. It includes a CD and DVD version of a set recorded July 4, 1997, at the Montreal Jazz Festival, and the DVD adds a short documentary and a couple of interviews. The DVD is especially intriguing and deeply poignant when you realize that Allison would be dead of cancer less than two months after this was filmed.

The set is heavy on songs from Allison’s last albums, musical vignettes and terse short stories that he calls “realistic songs” in one of the DVD interviews. “Move From the Hood,” “Cancel My Check,” “You Can, You Can” – all are all wonders of lyrical economy and ferocious musicality.

Has there ever been a more harrowing lyric about alcohol addiction than the sixteen lines that comprise “(Watching You) Cherry Red Wine?” The torment that settles over the singer as he watches his companion “asking the children to pour you a drink” is almost feral, his voice and Gibson Flying V shrieking together in deep pain and infinite frustration.

It certainly doesn’t hurt to have as talented a guitarist as James Solberg or his group backing you. Like the E-Street Band, these are guys ready to play upwards of three hours a night behind their charismatic leader. Allison gives him plenty of chance to stretch out, and Solberg’s tone and delivery perfectly complement Allison’s beefy chords, as the tension rises and then drops.

The DVD included with this package captures the Allison I remember, as charismatic and powerful onstage performer as I’ve ever seen.

Luther Allison
Songs From the Road
Ruf 1157

This review appeared in Stereophile magazine August 2010.

Looking southwest on Welton Street at 29th Street. Downtown Denver is less than a mile but a world away from Five Points. (click to enlarge)

One of the things I like about the Five Points District is its human scale. Quite simply: There are no tall buildings. Except for the four-story multi-use structure built recently on the east side of the Five Points intersection, no building is higher than two stories, which offers a sharp contrast to downtown Denver, whose skyscrapers can be observed from almost anywhere in the Five Points neighborhood by just looking southwest.

Walking down Welton from the Free Speech TV offices at 29th Street, I pass storefronts that are single story and completely unimposing and inviting. It’s the kind of ambience that planners try to emulate in suburban malls.

Along the west side of Welton near 28th St are homes that double as storefront businesses. (click to enlarge)

Adding to the human dimension of the commercial district is the fact that some of the businesses are attached to the homes originally built along Welton Street. I’m not sure if they were built that way or whether the storefronts take up what would have once been the front yards, but it gives the street the feel of residency as well as commercialism.

The tallest structures are at the Five Points intersection: the landmark Baxter Building, which houses the famous Rossonian Hotel, which housed jazz musicians before the Civil Rights Act, and the Fern Building, which is about the same height and has a long history as a ballroom, Prohibition tavern and the place where Sonny Liston trained for his fights against Cassius Clay in the 1960s.

Christ in the City Church is a good example of the human scale of buildings along Welton Street. The brick building on the right has been rehabilitated since this shot was taken. (click to enlarge)

It’s apparent that there have been attempts to revitalize the area recently, and Sen. Mark Udall gave a mod to a new redevelopment plan after a tour of the area in July, but Five Points remains a mish-mash of businesses that cater to the neighborhood amidst boarded-up storefronts and buildings in need of repair or rehabilitation.

There are several barber and beauty products shops, legal offices, shoe-shine parlor, men’s clothing store, a market, churches, a couple of live music venues, Wells Fargo and Bank One outlets, soul food restaurants and take-out tamale and burger spots.

The Rossonian Hotel is an elegant building at that is at the height limits of the Five Points district. (click to enlarge)

A couple are being or have recently been rehabbed. A marijuana dispensary recently opened discretely. The Colorado Division of Motor Vehicles License Bureau has an outlet in Five Points Plaza, part of one attempt to rejuvenate the area. Next door a Romanoff for Senate branch closed after he lost to Michael Bennet in the primary.

The 30th and Downing light rail line runs along Welton Street, with stops at 25th, 27th and 29th, all of which are places where people gather, especially in front of Five Points Plaza and the Welton Street Café, a Carribean/soul food restaurant that, though in a new building, epitomizes the tradition of the area.

Scoreboard at Sonny Lawson Park. The vacant lot across the street is scheduled to be turned into high-end condos.

The offices where I work are in Denver’s Five Points district. Free Speech TV, where I have been happily employed the last year, the jazz radio station KUVO and TV station KBDI are located at 2900 Welton Street, just two blocks north of the conjunction of Welton Street, 26^th Avenue, 27^th Street and Washington Street, the five-way intersection that gives the area its name.

