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Boulder Weekly

contents

ON THE COVER: The peace sign on the mountain by Jack Olsen

....................................................................... BOULDERGANIC: Sustainable wastewater treatment from Boulder to ‘The Smiling Coast of Africa’ by Christi Turner

....................................................................... ADVENTURE: The truth behind mountaineering’s tallest tale, and other controversies on Cerro Torre by Elizabeth Miller

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departments 7 L ETTERS: In praise of Danish; Hands up, not heads in the sand 7 T HE HIGHROAD: Daddy’s philosophy 8 DANISH PLAN: My persons of the year 28 OVERTONES: BCO offers classical option for New Year’s Eve 35 BOULDER COUNTY EVENTS: What to do and where to go 40 FILM: Iranian New Wave meets vampire stories in ‘A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night’ 41 SCREEN: ‘The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies’ sticks the landing 43 CUISINE REVIEW: Westfalen Hof is worth the trip 45 TIDBITES: Food happenings around Boulder County 49 DRINK: Unique brews for your holiday feasts 57 SAVAGE LOVE: A short guy’s guide to romance 59 ASTROLOGY: By Rob Brezsny 61 WEED BETWEEN THE LINES: A lump of coal for Colorado from Nebraska and Oklahoma Boulder Weekly

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letters

Publisher, Stewart Sallo Editor, Joel Dyer Advertising Director, Jeff Cole Director of Operations/Controller, Benecia Beyer Circulation Manager, Cal Winn EDITORIAL Managing Editor, Elizabeth Miller Associate Editor, Matt Cortina Special Editions Editor, Caitlin Rockett Contributing Writers, Peter Alexander, Dave Anderson, Cayte Bosler, Rob Brezsny, Chris Callaway, Michael J. Casey, Paul Danish, James Dziezynski, Amber Gabbey, Jim Hightower, Dave Kirby, Michael Krumholtz, Hudson Lindenberger, Dylan Owens, Brian Palmer, Adam Perry, Leland Rucker, Dan Savage, Alan Sculley, Ryan Syrek, Greg Thorson, Ruth Tobias, Christine Vazquez, Tom Winter, Tate Zandstra, Gary Zeidner SALES & MARKETING Retail Sales Manager, Allen Carmichael Senior Account Executive, David Hasson Account Executive, Julian Bourke, Althea Schelling, Darragh Hoffmann Market Development Manager, Kellie Robinson Inside Sales Representative, Alex Valles Marketing Coordinator, Melissa Chua Mrs. Boulder Weekly, Mari Nevar PRODUCTION Production Manager, Dave Kirby Art Director, Susan France Graphic Designer, Mark Goodman Assistant to the Publisher Julia Sallo Office Manager/Advertising Assistant Andrea Neville CIRCULATION TEAM Dave Hastie, Dan Hill, George LaRoe, Jeffrey Lohrius, Elizabeth Ouslie, Rick Slama 15-Year-Old, Mia Rose Sallo December 25, 2014 Volume XXII, Number 21 As Boulder County's only independently owned newspaper, Boulder Weekly is dedicated to illuminating truth, advancing justice and protecting the First Amendment through ethical, no-holdsbarred journalism and thought-provoking opinion writing. Free every Thursday since 1993, the Weekly also offers the county's most comprehensive arts and entertainment coverage. Read the print version, or visit www.boulderweekly.com. Boulder Weekly does not accept unsolicited editorial submissions. If you're interested in writing for the paper, please send queries to: editorial@boulderweekly.com. Any materials sent to Boulder Weekly become the property of the newspaper. 690 South Lashley Lane, Boulder, CO, 80305 p 303.494.5511 f 303.494.2585 editorial@boulderweekly.com www.boulderweekly.com Printed on 100% recycled paper with soy-based ink.

Boulder Weekly welcomes your correspondence via email (letters@ boulderweekly.com) or the comments section of our website at www.boulderweekly.com. Preference will be given to short letters (under 300 words) that deal with recent stories or local issues, and letters may be edited for style, length and libel. Letters should include your name, address and telephone number for verification. We do not publish anonymous letters or those signed with pseudonyms. Letters become the property of Boulder Weekly and will be published on our website.

Boulder Weekly

In praise of Danish

Paul Danish does an excellent job of making the second half of a pro-legalization argument that’s as simple as it’s convincing [Re: “ Blacks, police and marijuana,” Danish Plan, Dec. 11]. The first half: Far as social science can tell, there is no correlation between the legal status of a drug and the extent to which it is used. Thus, the 2008 United Nations study, “Toward a

Global View of Alcohol, Tobacco, Cannabis, and Cocaine Use: Findings from the WHO World Mental Health Surveys,” the findings of social scientists in 18 nations around the globe, concluded, “Drug use does not appear to be related to drug policy, as countries with more stringent policies (e.g., the U.S.) did not have lower levels of illegal drug use than countries with more liberal policies (e.g., The Netherlands).”

the

Highroad Daddy’s philosophy

by Jim Hightower

his special day got me to thinking about America’s spirit of giving, and I don’t mean this overdone business of Christmas gifts. I mean our true spirit of giving — giving of ourselves. Yes, we are a country of rugged individualists, yet there’s also a deep, community-minded streak in each of us. We’re a people who believe in the notion that we’re all in this together, that we can make our individual lives better by contributing to the common good.

The establishment media pays little attention to grassroots generosity, focusing instead on the occasional showy donation by what it calls “philanthropists” — big tycoons who give a little piece of their billions to some university or museum in exchange for getting a building named after them. But in my mind, the real philanthropists are the millions of ordinary folks who have precious little money to give, but consistently give of themselves, and do it without demanding that their name be engraved on a granite wall. My own Daddy, rest his soul, was a fine example of this. With half a dozen other guys in Denison, Texas, he started the Little League baseball program volunteering to build the park, sponsor and coach the teams, run the squawking P.A. system, etc. etc. Even after I graduated from Little League, Daddy stayed working at it, because his involvement was not

Indeed, it’s common knowledge that the U.S. War on Drugs has failed to reduce use or abuse of drugs. If this lack of correlation between the law and drug use seems strange, consider American Prohibition, the Volstead Act. So, probably the number of people who drank before Prohibition was the same number who drank dursee LETTERS Page 9

For more information on Jim Hightower’s work — and to subscribe to his award-winning monthly newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown — visit www.jimhightower.com.

merely for his kids... but for all. He felt the same way about being taxed to build a public library in town. I don’t recall him ever going in that building, much less checking out a book, but he wanted it to be there for the community and he was happy to pay his part. Not that he was a do-good liberal, for God’s sake — indeed, he called himself a conservative. My Daddy didn’t even know he had a political philosophy, but he did, and it’s the best I’ve ever heard. He would often say to me, “Everybody does better when everybody does better.” If only our leaders in Washington and on Wall Street would begin practicing this true American Philosophy. Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com This opinion column does not necessarily reflect the views of Boulder Weekly. December 25, 2014 7

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ime Magazine’s “Person of used, this year’s award would have gone the Year” this year was a col- to a different recipient — one who had a lective award: The Ebola far greater and more profound impact on Fighters. the course of human events globally: An excellent choice. The The American Oilman. courage and gallantry of these health Through the combination of care workers — advanced seismolodozens of whom gy, horizontal drillhave died from the ing, fracking and plague — richly other technological MEASURE HAD BEEN USED, deserves the honor. advances, the The Person of American petroTHIS YEAR’S AWARD WOULD the Year award — leum industry has HAVE GONE TO A DIFFERENT called the Man of revolutionized the the Year award production of oil RECIPIENT — ONE WHO HAD when it was begun and natural gas. It A FAR GREATER AND MORE in 1927 (Charles has created millions Lindberg was the of well-paying jobs PROFOUND IMPACT ON THE first recipient) — and provided an COURSE OF HUMAN EVENTS was originally enormous boost to intended to recogboth the U.S. and GLOBALLY: THE AMERICAN nize the person the global econoOILMAN. who “for better or mies, for worse ... has In 2014, the done the most to American oil influence the events industry unleashed of the year.” a torrent of new oil Time rarely applies this standard in and natural gas production that broke picking the recipients anymore. The the international price of oil. U.S. crude award is more typically given as an oil production in 2014 rose by 1.1 milhonor, sometimes deserved, sometimes lion barrels per day to 9.1 million barrels not, than it is for genuinely having done a day from a low of 5 million bbls/d in the most to influence the events of the 2008. year for better or worse. see DANISH PLAN Page 10 If the original measure had been

IF THE ORIGINAL

Boulder Weekly

letters LETTERS from Page 7

Hands up, not heads in the sand

In the wake of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Timor Rice and other losses, there are those who would deny we have a problem, blame the victim, and/ or refute that it has anything to do with bias. Americans have an innate tendency to want to believe in the goodness of their country. However, this is the time to see clearly and take action. Issues threatening communities of color threaten all of us. Three core issues intersect here: militarization through the unprecedented distribution or free “used” war machinery, racism and bias in policing, and the poor judicial design of prosecutors inherently compromised Boulder Weekly

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in their ability to fairly try local police upon which they depend. Keep in mind, for instance, the following: in the past 15 years 179 individuals have been killed by cops in New York City. Only three indictments have been made and one prosecution, and that cop did no jail time. Of the cases where race of the victim was known, 85 percent were blacks or Latinos. Cops cannot police their own. That’s why New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman just asked Gov. Cuomo for an executive order immediately moving all police prosecutions to the state level. This problem of “self investigating” is national, it’s longstanding, and must be addressed. Similar statistics with the FBI, they can’t police themselves either. It’s just human nature. This has nothing to do with race per se, although people of color are disproportionately impacted. In terms of Garner, as some allege, it’s not just one “bad apple” who just happened to kill an innocent while on duty. A choke hold is illegal in the state of New York, yet none of the other cops said a word, expressed concern, did anything to stop this homicide or to revive later on. Generally when someone says they “can’t breathe,” it’s cause for concern. The other cops are what are commonly called “accomplices.” Even George W. Bush has stated that “the verdict is hard to understand.” There’s a second video, which you can watch online. It shows bystanders asking why no one is doing CPR? A paramedic arrives, yet she does nothing to help, no CPR, nothing. No one tried to revive him or clear his airways, he’s laying face down — does this sound normal? Yet the excuses and apologies for police continue. Eyewitness testimony and the second video strongly indicate that despite the chokehold, Garner’s life might have been saved, had anyone bothered to try. But no one did. Harry Siegel of the NY Daily News, describes a part of this lesser-known second video: cops grumbling how heavy the guy was, dropping his body down from 6 inches above the gurney, one of his legs rolling off, “contempt for this living, breathing human is palpable.” Sounds familiar. Recall the disregard for human life as Michael Brown’s body lay in the street for over four hours. In Ferguson, the prosecution not only distorted the Grand Jury process by turning it into a one-sided “trial,” but took a law that was ruled unconsti-

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ing Prohibition was the same number who drank after Prohibition. Historians of this era never say that Prohibition had any impact on the total number of drinkers, right? Likewise, those who drank excessively before Prohibition were likely drunks during and after Prohibition; those who drank responsibly before Prohibition likely drank responsibly during and after Prohibition. In short, the law has no impact on the extent to which society or individuals use/abuse a drug. Prohibitionist arguments rest almost entirely on the public-health argument: “Make it illegal so people will stop using it; then, we’ll protect the public, particularly children.” But if there is no correlation between legal status and usage, that argument collapses. What’s left is the ugly truth that Danish documents: Drug laws, including marijuana laws, are a pretext for persecuting African-Americans, among others. Dr. Carl Hart, an AfricanAmerican professor of psychology and psychiatry at Columbia University told Democracy Now!, “If we continue the same sort of drug-enforcement policies, one in three African-American males born today will spend some time in jail. . . . African-American males make up 6 percent of this population, 35 percent of the prison population.” Sadly, it’s not just blacks who are being victimized by these laws: it’s other minorities too; in particular, Mexican-Americans and those I call Hippie-Americans. In essence, the War on Drugs is a fascistic social movement and a crime against humanity. As Coloradans, we should be proud that our state has led the way in fighting back. Ending the War on Drugs makes our society more just and egalitarian; it makes America more American. Paul Dougan/Lafayette

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danish plan DANISH PLAN from Page 8

