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March 12-18, 2009
buzz@boulderweekly.com
• Memory lane
Documentary recaptures the heyday of the Boulder music scene
by Dave Kirby
• Unintelligible Bohemia
The Akron/Family blur the hipster/hippie divide
by Elliott Johnston
 Memory lane
Documentary recaptures the heyday of the Boulder music scene
by Dave Kirby
When Sweet Lunacy was first screened in 2001, the hour-ish documentary chronicling the heyday of the ’60s and ’70s Boulder rock music scene seemed like a fondly rendered postcard from the not-too-distant past. It was a freewheeling film from a time when, frankly, Boulder was having way too much fun, and it drew groans and giggles from the Baby Boomer set when it premiered at the Boulder Theater.
Eight years later, and poised for re-screening as part of the Boulder Arts Commission Sesquicentennial celebration, the film is starting to morph into a bit of a time capsule for co-creator Leland Rucker, who hasn’t watched the documentary all the way through for more than five years.
“Occasionally,” Rucker recalled in a recent conversation, “I’d be running through the channels on the TV and it would pop up. When we did it, we were just trying to talk to as many people as we could and try to make as many connections as we could. The thing that struck me this [past] time through is that it looks like a document of a long-ago historical period. You know, long ago and far away.”
Beginning with the opening of the (in)famous music venue Tulagi and extending into the glory years of local bands like The Astronauts, Flash Cadillac & the Continental Kids and Dusty Drapes and the Dusters, the film recounts the throw-down, sticky-floor party atmosphere surrounding a burgeoning live-music environment and its various adventures (and misadventures) as it sought to extend its influence outside The Valley.
But to the extent that the film documents the scene and the greater Boulder experience that embraced it during those years, Rucker says that Sweet Lunacy really grew not from a detailed, chronological blueprint, but from the interviews they conducted.
“We followed our noses. We started with Harold Fielden [Flash Cadillac founder] and G Brown [longtime area music critic and radio personality]. Once we got those two people and watched their interviews, then we asked everybody else about anybody they had talked about. Once we got two or three people who talked about someone else, then we pursued that. And that’s how we did it.
“Don [Chapman, co-creator of Sweet Lunacy] had been around during the ’70s here. Don was the type of person who, when we’d be talking to Michael Woody, he’d say, ‘Hey, I remember you,’ and Don would say, ‘Yeah, I was out in the audience.’”
Rucker is a longtime music and arts writer who has had various positions in local media, including editorship roles at The Colorado Daily and Boulder Weekly (and, in the interests of full disclosure, a guy who has been this writer’s editor for at least four different publications over the span of a quarter century). He speculates that Boulder became a musical sparkplug because, ironically, it was an inexpensive place to live.
“One of the reasons — and this has always been an interesting thing to me — is that Boulder was so cheap to live in back then. Musicians told me about coming here to Boulder, and in the first weekend playing Tulagi or playing up on The Hill someplace else, they would make their nut for the month. After that, everything else was gravy. I mean, you think about that now…”
And while the footage and memoirs of that period — roughly 1960 through about 1980 — portray a carnival of impatient talent colliding with sudsy, shoulda-been-there zaniness, Rucker concedes that the film was a somewhat incomplete view of everything that happened back in that early ’60s to late-’70s timeframe.
“Starting maybe with Ophelia String Band with Tim O’Brien in ’75, there’s probably a full film that would take you through Hot Rize, Leftover Salmon, String Cheese Incident, Yonder Mountain. There’s probably a great film and a bunch of footage from all those groups that would probably tell that story, as well, because there was all that going on at the same time.”
Still, the film brilliantly captures the spirit of the time, a certain liberated élan that subsequent changes in the culture, the music business and a post-MADD sensibility have probably rendered unrepeatable.
And there are also a few tragic ghosts still haunting the scene. Like the late Candy Givens, the searing blues-rock singer who fronted the psychedelic rock band Zephyr, with a young Tommy Bolin off to the side tearing off utterly impossible, cranium-splitting rock licks.
By some estimates, Zephyr may have been the most musically arresting band Boulder has ever produced, and their short, turbulent history is one of the film’s high points.
After playing with the James Gang and Deep Purple for several years, Bolin died at the age of 25 of possible drug-related causes. Givens passed away from the misadventure in 1984.
“Last week, I got an e-mail from David Givens [Candy’s ex-husband]. He said, ‘I was talking to somebody and he said I really need to see this film. Please tell me about it.’ And I sent him the link, and two hours later he sent me a note back and he just said, ‘Well, that turned on a few lights I didn’t know were there anymore. I especially loved seeing Candy and Judy Roderick. Thanks for making it.’”
Rucker paused.
“Y’know, that’s what makes it all worth it.”
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On the Bill
Sweet Lunacy will be shown at 7 p.m. on Friday, March 13, at the Boulder Public Library, 1000 Canyon Blvd., Boulder, 303-441-3100.
