Denver musician, zinester and self-made archivist Tom Murphy, longtime staple of Mile High underground culture John Gross, and local indie music upstart Leya Lynette Thomas aka Sara Century! met this reporter at Café Europa yesterday for a conversation about the current resurgence of underground culture in Denver.
John remarked that years ago it used to seem that whenever he got bored, there was nothing to do, but these days whenever he has a day off and wants to go out, there are two or three different choices of cool stuff to do in the city-"Any night of the week, even on like a Tuesday."
"Tuesdays seem to be more convoluted than Fridays," agrees Leya.
"Yeah, it wasn't always like that."
"I remember last year I wrote a series of reviews for Westword," offered Tom. "I ended up going to 40 shows in 36 consecutive days. And I wrote a review of every single show, every night, diligently, to prove there's always something going on. It may not be what you're 100% thrilled with, but if you say there's nothing ever going on, you're full of crap."
This coming Satuday, October 24th is a perfect example of a night crammed with options. Murphy is having a release party for the fifth issue of his zine, All You Need is Music "if he can get it done by then" and whether or not he completes it on time, his band, 900 Ancestors, will play at Wax Trax Records from 2:30 PM to 6 PM that afternoon with Fissure Mystic, Little Slugger, The Don'ts and Be Carefuls. A few hours later on the same day, Gross will be part of a Noise-centric holiday attraction called Haunted Hell at the House of Special Purpose, featuring Page 27, Spellcaster, Sterile Garden, Aleph.Null, Rasmussen and Ultra Butcher, beginning around 8:30 or 9:00 PM. "We like to wait until after dark," remarks Gross, going into a spooky ghostly sound. "The purpose is to scare you."
"I have nothing going on that day," says Leya. "I guess I'll go to Tom's show. I'll go to your show as well, John. I just did a house party, they're always really amazing, but when you're the host, it's like-so zapping, you know. So I'm not gonna have another house party for at least a month, hopefully. I might try to play the Lonnie Allen show at Blast-o-Mat, but I haven't approached him about it yet." Blast-o-Mat is another main DIY space near Federal and 7th.
"Haunted Hell is an annual thing," says Gross. "We turn my friend's house and backyard into a maze, then all the volunteers dress up in costumes and hide in the maze, lurking, waiting for you to walk through, then we jump out and scare you. That can take its toll on you over the course of hours, we kind of do it in shifts. There's just a ton of things always happening on the actual night of Halloween, so this year we're trying to do it on a night where there's not as much going on."
Tom remembers his own discovery of a converted warehouse called Monkeymania that served as a venue for underground acts in the same neighborhood years ago. "I went there the first or second show. I didn't know any of that stuff existed. So I was going to shows at like Red Rocks, and Ogden, and Bluebird, then I remember going to an art gallery and saw a flyer for a show there. There were no street lights at that time, this was the late ‘90's, and getting out of the car, I wondered, "'Uh, is it okay to be here? Am I gonna get stabbed?'"
Denver underground music territory was once the west side of the Baker district but for a long time the highest concentration of DIY venues has been north and west of LoDo. The area has since been gentrified at least enough to earn the requisite streetlights. Even so, Haunted Hell sounds pretty freestyle, compared to officially sanctioned "spook-tacular" events. Is it safe? "We have had some people freak out and like, get tangled in some of the displays or-you know-running backwards through, like, the fog into the alien abduction tunnel and slipping on something-nobody's ever been hurt, but there's been some hilarious mishaps like that."
Leya is also a writer. Her story, "Die, Fly! For being a Fly!", about her feeling of connection with a stranger she met at a Greyhound terminal, appears in Gut number twelve, ETA any day now. "She had prosthetics from her knees down on both of her legs and a cane to help her walk. She was the nicest lady I've ever met in my entire life, it was awesome. We talked about how she liked trains way better. On trains, apparently, if you're handicapped, they give you all of these nice accommodations, whereas on the Greyhound, they just pack you into this tiny little space. I wish I could do a whole book about the Greyhound bus."
"What are you working on right now?"
"I'm working on a bajillion zines, I have a comic book zine that I'm working on, and a writing zine about music that I'm working on with this girl in Texas, and I will probably self-publish a book at some point next year. The book itself will be called How to Hunt People, and it's probably going to feature a lot of writers. It's gonna be all about uh just run-ins with homeless people, (laughs) stuff like that, weird urban-esque kind of stuff, and riding Greyhounds, things like that. My brother already signed on to it, and I'm not sure who else. I know so many writers. I'll probably stick with about six, and it'll be awesome."
Next month John's band Page 27 will appear at a three day power electronics industrial noise jubilee called the Harsh Fest in Seattle, Washington. "It's actually corresponding to their version of the weekly Backwards Records nights I helped start in Denver, but theirs is called Threat. Mostly it's bands from Seattle, I think there's one or two bands from Portland, and then us and Blackcell are like the only bands from Denver. After Haunted Hell, that's the next thing we're gonna be doing. And then we will have a new CD and a tape after that."
"Oh yeah!" Leya perks up. "I just remembered. I also am doing a CD and a tape. I forgot about it entirely. We did these recordings last night at our house party at MegaHouse and I'm gonna make a tape out of that. We did that for Sara Century!, Little Dead Things, and The Drinking Gourd."
John's connections to the underground music scene are international. "Talking about Greyhound, this band, Neckhold, two teenage guys from Australia, did a cross-country North American tour on the Greyhound, they had all of their stuff in backpacks, and skateboards with him. And there's another teenage punk band called Suspended, that's playing on that same night, on the 24th, at Old Curtis Street."
"I think everything's getting better attended, too," adds Leya. "Last year seemed like it was kind of a downer honestly, for the most part, as far as shows went. I'm really psyched about all of the house parties that have been springing up and like, there's so many DIY venues right now, that's totally the best thing in Denver right now, is that like the weirdos are kind of getting their shit together for a change, I guess, and doing a lot of stuff."
Tom agrees. "It's nice to see, 'cause it used to be like that, and that kind of faded away. Denver goes in cycles, it's really strange."
"And house shows are always so much better than a venue," says Leya enthusiastically. "Always. There's pretty much no time when I go to Blast-o-Mat and have a bad night, or Rhino, or DCCS on Lincoln, have you been there yet? Man, that place is awesome, it's so beautiful there. I love it. They're having a zombie party on the 24th as well! You've got some competition, John."
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