Last June crude oil was selling for $117 a barrel. The year will end with it selling for about half as much. The United States burns through about 140 billion gallons of gasoline a year, so for every one-cent reduction in the price of gasoline American consumers and businesses save $1.4 billion annually. Last April gasoline was selling for an average of $3.70 a gallon nationally. Today it is selling for about $2.50 a gallon. Assuming prices stay down, the saving to American consumers and businesses is about $168 billion annually. The stimulative impact on the economy is the same as a $168 billion tax cut or $168 billion of federal stimulus spending. Maybe more so, since the impact of gasoline price drops is immediate; no waiting for refund checks or supposedly shovel-ready projects to get underway. And that’s not the half of it. Lower natural gas prices in the U.S. are prompting U.S. businesses that moved energy-intensive manufacturing operations off-shore to bring them home. Globally, lower oil prices driven by the U.S. shale boom arrived in the nick of time. Both the Chinese and EU economies have been in danger of tumbling into recession for months. Lower energy prices are helping to keep them out of it. The American oil industry didn’t set out to make the U.S. energy independent — or at least no longer dependent on imported oil to the point where it can be subjected to oil embargos or extortive price fixing — but things are rapidly working out that way. American leftists aren’t chanting “no blood for oil” anymore. They would be laughed out of the room if they did. And although the American oil industry didn’t set out to do it, it has ravished the finances of assorted state sponsors of terrorism and petro-tyrannies, including Iran, Russia, Qatar and

Venezuela. Boo freaking hoo. The American oil industry has made a mockery of a lot of conventional wisdom about how much oil and gas is left in the earth, starting with the “peak oil” theory — the once widely held belief that the world had used up more than half of the oil in the earth and maxed out the amount of oil that could be produced in a year, and that oil and gas output had nowhere to go than down while prices had nowhere to go but up. The theory didn’t take into account oil in shale deposits, because it assumed it would never be possible to produce it. Bad guess. The industry isn’t likely to run out of places to drill in the U.S. shale deposits for a century or more. The industry has also made a big contribution to reducing the nation’s carbon footprint. Before it broke the price of oil, it broke the price of natural gas, which made it economically possible for the nation’s utilities to generate more electricity from natural gas and less from coal. Natural gas burning produces only half as much CO2 as coal burning. As a result, there’s been a 20 percent reduction in the amount of CO2 produced by American electric utilities. Can the industry survive the current collapse of oil prices? Probably, if for no other reason than lately it has been racking up productivity gains almost as fast as the computer industry. The announcement of Time’s Person of the Year award usually generates a lot of second guessing, and this year’s was no exception. But surprisingly, the American Oilman seems to have escaped notice. Apparently the industry has been accorded the highest honor the American people bestow on industries essential to their survival. They take them for granted. Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com This opinion column does not necessarily reflect the views of Boulder Weekly.

LETTERS from Page 9

tutional decades ago yet is still technically on the books in some states (including Missouri), and used that law to sway the grand jury. That law says it’s OK for a cop to shoot and kill a suspect running away. The grand jury considered much of the proceedings through the lens of that untruth. Then at some point prosecutors told them to “fold in half ” a page that contained some invalid information, not ever specifying which law it was. This is called a “mistrial,” except oh, it wasn’t a trial in the first place. It’s now up to politics to decide whether to correct this egregious error.

If it had been an “actual mistrial” there would be legal recourse. Instead, we are left to resort to influencing the political system, hence the need to protest. There was no justice in Ferguson, unless you think misleading jurors to get your ends met is justice. Or maybe, of course, all the attorneys involved are just super dumb, in which case they shouldn’t be receiving taxpayer dollars in the first place. I would agree with the apologists that cops have a difficult job. However, that absolves neither departments nor individual officers. No one is above the see LETTERS Page 11

Boulder Weekly

letters LETTERS from Page 10

law. The greater the perceived immunity, the more abuse we will continue to see. Carah Wertheimer/Boulder

America: the best democracy money can buy!

The Supreme Court’s McCutcheon decision, allowing “citizens” to give up to $3.6 million directly to candidates is another rightist outrage done in the name of freedom, “Free speech”— ha! Functioning democracy means the “free marketplace of ideas,” a place where ideas compete for public acceptance. But for a competition to be fair, there has to be a level playing field. The court has taken the already tilted playing field of American politics and tipped it even further; rather than facilitating a healthier free marketplace of ideas, it’s giving us a more limited, less vigorous one. It’s like taking a discussion or debate and instead of moderating it, letting the loudest mouths dominate. The Court’s decision is also reckless since for government to work, we can’t encourage corruption, McCutcheon does. Increasingly, the line between legally donating to a legislator’s campaign and bribery is blurred. And that’s going to become even more true as campaigns become even more expensive, as legislators understand that unless they slavishly cater to wealthy donors, they’ll likely face an opponent with hundreds of millions of dollars who will. Soon, about the only campaign donation that will still be illegal is sending a prostitute to a legislator’s hotel room — and if Justice Clarence Thomas has his way, that too will probably become “free speech.” McCutcheon’s horrible, proof that most of our “esteemed” public servants are the slobbering lackeys of the superrich. Yet, we shouldn’t despair: First, in the 2012 presidential election, Republican strategist Karl Rove raised over a billion dollars in donations from the far right; yet, they were unable to elect Mitt Romney, and they’ve failed miserably in their principal political goal of overturning Obamacare. Also, large sums of campaign money translate into a torrent of television ads, increasingly negative. Yes, there are many gullible, insecure Americans, staring stupidly at the tube, willing to be manipulated, but there are many more who’re disgusted at having to sit through the same stupid Boulder Weekly

attack ads again and again and again as they mumble to themselves, “They’re all a bunch of liars.” At some point, those ads must become counterproductive. I think we’re going to see a Democrat, probably Hillary Clinton, elected president in 2016. I mean, look at the Republicans: all the money in world isn’t going to elect Chris “Bridge Scandal” Christie or Ted “I Shut Down the Government” Cruz. Also, we’ll likely see a wave of promarijuana victories, and that doesn’t bode well for a GOP that’s made its reputation as a militant War on Drugs party. Unfortunately, a Hillary Clinton presidency will, like Barack Obama’s, be a center-right administration, better certainly than the far-right Republican alternative, but still beholden to the super-wealthy, still, sadly, more part of the problem than part of the solution, Paul Dougan/Lafayette

No evidence of climate change

Exactly what “science” are you talking about that gives the world a deadline to curb rising temps? There is no conclusive evidence that anything we do will adjust the natural changes happening to the earth. Do I believe pollution is bad and even detrimental? Sure, but I don’t fall in the “sheep” category as so many Boulderites do. I look at both sides. I don’t let my emotions govern my feelings about the environment. First off, if anyone is to blame for poor air quality, then it is China and India. Until those two countries get their factories equipped with air cleaners then there is no hope to change air quality. The Earth since it solidified has changed. It will continue to change. The Earth is getting warmer you say? Then most likely, this is the natural evolution of the planet. Fact is, NOAA’s satellite images show arctic ice is thicker now than the ’90s. How do you explain that if we are getting warmer? And don’t tell me that’s what happens in warming, that temps go down? I’m sorry, you can’t have it both ways. Real science like polar ice cores show periods of both warming and cooling throughout the history of the planet. Remove your emotions from the equation and you will find that you can’t trust anyone especially those like Al Gore who has made billions from this climate scam. Tell the truth from the middle next time! Scott Cohen/via Internet

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news

Courtesy of the Boulder Chamber

The Peace Sign on the

Mountain by jack Olsen 12 December 25, 2014

Boulder Weekly

Wikimedia Commons

After returning from a stint in Vietnam, Jack Olsen enrolled at CU where he became, among other things, a journalism major and the night city editor at the Colorado Daily, which was still the campus newspaper back then. Olsen has written a forthcoming book titled The Children, which draws on his time in Vietnam. The last chapter of the book recounts Olsen’s return to Boulder, specifically his time at the paper and how he and others came together in 1969 to protest the war by placing a lighted peace sign on Flagstaff Mountain near Boulder’s famed holiday star, which has been illuminating the mountain since 1947. Many historical accounts state that in 1969, the lights of the star were reconfigured to form a peace sign, but that isn’t what happened. In the end, a lawsuit over the peace sign resulted in the court’s ruling that the Flagstaff Easter Cross and the peace sign were not allowed on public property but that the star could stay. The rest is history. Jack Olsen served as Governor Dick Lamm’s press secretary during his first term. He was a working journalist for seven years at United Press International, The Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News where he won awards for his investigative reporting. He traded his journalism for a law degree in the late 1970s. Today, Olsen is still a lawyer and living in Niwot. The following is the last chapter of his book.

n Nov. 2, 1969, we sat on the University of Colorado campus in Boulder and wondered if we would be branded a bunch of hippies and spied on by the FBI if we put a huge lighted peace sign on the side of Flagstaff Mountain, overlooking the city. As it turned out, we were being spied on by the FBI, even though I still looked like I had just gotten out of the Army, with a short haircut and 30 fewer pounds than when I went over to Vietnam. We all had come from conservative households. Nonetheless, we had become sensitive to being branded anything except college students who thought the Vietnam War was a poor idea. Or worse. Being followed around by the FBI was kind of neat. We were also reporters for the student newspaper, the Colorado Daily, and we had watched the nation’s silent majority closing its eyes to what was happening in Vietnam. I was the night editor of the student newspaper, which meant I was there every night until two in the morning and loved it, because I was getting paid $120 a month and I needed the money badly to stay in school. I also had the GI Bill. At about 11 p.m. each night, the paper was laid out and then sent off to an equally enthusiastic student named Jim Colt Boulder Weekly

to be printed (he would become well known in the printing industry) and, after deadline, the Daily office in the University Memorial Center, brightened up with impromptu debates that sometimes went on until dawn and drew students from all over the campus. Anyone who carried in a six-pack of beer was especially welcome. I sometimes nodded off while several debaters sat or even stood on my desk and made valid philosophic points ad nauseam. Dozens of others showed up, listened and chimed in; it became the center of the anti-war movement on the CU Boulder campus. That’s why we knew the FBI had already infiltrated our staff. Actually, I looked like I was the infiltrator because of my short hair and it took a while to prove I wasn’t. The infiltrator wasn’t Lorel Branigan or Lois Fingerhut either, both wellcoifed students from California and very astute reporters for the newspaper. Both were essentially brilliant and gorgeous, and, of course, that meant I wanted to sleep with them, one at a time. Eventually, Lois and I would live together for quite a while until she went off to live in Israel, and I took our two cats, an orange tiger named “Creamy” and a calico named “Action-Can-It!,” back to my mother on the chicken farm in Maryland over Christmas break. We helped form what we called the University of Colorado Vietnam Moratorium Committee, with Lorel as one of its many leaders, although we didn’t know what title to give her. I became the light-bulb purchaser. Lois Fingerhut’s job was to scout up portable generators to rent in a three-county region.

Between them, Lorel and Lois chipped in $100, and I chipped in $10. The rest of the funding came from CU students who thought peace needed a chance. I drove to Denver and walked into an electrical supply store. The salesman told me exactly how to do it, and I purchased 300 feet of electrical cord and 150 25-watt light bulbs that you could screw neatly onto the wires. The salesman asked what I wanted to do with the entire gizmo. “Light up the side of a mountain,” I said. A half-dozen volunteers helped put the light bulbs together in the form of a peace sign, 75 feet in diameter, on Farrand Field on the CU campus. Campus police stopped by to ask what we were doing. We said we were going to put a peace sign up on Flagstaff Mountain, and we pointed to the mountain. They said, “Neat,” and left us alone. We hooked up one of Lois’ generators and — voila — the trial run was a glowing success. It was a beautiful sight. For decades, the city of Boulder had been lighting up the city-owned side of Flagstaff Mountain, overlooking the city, with a lighted cross at Easter and a lighted star at Christmas. When the city switched on the star, we moved into action on the night of Dec. 16, 1969. Lorel, Lois and I had scouted the mountainside twice earlier that week, finding a large open area (above the star, which we never touched, although vandals sometimes did damage the star over the years). We wanted to be careful not to tumble off the side of the mountain. At dusk, we carefully loaded the lights and generator into the back of Lois’ car, a tiny Opal Kadett. With the help of two other students, we pulled off the mountainside road and hoped that a sheriff ’s deputy wouldn’t drive by wondering what we were doing up there at that time of night with the trunk lid unable to close on a pile of wires and light bulbs. Lorel was as strong as an ox. She and I grasped each side of the generator and climbed further up the mountain. Lois followed, taking care not to break the display of bulbs, which were layered in her arms. I slipped and fell and planted my left hand on a cactus. Way above the existing star, we spread out our lights in a beautiful circle on the tilted side of Flagstaff Mountain, and tried to see what we had wrought in the dark. Lois started to slip down the steep mountainside. Lorel and I caught her hands and then her arms and pulled her back up to safety. We decided to turn the lights on for 10 seconds just to see if it looked anything like a peace sign. After two such realignment procedures, we turned it on for the night. See PEACE SIGN Page 14