 Unintelligible Bohemia
The Akron/Family blur the hipster/hippie divide
by Elliott Johnston
Indie-psychedelic-rock band Akron/Family knows this much by now: they can be too abrasive for the hippies, and too hippie for the hipsters. The group — which is neither from Akron, Ohio, (it’s Brooklyn) nor a family (they’re just friends) — grew up fast on the crest of the mid-’00s freak-folk wave.
Under the avant-rock tutelage of ex-Swans frontman Michael Gira, who might be best known to Gen Y for discovering dreamboat beardo Devendra Banhart, Akron/Family’s first few records were read almost entirely through that trend: the one that gave urban, Pitchfork.com-approved hipster dudes an a-okay to grow Jesus-beards, and like-minded dudettes the itch to rummage thrift stores for early ’70s Joni Mitchell garb. Though Boulder hardly blinked during all this — here, the hippie thing is evergreen — freak-folk created a fascinating dilemma within hipsterdom, which is built upon a punk-influenced aversion to dad-rock heroes like The Grateful Dead.
The problem was solved, in a way, by uplifting obscure folkies that most dads never listened to in the first place, like Michael Hurley, pre T.Rex-era Marc Bolan, The Incredible String Band and Vashti Bunyan.
The press fit Akron/Family squarely into its short-lived neo-boho genre 1) because of the group’s Gira association, 2) because of their voluminous facial hair and 3) because their music oscillated between peacefully mystical and bat-crazy. The band’s concerts gained a quick rep for being ecstatic conversion experiences, complete with tribal sing a-longs, drum circle-style audience involvement, free-jazz and noise-rock bombast scattered amongst pretty group harmonies promoting peace and love.
Now, cutting loose from Gira’s label Young God Records, Akron/Family has scaled down to a three-piece (from what was up to a seven-piece in ’07). Their present line-up of Seth Olinsky (vocals, guitars, percussion), Miles Seaton (vocals, bass, guitar, percussion) and Dana Janssen (drums, vocals) is touring on Set ‘Em Wild, Set ‘Em Free, an album that focuses, if a bit, their natural penchant for excitedly cramming a record-full of ideas into one song. The group’s appreciation for West African guitarists like Ali Farka Touré and King Sunny Adé is on display, as is a bit of electronics, some Sly Stone-inspired soul, and their personalized primal noise gurgling betwixt rustic, mountainside poetry.
Seaton, who often leads audience participation at their shows — which can end with crowd members onstage, sweating and smiling with the band — says he sees their music as a way of helping people through spreading visceral joy.
“I think there is some sort of altruistic calling that’s inside of human beings intrinsically, and from my own personal standpoint, music is both a call toward that and an expression of that altruistic, loving nature that people have inside them. I definitely feel like there is a desire for me in whatever way to inspire people.”
This kind of benevolent intent, combined with a smidgeon of bloggers and music journalists who’ve dubbed Akron/Family’s feral vibe Phish-like, has some cornering the group into the hippie camp. Though Akron/Family have a solid foothold on hipster ears (Pitchfork and Stereogum follow their doings), there’s been recent outreach to the jamband scene, through appearances at such crunchy fests as High Sierra. Seaton, who spent his formative years as a hardcore punk fan on the West Coast, says he never heard of jambands until two years ago. The thinking behind the outreach was thus:
“People trash on us for being hippies and they are close-minded, so why don’t we go play these shows for jammy kids? We’ll play these festivals and there’ll be this audience that is more open-minded.”
The open-mindedness at High Sierra, for Seaton, was a mixed blessing. The group’s vicious noise freakouts — which are, by design, aimed at an either/or reaction — didn’t seem to sway the audience either way.
“People we’re just like, ‘Yeah!’ And then someone else would come on after us and they’d just be like, ‘Yeah!’ That was kind of how I describe the jamband thing. That’s how I felt. So these guys are all real open-minded, but then like there’s no sense of taste. It’s a tough thing. You don’t want to be cynical and pretentious and whatever, but I don’t feel bad about having taste. That’s part of the deal. But there is the sense of some of that being a little bit lost. People are just like, ‘any sound is cool.’”
While the easy categorizations continue to slip off Akron/Family, their live show continues to spread a unique wave of zoological exuberance. So their edges are too jagged for the jam scene, their flower power too irony-free for indie-rock. Fantastic. Who else is bored by bands who neatly fit their iTunes genre?
“I think I’m into ‘other,’” Seaton says, musing on possible Akron/Family iTunes classifications. “But if you put ‘rock’ or ‘alternative,’ then it’s a little bit more visible.”
On the Bill
Akron/Family performs with Young Coyote, Pee Pee and Hawks of Paradise at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 17, at the Oriental Theater, 4335 W. 44th Ave., Denver, 303-455-2124.
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