Architecturally and politically, Five Points is an important part of the history of Denver, one of its oldest neighborhoods and now again, as it has many times in the past, is in transition. I have been walking the maze of streets that give this area its unique feel (more about the maze some other time), both the commercial area in and around the Five Points intersection and the adjacent residential neighborhoods. and I have become both curious about and fascinated with the area.

I take the D-train light rail from 18^th and California to the 29^th and Welton stop, the last before Welton Street and the light-rail end at 30^th and Downing St. Along the way, the train passes Sonny Lawson Park, at the intersection of Welton Street and Park Avenue West. It includes a lighted baseball field, and though I have never seen athletic contests there, I understand that during the summer, it is used every evening for everything from city softball leagues to sloshball. There is a shaded, landscaped area to the east (beyond the left field fence) with a basketball court and children’s play equipment that has been integrated with the Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library.

There is a certain serenity in its simplicity. No matter what time I pass, the park is always in use as a popular location for people to hang out and meet. Transients can be seen in the mornings spread out on cardboard and blankets along the outfield fence beneath the trees, but as the day goes on, families and kids move in and pickup games form on the basketball court. No matter the temperature, and it has been hot this summer in the late afternoons, it is always cooler beneath the trees.

I found that the park, named after Denver pharmacist and political activist Sonny Lawson, is a stop along the Beat Experience Tour, mostly because Jack Kerouac wrote about a night he spent at the park while exploring Neil Cassady’s childhood neighborhood.

The park is near downtown Denver at the western edge of the Park Hill residential district.

“Down at 23rd and Welton a softball game was going on under floodlights which also illuminated the gas tank,” Kerouac wrote. “A great eager crowd roared at every play. The strange young heroes of all kinds, white, colored, Mexican, pure Indian, were on the field, performing with heart-breaking seriousness …  Near me sat an old Negro who apparently watched the games every night. Next to him was an old white bum, then a Mexican family, then some girls, some boys — all humanity, the lot. Oh, the sadness of the lights that night!”

That was written almost a half century ago,  and although the gas tank is gone, it describes Sonny Lawson Park even today and opens up another piece of the history of this area. Neal Cassady, upon whom Kerouac based Dean Moriarity, the protagonist of On the Road, grew up in Curtis Park, attended school and church in the neighborhood and played baseball on this very field. White kids like Kerouac were drawn to the underground black jazz scene in the many clubs around Five Points, just a few blocks east of Sonny Lawson Park. More on that relationship as we find out more about this historic area.

The familiar Garmin logo. (click to enlarge)

I was biking to my Sunday morning radio shift. Heading through a parking lot near KGNU, I noticed a familiar logo on a truck. It was the colors of the Garmin Transitions cycling team on a convoy of vehicles. including this one, a couple of team cars and vans. A quick Google search finds that they are parked outside the team’s Boulder offices.

I have been impressed with the Garmin team since its inception. Team Director Jonathan Vaughters has taken a serious stand against doping. And though the team suffered through a nightmare Tour de France, losing Robbie Hunter and Tyler Farrar to broken bones, the performance of Ryder Hesjedal, who rode well and wound up in seventh place, bodes well for the future.

As a huge fan of cycling, it’s nice to have one of the sport’s premier teams in town. The recent announcement that there will be a tour of Colorado next year, possibly including a ride through Boulder, is icing on the cake.

Here's the fleet. (click to enlarge)

]]> http://lelandrucker.com/2010/08/the-garmin-transition-boys-are-in-town/feed/ 0 http://lelandrucker.com/2010/08/return-of-the-datura/ http://lelandrucker.com/2010/08/return-of-the-datura/#comments Thu, 05 Aug 2010 13:10:50 +0000 leland http://lelandrucker.com/?p=1150

This datura flower lasted only one night.

The datura have returned to the yard this year, more a scouting party than a full brigade. They are volunteers, and they show up in only in a small area along a stone path just at the edge of the canopy of our spruce tree, so they exist in a place where they are shaded except in the afternoons. The plant has a way of wilting when the sun is intense and then rebounding after dark.

Datura bring forth mysteriously beautiful, often short-lasting flowers that bloom at night. Besides their natural magnificence, datura, when ingested, are both hallucinogenic and toxic, with a long cultural history. I have not ingested one of the enticing flowers, and after reading several accounts of people who did, I won’t be finding out for myself. But it makes the plant even more mysterious to me.

Last summer no volunteers showed for duty, after a banner year in 2008, when we had many blooms on several plants.

But this flower lasted only one night. The afternoon sun “melted” it, and it didn’t come back.