December 25, 2014 13

PEACE SIGN from Page 13

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It was 7:40 p.m. according to the Boulder Daily Camera, and for the first time since I got out of the Army I felt there was hope for mankind. You can tell I was given to cheap sentimentality. We sat down next to the humming generator and basked in the warm glow shining out over Boulder. Within an hour we could hear police scouring the mountainside in the dark, searching for us. It should have been easy since you could see the huge peace sign for 10 miles. We could hear them chirping on their radios. “No,” one crackling voice said, “You are too low. Climb higher.” The first police officer to arrive waited for a sergeant, who instructed us that we were required to turn off the peace sign. We said no, we wouldn’t do that. So he turned off the generator himself and said goodbye. We sat in the dark and discussed our strategy. Within a halfhour the same police sergeant came huffing and puffing back up to us and said he was glad we were still there, as the Boulder City Attorney’s Office was unable to pinpoint any ordinance that we had violated. “There apparently is no law against turning on lights on public property.” He apologized and said we could turn the peace sign back on, and Lois cranked up the generator and the lights shone again. At 10:30 p.m., the same police sergeant reappeared and apologized profusely again. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve been instructed to confiscate the generator.” He asserted that it was a fire hazard on public land. He and three other officers carried it off. But we still had the peace sign itself, all the bulbs and wires spread out, turned off though they were. Lois went off the next morning, Dec. 17, 1969 and came back with another generator. “Where did you get it?” I asked. She responded, “Don’t ask, and don’t tell my dad. I used his credit card.” Lois’ father owned a clothing manufacturing company in Los Angeles. Years later I learned how proud he was of his daughter. Nonetheless, the police confiscated the next generator too. And the next and the next. Finally, we purchased a steel chain with links so large it could hold a ship in port, along with a huge, bolt cutter-immune padlock, and chained our last generator to a thick Ponderosa pine tree. Joining us that night was Jonathan “Skip” Chase, a CU Law School professor who was well versed in constitutional law. This guy mesmerized us with two qualities — brilliance and courage. It apparently rubbed off on his son, Adam, a precocious little kid, who stood nearby

whenever we strategized in Skip’s living room. The kid was not shy around adults. Adam would later become one of Colorado’s more successful attorneys, always looking for a just cause. No wonder. But back then, his dad was a faculty member of the University of Colorado, and we figured Skip would get fired for sure. Skip said that was always a worry. But the fight was worth fighting, he said, as we sat there in the dark and waited for the next band of police officers. Professor Chase told the police officers that they couldn’t seize the generator, particularly because there were no bolt cutters in existence that were large enough, and there was no law forbidding us to put a peace sign on Flagstaff Mountain. His argument didn’t matter to the police, and they issued Lorel and me court summonses from the City of Boulder for trespassing on public lands. The charge made no sense to us. How can you trespass on public lands? The police took the spark plug out of the generator and departed while we laughed with artificial indignation and debated what it meant to trespass on public lands. Professor Chase said that was a new legal concept. The next morning the police came back with a blowtorch and cut the chain and seized the generator. It was the sixth. Lois then went off and came back with another generator. Finally on Dec. 24, 1969, Judge Howard O. Ashton issued a restraining order forbidding “Lorel Branigan and John R. Olsen” from planting any more generators on the side of Flagstaff Mountain. But they forgot to name Lois Fingerhut in the litigation — and nothing was going to stop her now. She gathered more CU students and on Jan. 16, 1970, they lit up the peace sign again — and had yet another generator confiscated. On Feb. 3, 1970 I got to speak before the Boulder City Council. I told them that the purpose of the peace sign was to stimulate discussion and to stop the killing of thousands of Americans and Vietnamese. I highlighted the killing of the children. The Daily Camera quoted me the next day, and it felt good, but then public reaction became a deluge and I was labeled in letters to the Camera and Colorado Daily a gook lover, a pinko and a drug-crazed hippie, although I had never taken an illicit drug in my life. I thought my short hair still looked pretty good in the mirror. I had a beer one night with a Boulder police officer I had come to know. He told me quietly that the department Boulder Weekly

BEST

news had been informed that I was the subject of some FBI undercover work. Which meant I was being tailed. I confronted one of my shadows on The Hill in Boulder, and he turned and walked away without saying a single word. On another occasion, I tried to photograph a different agent who was following me. Two other undercover guys jumped out of an unmarked car, ran up to me and ordered me to stop taking photos. They said taking such photos was illegal. Skip Chase commented later, with a laugh, “Another questionable legal principle!” Then the Boulder City Council voted to ban all lights on the side of Flagstaff Mountain, both Christmas and Easter. This was not unlike the way America had come up with disingenuous ways to sidestep any meaningful debate about Vietnam. Eventually, a federal judge in Denver, in a lawsuit brought by Lorel and me, with Skip Chase as our truly intrepid attorney, suggested that the City of Boulder could continue to place a lighted star as a universal symbol that was not religious in connotation on the side of Flagstaff Mountain. But the cross at Easter (and peace sign at any time) must come down, because they were, in essence, symbols of a philosophy (or religion) on public property, which was a violation of the United States Constitution. During oral argument against our case in federal court, the Boulder City Attorney, Walt Wagenhals, was so strident, he broke the podium with his fist. Skip Chase explained with a chuckle that that’s how a lawyer argues when he doesn’t have the facts or the law on his side. In the meantime, I had received a full scholarship from the Daily Camera for my senior year and a promise of a fulltime job upon graduation. When I reported to the Camera offices for the job, an editor there asked me if I was the same Olsen who sued the City of Boulder over the peace sign on the mountain. They had put two and two together. I was told to go home and await a call with my start date. Of course that call never came. The Vietnam War raged on. For five more years. After the war, several independent studies concluded that one-third of the land in six central Vietnam provinces, including Quang Ngai Province — where my Army unit, Alpha Company, was relegated on foot and where the Vietnamese populous was nearly annihilated, including untold numbers of Boulder Weekly

children — was still mined. In the nearly four decades following the war, 42,000 Vietnamese were killed when they accidentally triggered mines in their own countryside. This included a whole new generation of kids who didn’t know a mine from a mimosa tree. President Johnson decided not to run again, and President Nixon decided that the war needed a little more elbow room, so in early 1969 he ordered the U.S. Air Force to bomb the bejesus out of the edges of Cambodia that bordered Vietnam. This new incursion was called Operation Breakfast, and it was kept from the American people, designated a top secret. The Air Force flew more than 3,500 sorties and dropped more than a half million tons of bombs, wiping out virtually every village within 20 miles of the Cambodian border with Vietnam. Thousands of Cambodians were killed by the bombs, and it is estimated that a quarter of them were children. Then President Nixon ordered a ground invasion of Cambodia in the spring of 1970, triggering a Cambodia Revolution that ushered the Khmer Rouge into power. The Khmer Rouge shut out the outside world and ruthlessly murdered tens of thousands of its own people. If the parents were executed, so were the children. Estimates of deaths, one-half from starvation, the other half from executions (with bodies buried in several thousand mass graves around Cambodia), range from 1 million to 2 million. Tens of thousands of Cambodian children were executed to ensure the perpetual expungement of the elite, the intellectuals, the recalcitrant and the religious, racial and political minorities. Other thousands of children died on long marches to remote refugee camps. Skip Chase is gone now. So is Lorel Branigan. Both died young. The Alpha Company veterans I served with are starting to die off now too. They are in their late 60s. Very few have ever wanted to look back on history, although they were intimately involved in making it. As for my own children, James, Michael and Jane (and my beloved nephew Andrew), I would ask that you just hold onto what I have written and perhaps show it to your own kids and grandkids when they are older and if they ever mention the Vietnam War. Perhaps one of their teachers will bring it up in class and point out that the Vietnam War did not come before the War of 1812. Or perhaps not. Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com

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hese plants save lives.” That’s how the Boulderbased company Agua Inc describes its rich collection of macrophytes, a class of plants that dominate wetlands, streams and shallow lake ecosystems in the wild. Macrophytes are also the key to Agua’s vision: helping to make clean, safe water attainable in the poorest and least developed corners of the globe. They’re the cornerstone of Agua’s newest of 175 projects, more than 5,000 miles away in The Gambia; a project Agua is calling the largest ecological wastewater treatment facility in the world. Agua’s newest facility sits near the northwestern tip of The Gambia, the smallest mainland country in Africa. The Gambia has the appearance of wriggling into Senegal’s southern coast, its borders closely mirroring the Gambia River’s winding path inland from the Atlantic Ocean. Located near the coast in a relatively developed area of the country, Agua’s macrophytebased Aquatic Biological Integrated System for wastewater treatment — or ABIS — stands out as one of the largest wastewater treatment plants of any kind, “ecological” or not, in any developing country. ABIS requires no chemicals, uses far less energy than traditional wastewater treatment facilities and boasts dramatically lower costs. Agua says the facility will provide clean water for more than 200,000 consumers, or about 10 percent of the country’s roughly 1.9 million people. Bianca Griffith, Boulder native and founder of Agua, had been in Senegal organizing sustainable water projects through her nonprofit, Santé Natural, when Gambian officials first contacted her for help. Without a regular supply of chemicals and electricity, a traditional wastewater treatment facility in The Boulder Weekly

Gambia’s Kotu region was leaking polpopulation did not use improved sanitaluted runoff into neighboring farms and tion. (For comparison, around 90 perthe nearby coastline, causing serious cent of the developing world does not health concerns for the surrounding treat its wastewater.) The European population. It’s taken a few years, Commission gives The Gambia a score lengthy negotiations with the Gambian of 48.6 out of 100 on its water quality government and the formal founding of index, and water and sanitation trends Agua in early 2013, but finally in early in the country remain “of concern.” 2014, Griffith and Agua’s chief operat“It’s just not right that 900 million ing officer Pedro Delgado, social entrepeople don’t have access to potable preneur and native of Spain, moved water,” says Delgado, who brings to from Boulder to Courtesy of Agua Inc Agua more than The Gambia to 10 years’ experiimplement their ence in helping company’s newdeveloping est project. communities “Maybe I’m implement susa naïve optitainable wastemist,” Griffith water and says. “I believe drinking water that we can treatment. “As really find a much as we’re balance able, we offer a between doing water solution something that’s sustainenvironmentally able, global and sustainable that one that’s totally is just as ecobased on respect nomical as the for the environtraditional ment.” alternatives.” When Compared with traditional wastewater treatment facilities, a macrophyte system costs Despite its Delgado spoke millions less, requires no chemicals and uses small size, The about 40 percent less energy than a traditional at an U.S. system. Gambia still Unreasonable has room for Institute event improvement in in Boulder, the realm of water and sanitation. Griffith fell in love with his technology Much of the country, less developed and their shared passion for sustainable than the touristy coast, lacks wastewater development. Eventually they fell in treatment entirely. According to the love themselves: the two were engaged 2013 United Nations Water Country a month before incorporating Agua. Brief on The Gambia, 15 percent of the Wastewater treatment using floating rural and 8 percent of the urban popuplants isn’t new; the Environmental lation lacked an “improved” drinking Protection Agency even published a water source in 2010. Trends in design manual on the technique in the improved sanitation facilities lag further: in the same year, 32 percent of the See WASTEWATER Page 18

