Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Fort Collins Music Extravaganza or FoCoMx





One of life's pleasures is music. In human evolution, I believe that music...or at least rhythm...preceded the development of modern language, estimated to have been around 70,000 years ago. The beating of sticks in unison around a fire, the repeating of vocalizations to babies, the rhythmic pounding of roots and plants for cooking...all would have lent themselves to a kind of protomusic, long before homo sapiens learned to say things like "Hey Dad, I need the keys to the car."

FoCoMx is a music festival in Fort Collins, this year with over 300 Colorado bands performing in venues all over town, even out to La Porte, fit into a two day period. So you can move from one bar or book store or restaurant or brewery or coffee shop and catch bands you've never heard before or older favorites whom you have heard before. Like Widow's Bane, pictured above and below, a tremendously eclectic ensemble, complete with belly dancer, that performed at the Aggie, a music venue in a converted movie theatre.




But then down the street, you can run into Lara Jai, singing blues in the poster splayed back room of the vinyl record store.



And next store, the metal band, Away for Nothing, in a cocktail bar, surrounded by a crowd of enthralled groupies.



Or Chad Price, a country and western band, performing at the redone Astoria, now a more upscale tapas bar.






In short, a weekend of sound that reminds us of the diversity of music that makes this community and this world go round, round, round.

Red mountain


Am experimenting with blogging from my iPad. So I am not sure this will work.





- But last week I explored some additional trails at this geologically complex complex "county open space





Some of the trails go through eroded canyons...and the Cheyenne Rim goes up along the northern edge of the Denver Basin, a syncline that dips to 13,000 feet under the city of Denver. Makes one realize the extent to which the Front Range is just wash out from the erosion of the Rocky Mountains, now so much lower than they once were.





Just astonishing to be surrounded by so much living, moving rock...forming the structure of our daily lives

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Location:Larimer County