Click here to see a shot of our 2008 bumper crop.

Anais Mitchell's Hadestown is a folk opera based on the Orpheus myth and set in the U.S.

As the title of this weblog suggests, I have this jukebox running inside my head. Always have. Songs, snippets, phrases, riffs, lyrics, lead breaks, intros, outros, middle eights, instruments and rhythm patterns are constantly striving to play on the jukebox inside in my head.

Sometimes it takes multiple listens to finally catch onto a song; other times I hit repeat after the first listen. Once there, songs can linger for days. They play in my head after the song ends. They run in a loop at night, when I wake up, and they won’t go away until I completely digest them. Often this take dozens of listens. The excitement of listening again and again is palpable, although sometimes I wonder how long it’s going to take.

What is it that makes me lift the needle back to the beginning of a certain song, rewind it on a cassette, replay a CD track or click to the beginning again in iTunes? What makes a song play in my mind over and over before I finally find another one to take its place?

I have been spinning the current song for a full week. “Why We Build the Wall” is by an artist I have never heard before. Anais Mitchell, says her website, is a songwriter based in Vermont who released Hadestown, her fourth album, in March. Hadestown is an ambitious effort, a folk opera based on the Orpheus myth with a decidedly American orientation, and it features Justin (Bon Iver) Vernon, Ani DiFranco and Tanya, Petra and Rachel Haden as characters. It was released in March on Righteous Babe Records, DiFranco’s label.

The first time I played “Why We Build the Wall,” I instinctively hit the replay button, since I was already singing the chorus by the time it ended. The melody and harmonies of the choir just overtook me.

“Why We Build the Wall” is recorded in classic call-and-response form, with the craggy voice of Greg Brown (Hades) asking questions and a women’s choir (Cerberus)  answering. Mitchell says she wrote the song as an archetype, and one of those is the contradictions in the arguments over illegal immigration along our Southwest border.

“Why do we build the wall, my children, my children,” Brown’s voice asks in a croaky, grandfatherly voice, and the chorus answers:

“Why do we build the wall?
We build the wall to keep us free
That’s why we build the wall
We build the wall to keep us free.”

Brown asks more questions, and the chorus builds on itself in a kind of trancelike, circular motion. It’s so desperately simple, really, three chords and a cumulative lyric (think “Green Grow the Rushes” or “Alouette”), with each chorus building upon the last by adding a new phrase.

Simple, but more than enough to keep it in first place on the cerebral turntable for almost a full week now.

Here’s a link to the song as done on the album.

Here’s one of Mitchell performing the song with Erin McKeown live onstage.

Andy Schleck tries to get Alberto Contador's attention during the Tour de France 2010.

This is a rivalry that’s building and can only get better.

Over 21 days and some 2,200 miles, Andy Schleck and Alberto Contador tried to shake each other. They attacked. But neither could shake the other. One day, in a moment that will be debated forever, Contador attacked Schleck as the latter’s chain slipped. Still, Contador couldn’t shake him. Schleck attacked a couple days later on the ride up to the Col du Tourmalet, but he couldn’t shake Contador. Even in the time trial, which everyone had predicted would be dominated by Contador, he couldn’t shake Schleck.

For those who expected all-out fireworks, there might be some disappointment. But for anyone with a sense of the difficulties involved in riding this bike race around France for three weeks, this was as good as it gets, a battle set up during an early stage between two men who are almost perfectly matched. The climb up the Tourmalet, which pitted them head-to-head for six dizzying uphill miles, was as exciting a stage as I have ever seen in my seven years of Tourwatching. These two guys are going to be battling for  the maillot jaune for many years to come.

Contador won his third yellow jersey, though he will have to live with the fact that his actions in that moment on Stage 15 will be interpreted by many fans as breaking an unwritten ethical rule in this tour. Contador perhaps erred in not slowing down and letting Schleck fix his chain. But like Schleck, I’m forgiving but willing to accept that a significant number of racing fans will hold this against Contador.

No matter. It was a spectacular race, as always. The first week was vicious and brutal, with the race taking more than its usual share of crashes and broken bones, highlighted by a day on cobblestones, and another with at least half the peleton on the ground at one time or another and the entire bunch (save stage winner Sylvain Chavanel)  waiting for Schleck after a nasty looking smashup.

But after Stage 9, when Contador and Schleck looked at each other and bolted away from the pack and helped eliminate the others, it became a two-man show, and it was well worth the effort of watching them battle on the high slopes of the Pyrenees. They will return.