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late 1980s. And ABIS wastewater treat- mass that needs to be removed regularment has much in common with tradily. If the lagoons receive too much tional systems. Both start by using organic matter in the form of untreated screening to remove large solids, folsewage, there may not be enough oxylowed by grit chambers and decanters. gen present for the plants to breakdown But Agua says the key distinction is in wastes. A sediment layer of wastewater the next phases, where macrophyte solids may accumulate, requiring “lagoons,” supported by its patented removal. And in at least one other “BioMatrix” system, take the place of wastewater treatment facility using aeration and a secondary clarifier. floating plants, seeds from the nonMacrophytes are characterized by native macrophytes escaped, transported their ability to grow fully submerged or by wind and birds, and the project was partially above water, with roots either abandoned. attached to the bottom or floating freeAgua emphasizes the system’s ly. In the wild, they help keep the strengths, particular for developing aquatic ecosystems they occupy clean nations. Compared with traditional and act as “bio-indicators” of ecosystem wastewater treatment facilities, the syshealth. In The Gambia, Agua’s macrotem costs millions less — up to 50 perphytes are locally grown, free-floating cent less, the founders say — requires typha plants (think cattails or bulrushno chemicals and uses about 40 percent es). To put the typha less energy than a to work, Agua lays traditional U.S. sysits BioMatrix — a tem. flexible, buoyant, “Statistics say I’M A NAIVE interlocking plastic around 30 to 35 OPTIMIST. I BELIEVE THAT honeycomb — on percent of energy WE CAN FIND A BALANCE the surface of the costs (in the U.S.) wastewater treatgo to water treatBETWEEN DOING SOMEment lagoon and ment and water THING ENVIRONMENTALLY places a typha plant distribution,” SUSTAINABLE THAT IS JUST in each hub of the Griffith says. matrix. The “We’re looking for AS ECONOMICAL AS THE Biomatrix stabilizes energy savings — TRADITIONAL ALTERNAthe young macrowe’re looking for TIVES.” — BIANCA GRIFFITH, phyte plants, helpsustainability.” ing create a floating Operating as a FOUNDER OF AGUA INC ecosystem and ecoquasi-utility in logical water purifipartnership with cation system. The the Gambian govmacrophytes’ roots, ernment, the new dangling in the water, become a home wastewater treatment facility will to helpful bacteria. These bacteria break charge the same rates to its users as the down harmful contaminants in the former system charged, putting no wastewater. The water filters directly additional financial strain on consumers through the plants for a minimum of and requiring vastly less energy to five days. The bacteria living on the power it. And in a developing country plants’ roots, and the macrophytes where chemical engineers are in short themselves, purify the water as it flows supply, the system requires little techthrough. As the macrophytes grow, they nology: Agua says the same person who stay buoyant because they’re less dense takes care of the plants can also oversee than water. Their root structure the wastewater filtration system. becomes more complex, better at aeratPassionate about sustainable soluing and filtering wastewater, and more tions for problems in developing hospitable to good microorganisms. nations, Griffith and Delgado are also University of Colorado Boulder empowering the next generation of professor of engineering JoAnn engineers and entrepreneurs in Africa Silverstein points out that “ecological” through their “Agua Campus” in The may be a confusing label for the Agua Gambia. A facility that sounds system, since virtually all wastewater Boulder-inspired, they call it “an intertreatment uses microbial ecosystems, national innovation, education and colengineered to provide specific types of laboration hub in West Africa,” with treatment. classrooms, co-working spaces and lab“This is not to downplay Agua’s oratories for visiting researchers and achievement in The Gambia,” Silverstein future leaders. says. “Just to put it into context.” The wastewater treatment facility And even this type of system can will be fully operational by midhave its challenges, she says. For exam2015. ple, macrophytes may create excess bioRespond: letters@boulderweekly.com

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18 December 25, 2014

Boulder Weekly

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December 25, 2014 19

adventure

Kelly Cordes

Chaltén Massif

A quest for honest heroes

‘The Tower’ tells the truth behind mountaineering’s tallest tale, and other controversies surrounding the coveted Cerro Torre by Elizabeth Miller

rp.boulder.weekly.holiday.2014.pdf

20 December 25, 2014

f you were going to go to war over a mountain, Cerro Torre would be the one to do it for. No one has ever lived on the sides of Cerro Torre for more than a few days, and yet the peak has been home to mythic accomplishments, heated controversy, a battleground of climbing ethics and philosophical questions on the innate value of truth, the freedom of climbers and the legacy of mountaineering. The peak, the tallest in the Chaltén Massif, a jagged shard of skyline in Patagonia, was deemed impossible by the first of those who ventured toward its flanks. Then an Italian claimed to have climbed it, and 1lost11/14/14 10:59 AM his Austrian partner in the process.

Then, decades later, an expert on the Chaltén Massif debunked that longdoubted claim, compiling into a single American Alpine Journal article the various evidence, from the fact that no ropes or pitons or any other trace of their ascent was ever found on the upper reaches of the peak to the improbability that after filling his journals with descriptions of tedious progress and overbearing exhaustion, the climbers were suddenly able to sprint to the summit. “We all want to believe in the impossible, we want to believe in the greatest ascent in history, and that makes it really easy to dismiss inconvenient evidence,” says Kelly Cordes, author of the recently released book The Tower: A Chronicle of Climbing and Controversy on Cerro Torre. “To look at it

purely objectively, it’s almost comical that anybody believed it, it so clearly did not happen.” In addition to picking up where previous books and articles about the region have left off, Cordes takes Cerro Torre’s history an introspective question further, asking about the basics of what makes us human and how the need to believe what we believe shapes what we see when we look at the highlights of human history on the mountain. That history goes like this. Following the enticements of fellow Italian climber Cesarino Fava, Cesare Maestri began traveling to Patagonia in search of unknown challenges. In 1959, Fava, Maestri and Austrian ice climber Toni Egger set off for Cerro Torre. Fava assisted in hauling gear for the initial

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portions of the climb before turning back to wait for the climbers on the glacier below. Maestri made what is now commonly accepted as a fraudulent claim to the first ascent in 1959 with Egger, who he says was killed in an avalanche while being lowered on their way down from the summit. Doubt of Maestri’s claim to that ascent fueled his return in 1970, this time hauling hundreds of bolts and a compressor to power his bolt gun. He drilled one of the world’s most beautiful peaks like it was target practice, stringing up some 400 bolts that built a ladder to the summit — the Compressor Route, on the southeast ridge, considered an abomination by alpine climbers who prioritize climbing with the use of natural protection and turn to manmade hardware Kelly Cordes only as a last resort. The engine block for the compressor is still fixed to the wall, nearly a mile up. In 1974, what is now the accepted first ascent was made by a team of Italian climbers who completed the Ragni di Lecco route. Then in 1979, American climbers Steve Brewer and Jim Bridwell completed the Compressor Route — discovering in the process that Maestri didn’t actually reach the summit via that route, either. The controversies haven’t stopped. In recent years, David Lama’s attempt to free climb the Southeast Ridge drew criticism primarily for the Red Bull film crew that wanted to hover near him. While he attempted to climb using hands on rock, a clean approach, his film crew lashed ropes to the mountainside and drilled new bolts into it —

GLASS PIPES

leaving a huge footprint. When criticism persuaded them to abandon that method, they instead used a helicopter that buzzed the mountain so persistently other climbers compared it to climbing through Vietnam. That same year, 2012, saw climbers Hayden Kennedy and Jason Kruk able to complete the southeast ridge by “fair means” — using natural protection, not the 400-bolt ladder to the summit, which often ran near the cracks and flakes a climber could use to set gear and protect a fall. On the way down, Kennedy and Kruk removed 120 of the bolts, having now proved them unnecessary. When they returned to town, they were harassed and sent to jail, though no crime had been committed. “It became such a fascinating story to me, one of those things that, the more you dig, the more you uncover,” Cordes says. “Then in a moment of bad judgment I thought it would be a good idea to write a book about it, but it was too damn much work.” For two years, Cordes conducted interviews across multiple continents and with translators helping with several languages. He reviewed documents and photographs — 150 are included in The Tower. Cordes recounts the various ascents of Cerro Torre, including his own climb to establish a new route with Colin Haley in 2007, with a proximity that leaves the reader feeling as though they’re watching from within arm’s reach of the rock, grasping the tiny ledges Lama pinched to ascend his 5.13 route to the summit, or dancing up the icy chimney Kennedy and Kruk found

OIL RIGS

when they climbed the southeast ridge without the Compressor Route’s bolts, or elbow-deep in the mushrooms of rime ice that top the peak and almost every summit venture must weather. While the book records those other ascents, the bulk of it goes to addressing Cerro Torre’s tallest tale — the ascents claimed by Maestri and now generally accepted as disproven. Cordes is a former editor for the American Alpine Journal, which published an account by renowned Chaltén Massif climber and Cerro Torre history expert Rolando Garibotti that, from a technical perspective, debunks Maestri’s claimed 1959 first ascent beyond any reasonable doubt. “Only the most irrational person could read it and look at Rolo’s [Garibotti] level of research and still have any doubts,” Cordes says. “When you start looking at this thing, and you start looking at the evidence, it’s almost funny how people have believed it at all.” And yet, some people seem to. Or there is, at least, the wish for it to have been true and a protectiveness over Maestri’s handiwork on Cerro Torre: the Compressor Route. Time and again, Cordes reports his interview subjects saying something to the nature of, Maestri and Egger probably didn’t finish the route, but if they had, it would be one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of mountaineering. Italian alpinist Maestri, called “Spider of the Dolomites” and renowned for fantastic accomplishments in Europe, claims that after a storm coated the peak’s southeast face in ice, he and Egger reached the mountain’s summit in 1959. Egger was killed in an avalanche on the way down, and with his body went the camera that included their summit photos, proof of their ascent. But all traces of their climb vanish just a fraction of the way up the mountain, Maestri’s description of the route doesn’t fit what others have experienced

SCALES

when climbing it and isn’t consistent from one telling of the story to the next. Then there’s the question of the gear available and the conditions described. Maestri says a freak storm coated the face in ice and Egger, the stronger ice climber of the two, led the way to the summit, but no one has seen conditions set up that way on the peak in the decades that have followed. Even if a perfect sheath of ice had covered the face, the ice tools climbers used at the time wouldn’t have facilitated that kind of climbing. “Everyone for years, for decades, has been talking about, ‘Well, we’ve never seen those conditions happen again, but if it did happen, yeah, it’s possible. It would be hard ice climbing, but yeah, it could happen.’ However, the modern ice ax hadn’t been invented yet,” Cordes says. At the time, climbers used a single, long ax and chopped holds. Ice at a ramp-like and pleasantly skiable angle of 50 degrees was considered extreme. “Quite simply, the capability to do it didn’t even exist,” Cordes says. “Everyone talks about, is it possible for Maestri to have climbed it in 1959, and I think as climbers, there’s a camaraderie, maybe. We want to give the benefit of the doubt, and I think as humans we want to believe that anything is possible on any given day. … We never want to say that something’s impossible as humans. However, ice climbing is utterly dependent on the equipment and, in 1959, it truly was impossible. Not only impossible for Maestri and Egger, impossible for anyone in the world to climb the north face of Cerro Torre if it were coated in ice in 1959. … With a single 80 cm wooden ax on grade six ice, you’re going nowhere.” Like Garibotti before him, Cordes chips down Maestri’s claimed ascent with one piece of evidence after another see CERRO TORRE Page 22

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CERRO TORRE from Page 21 Kelly Cordes

— all of which arrives at the vertrapped,” Cordes says. “It takes a dict that Maestri just isn’t telling really big person to some day the truth. Where Garibotti’s artibreak all of that, but when that’s cle was a mountaineer’s technical your most famous accomplishassessment of how the climb ment, the thing that you’re best couldn’t have happened as known for, I don’t know. I can’t Maestri claims, Cordes’s work is pretend to know what’s going on an investigation into why people with him, but it could feel like cling to Maestri’s claim on the your whole life is a lie.” peak, both that 1959 ascent and Maestri’s friends say he’s bitthe 1970 establishment of the ter, tormented, his life ruined by Compressor Route. The de-boltthe Cerro Torre controversies. ing earned Kruk and Kennedy The people defending his serious harassment around town ascent in the face of the evidence, for having damaged a piece of Cordes says, are probably prohistory, or “vandalized” the peak tecting something of their own, — a curious turn, since their something that’s become interwork was to undo alterations to twined with their identities in an the natural features, not the other unbreakable way. way around. “I think an argument could be The Tower is threaded with a made that the people who really strong undercurrent of the care about Cesare Maestri would research Cordes did into human encourage him to tell the truth Colin Haley approaching the Col of Hope, with the rime formations of the Rangi Route (west face) rising belief and how our existing because I think that’s the only above. beliefs shape what we see when way that he’s going to find peace, evidence is in front of us. Those if he’s as tormented as he says he altered perceptions are both maddening, Maybe all that matters is that Egger world today that are harder to reach with is and as they say he is,” Cordes says. “I he says, and somehow a central part of died trying to climb an unclimbed don’t think it’ll ever happen though. It’s our modern transportation than Cerro what makes men, men instead of mountain. But Cordes himself gets carTorre was in 1959,” Cordes says. “I guess too engrained, too deeply entrenched machines. ried away playing through the baffling that it makes me wonder about all kinds one of the problems with lies is that you “I’ve always said, I would have loved facts and trying to make sense of the of things, what sorts of things am I stuck can never see the future and you can for the story to have been true, but it confusing rope configuration found with never know how you’re going to be disin my own brain where I can’t see out of. simply wasn’t, and at a certain point it Egger’s remains when they surfaced in covered. Maestri had no way of knowing I’m sure I have them.” became so ridiculous that I became a the glacier more than a mile from where that there would be a town there, that Maestri refused to take an interview little detached from any emotional Maestri says an avalanche swept him with Cordes. He sent him a letter — there would be people crawling all over desire for it to be true,” Cordes says. He away. And about those remains — glaand even called a mutual friend to conthe mountain. It was so hard to get to recalls having a conversation with a ciers move at varying paces, to be sure, firm that Cordes had received it. Cordes and so impossible to climb given the friend in 2002 — he hadn’t yet done but if Egger fell to his death where techniques, the equipment they had, that was at her house when the call came. much research on the peak, and Maestri says he did, based on the traces Maestri’s last interviews on Cerro surely he thought nobody would ever Garibotti’s article had not yet been pub- of him found on the glacier near Cerro Torre and the letter he sent to Cordes come, nobody would ever know.” lished — and the friend asked, “What Torre, his remains moved more than a have moments in which, as Cordes One thing Maestri and Cesarino do you think, do you think Egger and mile in 16 years, and then only 300 feet describes, Maestri “goes off the rails” — Fava, who climbed a portion of the Maestri really climbed it?” Cordes in the 29 years to follow. route with Maestri and Egger in 1959, ranting, pointing fingers and flinging recounts, “and I was like, ‘Man I don’t “There’s any number of scenarios have never wavered on is that Egger and accusations that make little sense. know…. I hope so.’” that your mind can run away with and Maestri reached the summit. Fava, who “I don’t have any doubts that he’s a died a few years ago, maintained that Hidden behind this obfuscation, the we don’t know if any of them are true. tormented guy,” Cordes says. “He’s cerWhat we do know without fail is that story to the end. His children, three of lies and the tall tales is the reality of tainly a mystery in himself, at least to whom live in El Chaltén, do as well. how Toni Egger died — and it was not, Maestri’s story is not accurate,” Cordes me, but I would argue even to some of But then, Fava has taken Maestri’s apparently, as Maestri had said, while he says. “I think there’s a big problem with those who say they know him best. … the fact that Maestri came home and word. He descended and waited on the was coming down from the summit. For all that [Maestri] says he doesn’t told a lie to a dead man’s family” glacier while Maestri and Egger climbed care, and these people are meaningless to “Even more than the fundamental It’s not that he suspects anything on for days, and then helped home a belief that the truth is important, there me, I wonder. I wonder if when he’s at other than that Egger died while climb- weakened Maestri who returned alone, is the incontrovertible fact that Toni home alone, and his wife is ill — it’s sad, ing. But how and when and why he moaning Toni’s name. Egger died and his family never got an you know, it is sad, and I can I totally died aren’t clear as long as that story is Only Maestri knows. honest answer about how their son, feel this compassion and sadness for lost behind Maestri’s myth of them havWhat they were hiding or why they their brother died. And Toni Egger’s him. And then, that’s what makes it so ing reached the top. lied, Cordes doesn’t want to speculate. sister is still alive in Austria. She knows complicated and why he is such a tragic Maybe Maestri thought Cerro Torre To him, Maestri’s a tragic character. that it didn’t happen the way Maestri figure, because then also I think, ‘Wait, was so remote, and so difficult, no one “It’s not hard to imagine one terrible wait, wait, Toni Egger’s family deserved said. She’s been waiting for an answer would ever come close enough to its moment of grief where you tell a lie to all of these years, and she still doesn’t an honest answer about how he died.’ summit to disprove his claim. It took honor your dead friend, and — I’m a have it. I think that matters,” Cordes And I don’t know how to rectify those months to get to the base of the peak in cynic for sure — and there’s a strong says. “I guess I do have a fantasy of my two things. I guess they both exist.” the 1950s. The town near the Chaltén side benefit of you having done the own that is probably as ridiculous as Maestri is listed in the acknowledgeMassif, El Chaltén, didn’t exist until the greatest ascent in history that comes some fantasy people are buying into ments for The Tower, in gratitude, if 1980s, when Argentina established it to with that lie to honor your dead friend, with Cerro Torre, but this fantasy that nothing else, for contributing one of the hold the ground from Chile’s claim to but the thing about it is, with a lie this Maestri will come clean and that wildest stories in all of climbing history, the territory. big, you tell it once and you have to Egger’s sister will get an honest answer. Cordes says. “There are probably few places in the keep telling it. Effectively, you’re But I don’t think it will ever happen.” Strong feelings still surround that 22 December 25, 2014

Boulder Weekly

adventure story on all sides — the climbers furious of tourists in a way that resembles Estes at the lies, furious at the machinery used Park, where he lives, and the herds of on a pristine peak, and the locals who slow-driving tourists who stop to photowere irate in 2012, when Kennedy and graph every wild animal within sight of Kruk removed bolts from the the road. And having grown up in State Compressor Route. Taking those bolts College, Penn., where football was king, down effectively dismantled the bolt he had classmates from the Paterno famladder people used as a route. ily, was friends with one of the Sandusky “The route was falling into oblivion kids and was junior high football coach anyway and some of the people who are to Mike McQueary, who blew the whismost angry in El Chaltén, with a gun to tle on the cover-up. He’s seen how pertheir head they couldn’t draw the line of sistently people can work to continue the Compressor Route. I really don’t believing in what and who they have think it was about the actual two-inch always believed in. pieces of metal that had been fading The people who still believe in into oblivion,” Cordes says. “I think it Maestri were so kind, he says, he worwas about feel- Kelly Cordes ried about ing disrespectthem, knowing ed by outsiders, what he wrote and, with that, wouldn’t be combine a complimentary healthy dose of to their friends stress in a small and family. town that’s “I tried to being overrun write the truth by tourists. You as best I could came to this while still being beautiful landcompassionate,” scape to get Cordes says. “I away from it think it’s all, have a little important to more balance stick to the in your life and truth. now all sumSometimes it’s mer long you’re not easy to do working nonthat.” stop with peoAs a few of ple coming in the initial and out on responses have buses and come back — Colin Haley leads into a wind-carved tunnel of rime on the upper Ragni Route. demanding he was on partheir sandwich ticular lookout now, goddamfor comment nit.” from Mirella Tenderini, an Italian Outsiders had no right to make that author well-connected in the climbing decision, the locals argued — but in community and editor for Cesarino fact, for decades, the only people to Fava’s autobiography. She was the one have climbed Cerro Torre were foreign- who facilitated his letter exchange with ers. And in mountaineering, there is no Maestri, and took that call to confirm process for checking in with locals — or he’d received it. When she came back anyone else, for that matter — to with compliments and noted his compassion, he says, “The human side of me approve a route before it’s completed. “Climbing is a self-regulated system, was really relieved. And in a way that’s what this whole story is about, maybe, is so what brought us Cesare Maestri also belief and objectivity — where do they brought us Jason [Kruk] and Hayden intersect, where do our human elements [Kennedy], and you can’t have it both intersect with those two things.” ways. You can’t say it’s OK for Maestri Will we suffer for losing this one to do this but not for Jason and Hayden legendary ascent — the greatest ever, if to do that,” Cordes says. “We don’t only it were true? always like what people do. I don’t like Cordes doesn’t think so: “I think what Maestri did and I did like what that we have enough phenomenal, Jason and Hayden did, but I underinspiring, mind-blowing examples of stand, and if someone wants to go put things that really did happen to provide the Compressor Route back in, they’re us with a lifetime of inspiration and free to do it.” that’s far more powerful than believing He’s tried to handle it all with some in a fairy tale.” empathy — commiserating with El Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com Chaltén’s annual overrunning population Boulder Weekly

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December 25, 2014 23

buzz THE FEW, THE PROUD, THE MEMORABLE ALBUMS OF 2014 A review of some of this year’s best music BY ADAM PERRY

TAYLOR SWIFT, who says she looks at albums as “sort of statements,” has sold an awful lot of albums this year. The unabashedly pop (as opposed to country-pop, her previous focus) 1989 sold more than a million albums in its first week and has spent a total of 29 weeks at #1. What kind of statement was Swift making with 1989? Well, she “felt like making a pop album.” Not that there’s anything wrong with great pop music, or wrong with you if you enjoy Taylor Swift, who is pretty hard to ignore. But 1989 is what Kurt Cobain would call a “radio-friendly unit shifter.” It’s a carefully calculated business venture by a young woman who was riding her crazy-wealthy family’s ponies while in diapers, successfully lobbied her parents to move to Nashville at 11 so she could become a star, and now gets paid more than $50 million a year to do many things associated with being a mega-famous musical celebrity, one of which is singing. Point is, a few years from now you’ll be hard-pressed to remember one song from 1989. In this, my seventh-annual feature for Boulder Weekly on my favorite albums of the year, I aim — as ever — to share with you some essential “statements” you may have missed, whether because they weren’t on the radio or because you don’t have the pleasure — or misfortune — of receiving a hundred press releases a day like I do. In my humble opinion, these are

24 December 25, 2014

Boulder Weekly

10 records you’re sure to remember, and maybe cherish. Have fun listening, and debating.

Damon Albarn: ‘Everyday Robots’ At 46 years old, with a well-known career as a pop vocalist in Blur and Gorillaz, few would have predicted the English singer-songwriter Damon Albarn not only releasing his first-ever solo album but making it a profound, spacey treatise on life in the ever-distancing digital world. Everyday Robots, with its dreamy opening track of the same name, is a much more strippeddown OK Computer in a world where technology has become even more of a worldwide obsession. Gorillaz is known as a “virtual band,” but Everyday Robots, with lyrics like “when you’re lonely, press play” and “it’s hard to be a lover when the TV’s on and nothing’s in your eye” is a mellow, haunting, electro-pop journey through the sadly habitual virtual reality we live in.

Aid Kit has come a long way since initially gaining attention by posting a homemade video of a Fleet Foxes cover — recorded in a forest, no less — online as teenagers six years ago. Now an international success, First Aid Kit marked the release of its galloping third album, Stay Gold, with a video for “My Silver Lining” that finds

Johanna and Klara Söderberg (now 21 and 24) cruising in a convertible around sunny Los Angeles. Sure, some of the lyrics on Stay Gold, less purely poetic than the stunning Lion’s Roar, can be called “naïve wisdom,” but these babyfaced Swedes can sing and play as wonderfully as Nashville’s finest.

Alt-J: ‘This is All Yours’ The English “folktronica” band Alt-J sold out the Fillmore in Denver

back in October, and — in the most awkward, honest terms I can provide — the performance was a phenomenon of unique, slow dance-rock without cymbals. Nary an inch of Fillmore space wasn’t being bounced on as the quartet — playing mesmerizing, eccentric electronic music that, like Future Islands’, is all live — stood as stone-faced as its dreary sophomore LP, This is All Yours, would suggest. Unlike the utterly fun An Awesome Wave (2012), the tranquil see ALBUMS Page 26

Future Islands: ‘Singles’ It’s a fun game, playing the addictive, romantic, live electronica of Future Islands’ brilliant new album Singles for someone and asking what he or she thinks emotive vocalist Samuel T. Herring looks like. “Very ’80s” was one comment I got. “Something like Flock of Seagulls?” was another. Watching the Baltimore band’s unforgettable performance of “Seasons” on Letterman — it’s been viewed on YouTube 3 million times — is a revelation. Herring, a Southern-born gentleman in neat clothes and short, dark hair, looks like a young Marlon Brando and takes pain and passion to heights rock has seldom seen. He brutally punches himself. He licks his fingers like a madman. He stresses random words with a guttural howl that seems to come from another plane of existence. He dances in crouched, near-fetal position. Somehow, not a moment seems contrived. And yes, the whole album is that good, that inspirational.

First Aid Kit: ‘Stay Gold’ The young Swedish sister act First Boulder Weekly

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ALBUMS from Page 25

“song cycle” that is This is All Yours strangely and silkily takes listeners to and from the ancient Japanese city of Nara, a trip that includes some seriously weird expressions of love (“turn you inside out and lick you like a crisp packet,” etc.). Most of the lyrics, as ever, are incomprehensible, but it’s AltJ’s beautiful, syncopated group harmonies and aforementioned thick, slow beats without cymbals that justifiably landed This is All Yours at #1 on the U.K. charts and #4 in the States.

Andrew Bird: ‘Things Are Really Great Here, Sort Of…’ Anyone who has attended one of Andrew Bird’s magical performances at the cavernous old Chautauqua Auditorium in Boulder in recent summers has learned that the violinist/guitarist/ vocalist/whistler can do a lot more than juxtapose world-class bursts of musical virtuosity with mindexpanding wordplay. The Chicago genius is as American as W.C. Fields with a dobro, and his new album (it’s a slow year for Bird when he releases only one album) is a tribute to the songs of The Handsome Family, an Albuquerque-via-Chicago husbandand-wife duo that writes songs as quirky and touching as Bird’s but much more narrative, and somewhat gothic.

Lana Del Rey: ‘Ultraviolence’ Something tells me I should hate this album. Lana Del Rey has glorified violence against women, extramarital affairs and suicide. Like Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift, her route to hitting #1 on the Billboard charts was eased by her extremely wealthy roots. Del Rey (born Lizzy Grant in New York City to an entrepreneur and an account executive) was even lampooned for her exceptionally crappy Saturday Night Live performance in 2012. But from the opening moments of Ultraviolence, Del Rey’s third LP, I was surprised by what glori-

ously twisted, lovesick album it reminded me of: Bob Dylan’s classic Time Out of Mind. With the help of Dan Auerbach, the whole “stiff, distant and weird” thing actually works for Del Rey on much of Ultraviolence, especially during the orchestral blues of “Cruel World” and the dark, hilarious satire of “Brooklyn Baby.” The sleek guitar-noir of “West Coast” is also a highlight. This is definitely not an album to ignore on reputation alone.

The War On Drugs: ‘Lost in the Dream’ For a little Indiana label Secretly Canadian, which boasts under-theradar greats like Luke Temple and Antony Hegarty, to release an album that reached #26 on the Billboard charts might seem like a fluke, but Lost in the Dream’s radiance was no accident. The War On Drugs spent two years making its third, and best, album; it is clearly the result of frontman/songwriter Adam Granduciel’s love of both classic American “layman rock” (Springsteen, the Eagles, Tom Petty) and drugged-out space madness like Spiritualized. Focusing on a tempo and feel eerily “Boys of Summer”-esque, Lost in the Dream is easy to fall in love with. Granduciel italicizes and narrates like Dylan; the whole band is remarkably tight, and clearly having a blast; and the balance between technology and wholesome acoustic rock births something like Pink Floyd with Rick Danko replacing Roger Waters.

Laura Mvula: ‘Laura Mvula with Metropole Orkest conducted by Jules Buckley at Abbey Road Studios’ While Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence, with its nightmarish romance and gloomy wit, reminded me at times of Time Out of Mind, Laura Mvula, a 28-yearold English songstress, released an ambitious orchestral album that brought to mind Sketches of Spain. Like Miles Davis’ singular instrumental voice leading a Gil Evans-led orchestra, the rebellious, empowered love songs on Sing to the Moon (Mvula’s 2013 debut), get big, (mostly) tasteful sym-

phonic treatment on this exciting release, and Mvula’s confident, heavenly voice and defiant lyrics are the centerpiece.

Against Me!: ‘Transgender Dysphoria Blues’ There isn’t enough space in an issue of Boulder Weekly to discuss the poignance and importance of Transgender Dysphoria Blues, the powerfully honest album that vaunted Against Me! from respected, successful punks to spokesmen for the international LGBT community. On the five Against Me! albums prior to Transgender — which is full of energetic, well-written power-punk — frontwoman Laura Jane Grace identified herself as a man named Tom Gabel. Now, still married (to the visual artist Heather Hannoura) with a young daughter, Grace is undergoing medical transition, mostly hormones, and considering full sex-reassignment therapy. From the start, the album is fantastic: Fierce as ever as a band, Against Me! now juxtaposes hard-charging punk with heartfelt lyrics such as “you should’ve been a mother / you should’ve been a wife...you should be living a different life.” It’s an inspiration for anyone afraid to be themselves.

Sylvan Esso: ‘Sylvan Esso’ Based in North Carolina, Sylvan Esso’s playful electropop is programmed by Nick Sanborn and sung by the exuberant Amelia Meath, who blew away the Boulder Theater a few years ago as a member of the pastoral Vermont vocal group Mountain Man. Sylvan Esso — which transforms Mountain Man’s quirky “Play It Right” into a bass-heavy, uplifting dance number on its eponymous debut — is a pleasant surprise for Mountain Man fans waiting patiently the last four years for a follow-up to the landmark Made the Harbor. The duo played a hypnotic version of “Coffee” with Questlove on Jimmy Fallon in July and — with the vivacious beats and provocative lyrics of Sylvan Esso, which quickly found critical and commercial success — has generally been channeling the Tank Girl fashion and attitude Meath has seemed to be somewhat holding back in Mountain Man. Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com Boulder Weekly

overtones Here and there

Big Head Todd dishes on the fast life by Dave Kirby

odd Park Mohr was enjoying a little holiday season downtime a few weeks ago when we caught up to him after a dinner out in Littleton; he kept apologizing as his cell phone nervously straddled mobile and Bluetooth car modes. Mohr is Drew Reynolds a guy on the go; even his devices have a little trouble keeping up with him. This past year found Mohr and the Monsters out on the road (with Hazel Miller and Chicago blues guitarist Ronnie Baker Brooks during the winter swing), promoting the band’s January release of Black Beehive¸ the Steve Jordanproduced fulllength CD titled after Mohr’s touching elegy to Amy Winehouse. Mohr has an under-appreciated gift for character study (one of our recent favorites is the dukes-up stomper “Muhammad Ali” from 2010’s Rocksteady), and “Black Beehive” deftly resonates with the shaded mourning that followed in the wake of the troubled soul siren’s 2011 demise, neither heroic nor lachrymose. “There’s a lot of things in that story that come together in a powerful way,” Mohr said about “Black Beehive,” “and it was an easy song to write because of that. When she died, it probably took me a half hour to write that song.” Jordan’s influence on the CD is evident; his production and playing credits extend to Eric Clapton, Don Henley, John Mayer, Herbie Hancock and Keith Richards, as well as gigs in TV bands like Letterman and Saturday Night Live. Mohr could hardly have found a better helmsman for this CD, a producer with equal facility in roots and commercial-appeal disciplines, especially as Mohr continues to incorporate his deep exploration of pre-war blues (evidenced by the band’s 2011 CD and tour 100 Years of Robert Johnson) with the band’s native-born songwriter rock. “Yeah, he played on most of the Boulder Weekly

tracks, he works really fast and he’s a musical genius to boot. He has incredible arrangement ideas and is rhythmically flawless. He knows how to get the feel and the vibe out of a performance, and yeah, we definitely owe him a lot for the sound of Black Beehive.”

ON THE BILL: 97.3 KBCO & Boulder Weekly present: An Evening with Big Head Todd and the Monsters. Doors 7:30 p.m., show at 8:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 27, Boulder Theater, 2032 14th St., Boulder, 303-786-7030, $45 general admission.

On paper, the project might sound a little like a vanity throwaway, but the effect is arresting. And yes, by the time you read this, Mohr will have just about completed it, but all the previous videos are still out there. “It’s kind of like a music blog,” Mohr explains. “It’s a daily exercise; I call it the Daily Donut because you have to make the donuts fresh every day. … My goal is to do them every day between Thanksgiving and Christmas… So far I’ve only missed a couple of days,” he says and laughs. Writing and/or arranging a new song, and then committing it to Big Head Todd’s spontaenous, fast-paced video and uploadapproach has fueled a daily music blog ing it, every day and an album recorded in a week. for almost a month sounds… Well, it Mohr says that Jordan’s no-nonsounds like work. Maybe even a bit sense approach to the studio thing — grueling. Whatever happened to chillget in, figure out what works and get ing over the holidays? out — aligns pretty closely to the “It is grueling, and I’m tired, I’ll band’s newfound appreciation for effiadmit it,” he says and laughs. “But it’s ciency. really worth it for me. I’m really enjoy“I think the main thing for me is ing it and I’m getting a lot of great that I’ve become a big fan of the less material out of it. And success — I’ve deliberative approach [to making been getting on average about 5,000 records]. More spontaneous, working views per video. And some of them have very quickly,” Mohr says. “Black Beehive gotten as much as 23,000 views, so it’s was done, I think, in about six days. been exciting to have people respond.” Working like that is really appealing; It sounds like a songwriter’s exerthe thing doesn’t wear out its welcome. cise, almost a boot camp. And if you’re working with somebody “Essentially that’s what it is,” he who can help you really focus on what’s says. “But it’s also kind of a different good, not waste time, you can really get way of looking at the artform, of music good live tracks. I think that’s a big as [being] kind of journalistic. Not necdifference from the way we used to essarily meaning to write a song that’s work. I mean, we used to really slave meant to last forever, but that’s approover things.” priate for the moment. Perhaps consistent with this “It’s kind of liberating because I approach, Mohr himself has been find that I can write a lot very freely working on a little online side project and quickly, without having to worry this holiday season that he calls the about whether it’s good or who’s going Daily Donut; daily videos of new origi- to like it… For me it’s been an interestnal songs and polished-up covers, with ing cultural experiment… I’ve been Mohr singing and playing solo in front using a lot of bluesy, folk or country a mic and a little context and currentstandard I-IV-V stuff, and then I’ll event commentary running across the throw as many tricks as I can at it.” Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com bottom like a news crawl.

WEEKLY EVENTS Tuesday Open Mic in the Opera House

UPCOMING EVENTS Friday, Dec 26 • 10pm

POST-XMAS DANCE PARTY

W/ DJS BUCKSHOT AND REVEREND EVOL

Saturday, Dec 27 • 8pm

GOOD WATER & HOBO SWAGGER

Wednesday, Dec 31 • 9pm

NEW YEARS EVE FEATURING

BANNED IN JAPAN Friday, Jan 2 • 8pm

CITIZEN DAN

Friday, Jan 9, 2015 • 8pm

HAMILTON LOOMIS

Saturday, Jan 10 • 8pm

MOJOMAMA

Wednesday, Jan 14 • 8pm

COMEDY NIGHT WITH KEVIN CRAFT Friday, Jan 16 • 8pm

SELASEE & THE FAFA FAMILY

Friday, Jan 23 • 8pm

KISSm

Saturday, Jan 24 • 8pm

THE JOHNNY O. BAND Wednesday, Jan 28 • 8pm

COMEDY NIGHT WITH BILL BLANK Saturday, Jan 31 • 8pm

WASH PARK

Friday, Feb 27 • 8pm

MY BLUE SKY

December 25, 2014 27

overtones BCO offers classical option for New Year’s Eve by Peter Alexander

ahman Saless and the Boulder To further help people with their celChamber Orchestra offered ebrations, the BCO will have what Saless their first New Year’s Eve calls “a wall of wine” on sale during interconcert two years ago. Saless mission. saw an open niche and decid“People can actually buy their wine ed to fill it. for the evening right at the concert, and “I always felt like on New Chris Hondros Year’s Eve, the only game in town in classical music is the Colorado Symphony,” he says, speaking of the CSO’s annual “Night in Vienna” (6:30 p.m. New Year’s Eve in Boettcher Concert Hall). “I thought, ‘It’s kind of a far thing to go all the way to Denver. Why don’t we have something around here?’” Because of the difficulty of finding an available space in Boulder on New Year’s Eve, Saless decided to perKeith Bobo form in the attractive Lakewood Cultural Center (470 S. Allison Pkwy. in Lakewood). Timed not to interfere with later New Year’s Eve events, the Boulder Chamber Orchestra’s concert, “A Night on the Danube,” will begin at 6:30 p.m. That is the same time as CSO’s “Night in Vienna,” and no, the similarity of names is not accidental, either. Musically, the New Year celebration is widely associated with Viennese music — especially waltzes and polkas from the Strauss family — because of the Vienna Philharmonic’s annual New Year’s Day concert. That event has become so popular that tickets are distributed by lottery and television broadcasts are seen in 90 countries. The Boulder Chamber Orchestra performs a Viennese program for the New Year. Saless says such European concerts are an inspiration for the BCO. “You know, in Europe all the counthen head home and celebrate,” he says. tries have some interesting New Year’s Of course, people mostly come to the Eve event, which we don’t,” he says. “We concert for the music. This year, the have the New York Times Square type BCO will perform music from countries of thing and we sit in front of the TV. that border on the Danube River as it At some point, I’d love to just get people flows through Central Europe. From out of the house and go do something Austria there will be Johann Strauss Jr.’s else.” Pizzicato Polka and — inevitably — The Apparently he is succeeding, since the Blue Danube. BCO New Year’s Eve concerts have Hungary will be represented by two nearly sold out each year. The only prob- composers: Johannes Brahms with his lem Saless sees is that most of the sales Hungarian Dances and Franz Liszt with come from Lakewood and Denver. the popular Second Hungarian “I would love for more Boulder peoRhapsody. And Slovakia comes in with ple to come,” he says. “It’s set up at a two of the Slavonic Dances of Antonín good time so you’re out by 8 o’clock.” Dvorák.

28 December 25, 2014

ON THE BILL: “A Night on the Danube,” Boulder Chamber Orchestra, Bahman Saless, conductor; Szilvia Schranz, soprano. 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 31, Lakewood Cultural Center 470 S. Allison Pkwy., Lakewood, 303-987-7845.

“The program is sort like my favorites,” Saless says. “It’s stuff that I would always love to do but can’t do with a chamber orchestra.” Announcements of the concert promise all that, “and much more.” But when asked about the “much more,” Saless just says, “I’m not going to say. We are doing some surprise pieces, which may or may not include one of our favorite singers.” The singer at least is not a secret: soprano Szilvia Schranz, who has impeccable Danubian credentials, is listed on the program. In keeping with the theme of the concert, she will sing — well, “some Hungarian pieces” is all Saless will admit to. Schranz was born in Budapest — on the banks of the Danube — and moved to Boulder when her father, second violinist of the Takacs Quartet, came to the University of Colorado with the other members of the ensemble. The playing style of music from Central Europe has some challenges for players who have not grown up with the different national traditions. The Viennese waltz, for example, gets its lilt from a slight displacement of the second beat, which is played a fraction early and lightly stressed in the accompanying parts. Think of the first “pah” as just ahead of the beat in the “Oom-PAH — pah” parts. As a conductor, Saless is prepared for the waltzes. “There a trick to it,” he says. “I have been fortunate enough to have a teacher that showed me how to do it, because he does a lot of Viennese waltzes. “What you do is you add a new dimension to the baton. You actually move the orchestra on the second beat by moving the baton toward them. And they’ll do it naturally. It’s a really cool thing.” Tickets for the Boulder Chamber Orchestra’s “Night on the Danube” are available by calling 303-987-7845. And should you choose to drive all the way to Denver instead, you can contact the Colorado Symphony box office at 303623-7876. Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com Boulder Weekly

arts & culture I’ll miss you, 2014  The film year in review  by Ryan Syrek

rom a purely fiscal standpoint, 2014 sucked. Box office totals are likely to finish at the lowest amount since 2008, which I’m sure makes everyone feel real bad for the billionaires in Hollywood. For those of us who could care less about opening day multipliers and staged platform theatrical releases, 2014 was doggone great! Sorry to use such language, but I’m darn tickled at how things wound up. Now let me tell you why.

Gillian Robespierre’s Obvious Child was one of several stories by and about women leading the way in film in 2014.

Miss (and Mister) Independent Honestly, the last few years have been so-so at best for indie and art house fare. Aside from one or two standouts, ho-hum and humdrum had been the name of the game. This year sports several flat-out breakthrough hits, one of which is blatantly charging at Best Picture. Birdman is the odds-on favorite for Oscar glory, but will likely be joined by Boyhood and possibly Whiplash or Foxcatcher. Even films with no sealed-envelope aspirations have much to brag about. Frank was a gleefully weird exploration of the artistic process. The Signal was unapologetic sci-fi goodness. Hell, I unabashedly loved a Wes Anderson film (The Grand Budapest Hotel) for the first time in ages. Does this mean I’m finally in the cool kids club?

Ladies brought the noise The inexcusable and irritating lack of opportunities for women in film remained a constant this past year. However, when given an opportunity, the talented few knocked it out of the park. Writer/ director Gillian Robespierre’s Obvious Child featured a killer performance from Jenny Slate and marked a high point in honest storytelling involving the subject of abortion. The Babadook, from first-time writer/director Jennifer Kent, wasn’t just the best horror movie of the year; it was the best horror movie in a decade. Lucy proved that a woman not named Angelina Jolie can also open an action movie to huge numbers. Speaking of Ms. Jolie, Maleficent was a big ole box office hit without any dudely help of note. And, ironically, in a movie called Boyhood, Patricia Arquette gives one of the most genuine and nuanced performances of the year. More of this in 2015, please.

Guardians of the Galaxy snagged the lead this year for comic book-inspired films, a genre that’s still steadily producing box office hits.

You can’t keep a Superman down The popular thought is that comic book movies can’t stay hot forever. Wanna bet? Captain America: The Winter Soldier, X-Men: Days of Future Past and The Amazing Spider-man 2 all crossed $200 million. The year’s top performer, Guardians of the Galaxy, didn’t even have character familiarity aiding it. Lots of people who don’t read comic books know who Spider-man is, but how many normals out there were amped and excited to finally see live-action versions of Groot, the talking tree, and Rocket, the homicidal raccoon? The Marvel brand is still as hot as they come, as just slapping their logo onto a property is a license to print money. Surely, see FILM YEAR Page 30

First time writer/director Jennifer Kent had a knockout success with The Babadook.

Boulder Weekly

December 25, 2014 29

arts & culture FILM YEAR from Page 29

there has to be a point of oversaturation, when comic book movies hit a number so high they exceed demand. That number is eleventy billion.

Flippity floppity

Document THIS!

wherever she goes, I’m following.

And keep it going for new stars Several folks cemented themselves as what Joe Biden would call “big effin’ deals” this year. Chris Pratt went from loveable schlub on Parks and Rec to

Perpetually forgotten and rarely seen at most megaplexes, almost every year features great documentaries. That said, 2014 stepped its documentary game up. The Overnighters was a stunning look at a modern day “Grapes of Wrath” unfolding in North Dakota that featured one hell of a twist ending. Life Itself, which explored the life of Roger Ebert, reduced me to a blubbery manbaby. The way the film used Ebert’s love and passion as a backbone elevated it beyond a simple biographical endeavor and into tear-jerker levels. Citizenfour, the Edward Snowden documentary, is getting so much love that rumor has it they are considering a push for a Best Picture nomination and not simply a Best Documentary nod. That would be the celebratory cherry on top of the delicious sundae of documentaries we got to devour this year.

When is a box office bomb a blessing? When it sends a message. The Expendables 3 didn’t tank just because a copy was leaked on the Internet. It tanked because we’re done with Sly Stallone’s silly shenanigans. Sex Tape’s fizzle may finally help people see what I’ve been pointing out for decades: Cameron Diaz is not good at comedy… or talking… or anything. Seth McFarlane’s A Million Ways to Die in the West failed miserably, which couldn’t have happened to a nicer horribly offensive trainwreck. The Giver was a reminder that we don’t need to adapt literally every young adult property ever created. Perhaps most importantly, Transcendence’s lackluster haul may finally serve notice to Johnny Depp The filmmaking first-of-its-kind Boyhood was among the strong independent films released this I’m living in the future so that he can stay in France as long as year. the present is my past he’d like. Here’s the thing, I didn’t want big-time movie guy with Guardians of the Galaxy. to start with this, because 2014 was really good… The trailer for Jurassic World didn’t hurt him neither, but 2015 is gonna be so sick, y’all. You like bigLet’s hear it for new voices as it reminded everyone there is more Pratt where Few things are as exciting as when a previously budget blockbuster awesomeness? How does a new unknown creative human steps up and says, “Look at that came from. Benedict Cumberbatch has always Bond movie (SPECTRE), a new Jurassic Park me! I make good things!” The aforementioned Gillian enjoyed a devoted cult following. And by “devoted movie (Jurassic World), a new Terminator movie Robespierre did that with Obvious Child, a movie that cult following” I mean fangirls on the internets (Terminator: Genisys), a new Avengers movie was as sophisticated as it was hilarious. Writer/direcwould physically devour him if given the opportuni- (Avengers: Age of Ultron) and a new freakin’ Star tor Justin Simien turned Dear White People from a Wars movie (The Force Awakens) sound? Like your ty. This year, he broke into the mainstream with a Kickstarter project into the most important movie sure-to-be-nominated performance in The Imitation cinema a little more artistic? I present to you about racial dialogue in ages. Dan Gilroy’s Beasts of No Nation, from True Detective director Game and the announcement that he is going to be Nightcrawler was downright David Fincher-esque and Doctor Strange for Marvel Studios. As mentioned Cary Fukunaga, While We’re Young from director featured the gnarliest performance from Jake Noah Baumbach, Queen of the Desert by Werner above, Marvel stuff is so popular that they haven’t Gyllenhaal ever. But it’s the arrival of Jennifer Kent Herzog, Freezing People is Easy by Errol Morris begun shooting the film yet and I’m pretty sure it that is most potentially game changing. Horror is a and, most exciting to me, an unknown movie from already passed $300 million domestic. Finally, genre that often lends itself to violent misogyny. Even Rosamund Pike has been in good things for years Benh Zeitlin, the director of my favorite movie, when it doesn’t, most entries in the genre are uninBeasts of the Southern Wild. So, yeah, thanks for all but when Gone Girl came around, her career went spired and schlocky. The Babadook was scary, smart, you did, 2014, but don’t let the door hit ya on the with it. All but assured of an Oscar nod, look for subtle and stunning. It’s unclear if Kent plans on stay- Pike to only continue her upward trajectory. way out. ing with this genre or expanding into others, but Respond:letters@boulderweekly.com

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(303) 444-7328 BOULDER CO Boulder Weekly

Boulder Weekly’s Complete

New Year’s Eve Guide

2014-2015 BOULDER:

full page of ad(s)

DJ Gangsterish. 10 p.m. Bohemian Biergarten, 2017 13th St., Boulder, 720-328-8328.

The Jerseys — A special one-night tribute to Franki Valli and the Four Seasons. Admission includes a bottle of champagne for two and dancing on stage to ring in the New Year after the show. 6:15 p.m. Boulder’s Dinner Theatre, 5501 Arapahoe Ave., Boulder, 303-449-6000. Center $85, Angle $75, Side $65.

New Year’s Eve Dance Party with DJ Jahsonic. 8 p.m.-1:30 a.m. Shine Restaurant and Gathering Place, 2027 13th St., Boulder, 303-449-0120. Free. Jazz Night. Laughing Goat, 1709 Pearl St., Boulder, 303-440-4628. The Goonies. 8 p.m.-1 a.m., Conor O’Neils, 1922 13th St., Boulder, 303-449-1922.

New Years Eve with Caribou Mountain Collective and The Hot Lick. 10 p.m. The Lazy Dog Sports Bar & Grill, 1346 Pearl St., Boulder, 303-440-3355. Free.

EAST COUNTY:

New Year’s Eve “Rat Pack” Gala — Dance to two live bands at the Hotel Boulderado’s New Year’s Eve “Rat Pack” Gala. Dressed in Black play classic hits in the lobby from 8:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m., and Raising Cain will be playing contemporary dance music in the Events Center of the North Wing from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. A limited number of guests will enjoy a decadent buffet dinner with reserved seating on the mezzanine. 8 p.m. Hotel Boulderado, 2115 13th St., Boulder, 303-442-4344. $60 West Water Outlaws “Paranoid” New Year’s Eve — One original set of material plus the entire Black Sabbath album Paranoid. With special guests The Yawpers and In the Whale. 9 p.m. Fox Theatre, 1128 13th St., Boulder, 720-645-2467. $17.50 New Year’s Eve at the St Julien — To ring in 2015, St Julien will offer guests and locals an evening of bubbly, balloon drops, Brazilian food and more. Attendees will enjoy a choice of two cocktails, wine, beer or caipirinhas; Brazilian street food and party favors; the musical stylings of Sambadende, a Brazilian samba band based in Boulder; live entertainment throughout the evening by a variety of samba dancers and capoeira, a traditional Brazilian martial art that incorporates elements of dance, acrobatics and music; a midnight balloon drop and champagne toast; a Veuve Clicquot Champagne Lounge featuring $16 glasses. Package deals including tickets to the New Year’s Eve celebra-

tion and an overnight stay at St Julien are available. 9:30 p.m. St Julien Hotel and Spa, 900 Walnut St., Boulder, www.stjulien.com. $95 New Year’s Eve Meditation — Ring in the New Year with prayer and meditation guided by Jack and Norma Groverland. 11:15 p.m. Unity of Boulder Spiritual Center, 2855 Folsom St., Boulder, 303-442-1411. Yonder Mountain String Band — With their traditional lineup of instruments, the band may look like a traditional bluegrass band at first glance but they’ve created their own music that transcends any genre. 9 p.m. Boulder Theater, 2032 14th St., Boulder, 303-786-7030. $65 New Year’s Eve at the Speakeasy — Put your glad rags on and celebrate New Year’s Eve at BMoCA’s speakeasy-themed NYE party and benefit. Embrace your 1920’s gangster or glamorous flapper as BMoCA is transformed into a Harlemese juice joint. Featuring live jazz, bathtub gin, late-night burlesque, tarot card readings, mugshot photography, complimentary champagne toast and light bites. 9:30 p.m. BMoCA, 1750 13th St., Boulder, 303-443-2122. $30-$40. $35/$30 members and $40 door.

Noon Year’s Eve Party — Kids can’t stay up until midnight? Come join us for a Noon Year’s Eve party to remember. Family fun for all ages. We’ll have stories and songs, a magic show by Rosey Rosebud, a sparkling cider toast and a balloon drop at noon. 10:30 a.m. The Family Garden, 600 S. Airport Road, Suite B, Longmont, 303-678-1144. Free. She Groovez. 9 p.m. Oskar Blues Homemade Liquids and Solids, 1555 S. Hover Road, Longmont, 303-485-9400. Free. Banned in Japan — This band plays a variety of great music. They cover rock, dance and party tunes from the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s all the way up to the present, including hits from Styx, Journey, Prince, Daft Punk and No Doubt. 9 p.m. Dickens Opera House, 300 Main St., Longmont, 303-834-9384. $11 New Year’s Eve Party #1 — WOW Children’s Museum’s annual New Year’s Eve party is back with two parties this year. Ring in 2015 a few hours early with noise maker crafts, face painting, music and countdown to the New Year. WOW Children’s Museum, 110 N. Harrison Ave., Lafayette, 303-604-2424. $12 per child, $6 for WOW Members and free for adults. New Year’s Eve Dance Party — Greet the New Year with a great evening of dancing to professional DJs Gerry and Vera Stephenson See NYE CALENDAR Page 32

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Boulder Weekly’s Complete

New Year’s Eve Guide

N EW Y EAR’S E VE R AT P ACK G ALA

2014-2015 303-455-4269. Free.

★ Dressed in Black

with Mark Diamond

★ Raising Cain Dance music from the era of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr.

Tori Pater. 10 p.m., Local 46, 4586 Tennyson St., Denver, 720-524-3792. Free. Soultimey. 8:30 p.m., Mead Street Station, 3625 W. 32nd Ave., Denver, 303-433-2138. Free.

New Year’s Eve with BluezHouse — Two shows, two seatings. First show includes fourcourse dinner and show from 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. for $65 per person. Second show rings in the New Year for $30 admission and $20 per person food and drink minimum. 10 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. Nissi’s, 2675 North Park Drive, Lafayette, 303-665-2757.

A. Tom Collins. 9 p.m. The Oriental Theater, 4335 W. 44th Ave., Denver, 720-420-0030. $10

Watersong. 9 p.m. Bootstrap Brewing Company, 6778 N. 79th St., Niwot, 303-652-4186. Free.

The String Cheese Incident — Born in 1993 in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, String Cheese Incident has since released six albums, three DVDs and countless live recordings from their relentless tour schedule. Their history is packed full of surreal experiences, epic moments, groundbreaking involvement and huge accomplishments. 8 p.m. 1stBank Center, 11450 Broomfield Lane, Broomfield, 303-4100700. $49.50-$59.50

Grant Farm — Led by National Flatpicking Champion Tyler Grant (Emmitt/Nershi Band), the talented four-piece is built on the foundation of love, family and the joy of music. The Grant Farm train stops at all the stations on the North American roots music line and is not afraid to let the whistle scream with some blistering jams. 8 p.m. Oskar Blues Grill & Brew, 303 Main St., Lyons, 303-823-6685. Free.

Phat Daddy. 9 p.m. Hoffbrau, 9110 Wadsworth Parkway, Westminister, 303-422-7755. Free.

Mountain Standard Time. 8 p.m. Stage Stop, 60 Main St., Rollinsville, 303-258-0649. Free

Decadent Buffet Dinner with Reserved Seating on the historic Mezzanine Limited Availablity! Access to both Dance Parties, Late-night Hors d’Oeuvre Buffet in the Event Center and Champagne Toast at Midnight

Split Jive Broadcast. 10 p.m. Pioneer Inn, 15 E. First St. Nederland, 303-258-7733. Free.

Review Menus & Reserve Online: Boulderado.com / hotel-events / new-years-eve Or Call: 303.440.2880 Room Packages: 303.442.4344 Hotel Boulderado | 13th & Spruce

Trainwreckers. 7 p.m. Jake’s Roadhouse, 5980 Lamar St., Arvada, 303-424-7266. Free.

New Year’s Eve at the Gold Hill Inn — Local band Bonnie and the Clydes will perform with Banshee Tree. All ngiht buffet and champagne at midnight. 8 p.m. Gold Hill Inn, 401 Main St., Gold Hill, 303-443-6461. Admission is $31. Cash bar. Rock Star Aaron. 8 p.m. Ameristar Casino-CO, 111 Richman St., Black Hawk, 720-946-4000. Free.

Party Packages range from $75 - $175 Per Person

Jim Jamm Jimmy. 5:30 p.m. Odyssey Beerwerks, 5535 W. 56th Ave., Suite 107, Arvada, 303-421-0772. Free.

MOUNTAIN TOWNS:

DENVER: New Year’s Eve Fireworks — Ring in the new year with fireworks that light up the 16th Street Mall filled with magicians, mascots, balloon artists, stilt walkers, comedians and more. 9 p.m. and midnight, 16th Street, Denver. Free. Resolution New Year’s Eve — Ten parties under one roof by the Collective 360 with DJs, games, a photo booth and massive balloon drop. 8 p.m. McNichols Building at Civic Center, 144 W. Colfax Ave., Denver, 720-865-4220. $79-$129 Union Station Bootlegger’s Ball — The new New Year’s Eve tradition downtown includes three parties on three floors. VIP access includes the underground Speakeasy. 8 p.m. Union Station Great Hall and

New Year’s Eve with The Grind — Beer pong tournament, live music, toast at midnight and special hotel packages. 6 p.m. Hiccups Bar and Grill, 7980 Sheridan Blvd., Arvada, 303-429-9523. $10

GOLDEN: Terminal Hall, 1701 Wynkoop St., Denver, www. unionstationindenver.com. $150 Noon Year’s Eve — Ring in 2015 in classic Noon Year’s Eve style with ball drops, bubble wrap and confetti. Noon Year’s Eve is moving from Children’s Museum of Denver to Butterfly Pavilion this year — same great party, totally different setting. 9 a.m. Butterfly Pavilion and Insect Center, 6252 West 104th Ave., Westminister, 303-469-5441. $0-$9.50 White Rose Gala — A 1920’s-themed celebration, where attendees can enjoy Vegas-style mash-up music, swing, big band and more across multiple levels and balconies. Top Cat Empire and Colorado Swing Cats will perform live. 9 p.m. Ellie Caulkins Opera House, Denver Performing Arts Complex, 1101 13th St., Denver, 303-893-4100. $79-$2,500 White Star Evening — A soiree through the lens

of early 1900’s culture. The evening will include a five-course meal, wine pairings, live music and all you can drink midnight celebration. 5 p.m. Central Bistro & Bar, 1691 Central St., Denver, 303-4774582. $25-$75 Zoo Year’s Eve — A celebration for the entire family. 9 p.m. Denver Zoo, 2300 Steele St., Denver, 303-337-1400. One Barrel. 3 p.m. Strange Craft Beer Company,1330 Zuni St., Unit M, Denver, 720-985-2337. Free. Walker Williams — New Years Eve Masquerade Ball. 8 p.m. Grizzly Rose, 5450 N. Valley Highway, Denver, 303-295-1330. $20 Laura Newman Hot Jazz Trio — The best jazz you can depend on, every Wednesday night. 8:30 p.m. Tennyson’s Tap, 4335 West 38th Ave., Denver,

Johnny Rock’it Band. 9 p.m. In the Zone, 15600 W. 44th Ave., Golden, 303-279-3888. Free Dave Powers Trio — For more than 30 years, Dave Powers has been a vital part of the Columbus, Ohio, music scene as a jazz pianist, keyboardist and vocalist. 6 p.m. Bridgewater Grill, 800 11th St., Golden, 303-279-2010. Texas Hippie Coalition — Their countrified blues riffs simmer with metallic edge, while each chorus ignites a sing-a-long. The Texas quartet Big Dad Ritch (vocals), John Exall (bass), Cord Pool (guitar) and Timmy Braun (drums) have formally landed, and they brought the party with them, in more ways than one. 8 p.m. Buffalo Rose, 1119 Washington Ave., Golden, 303-278-6800. $25-$50

GraSS For that aSS Free beFore 9Pm or beFore 10Pm For text MeSSage SubScriberS!

Sunday december 28

1/8: White Water ramble – old & in the Way niGht & PicKin’ on Ween W/ cranFord holloW 1/15: trout SteaK reViVal & lil’ SmoKeS W/ dead driFterS

tWo thouSand, PlaStic coFFinS, ShadoW GuaGe, doubted mindS, in the Variant & SePticemia

Monday deceMber 29 • dual Venue!

retro-FuturiSm FeStiVal

Feat late niGht KrooKed thunder Feat late niGht radio, KrooKed driVerS & miKey thunder W/ ProPer motion, bobby c Sound tV, Grim & darlinG, Vibe Street, Stone Soul, deluxe, mr. buGatti, lidSKy & more

tueSday & WedneSday december 30-31

BROOMFIELD/WESTMINSTER/ARVADA:

eVery thurSday @ the other Side

& Garrett SayerS trio

Feat melody lineS, run traitor run,

and learn to swing dance. Share the fun of the evening with friends and dance the night away. 8 p.m. Reverence Academy of Dance, 1370 Miners Drive, Suite 111, Lafayette, 303-661-0719. $10

2 Parties with 2 Bands!

W/ thundercat

holly daze muSic FeStiVal

NYE CALENDAR from Page 31

Wed, Dec 31, 2014

Saturday december 27

Victor Wooten

neW yearS eVe!! chriS robinSon brotherhood Friday January 2

dirty dozen braSS band W/ Filthy children & Faceman

Saturday January 10: dual Venue

an-ten-nae & GoVinda

tueSday december 30 Sub.miSSion PreSentS Very SPecial electronic tueSday

Feat deSert dWellerS W/ dubViruS, yu yu & dillard

WedneSday december 31

dyrty byrdS

Saturday January 3

naPPy rootS W/ rabid, Jalen bee, lmS & KdG

monday January 5

timeleSS deVeloPment houSe oF h, (unit)e & doze one

tueSday January 6 Sub.miSSion PreSentS

electronic tueSday Feat meGalodon W/ SWayd & mamuth

WedneSday January 7

the ben miller band W/ croW moSeS

W/ SodoWn, ProPer motion, cloud-d, liVinG liGht, Kruza Kid, roSS PennocK, hotbox & dJ KnoWledGe

Friday January 9

Friday & Saturday January 16-17

W/ Jonathan ScaleS FourcheStra & Punch drunK munKy FunK

cerVanteS’ 12th anniVerSary eVeryone orcheStra

Feat oteil burbridGe, eric KraSno,

turKuaz

tueSday January 13 Sub.miSSion PreSentS

electronic tueSday

al Schnier, durGa mcbroom (PinK

Feat the GreyS & london nebel W/ myxed uP & triSicloPlox

Floyd), robert Walter, daVe WattS,

WedneSday January 14

JanS inGber, Jeremy SalKen, Jenn hartSWicK & natalie creSSman (trey band) & more 1/16: the conGreSS 1/17: deadPhiSh orcheStra

Sunday January 18

5th annual 5280 urban muSic aWardS Friday & Saturday January 23-24

dumPStaPhunK & the Greyboy allStarS Friday February 6

3rd annual bob marley birthday celebration Feat WaKe uP and liVe & tnertle W/ red SaGe

Saturday February 7

PhuturePrimitiVe W/ Kaminanda

Friday February 13

the loVe ShacK Saturday march 7

zion i

W/ Proximity & JacK FlaSh

Friday & Saturday march 13-14

drKWaV

Feat John medeSKi, SKeriK & adam deitch W/ Joey Porter’S Shady buSineSS

monday aPril 20

the mcloVinS Friday January 16

FiShbone

W/ draGondeer & JudGe rouGhnecK

Saturday January 17

brotherS KeePer Feat John PoPPer oF blueS traVeler W/ rodina Feat memberS oF neW maSteSoundS, euForqueStra & Kinetix

thurSday January 29

WaKa Winter claSSic Friday February 5

the traVelin’ mccouryS W/ denVer blueGraSS GeneralS (chriS PandolFi & andy hall oF the inFamouS StrinGduSterS, tyler Grant oF Grant Farm, leSlie zieGler oF the railSPlitterS) & WhiteWater ramble PlayS bob marley

Saturday February 7 the Steady tour

Giant Panda dub Squad W/ tatanKa & heatbox

Saturday February 8 tranSVerSe WaVeS, triVial PSychic, eVeryday heroeS, redlandS, oPen to the hound, adoleScent behaVior & quincy cru Saturday February 14

altitude the diSPenSary PreSentS

niGhtmareS on Wax

Feat method man & redman, cyPreSS

Sunday February 15

420 in the StreetS hill, collie buddz, FlatbuSh

ZoMbieS, diZZy Wright & More tba!

(dJ Set)

true School liVe band W/ lucid ViSion & SPectacle

2637 Welton St • 303-297-1772 • CervantesMasterpiece.com TexT CervanTeS aT 91944 for TiCkeT GiveaWayS, Drink SpeCialS, DiSCounTeD TiCkeT proMoTionS & More

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32 December 25, 2014

Boulder Weekly Boulder Weekly

December 25, 2014 33