Richard Reviews a Concert! / Also: The Return of "Is It Art, Or Isn't It?"

Readers, there was not a hipster in sight at last night's performance by the Dave Rawlings Machine at the Granada (voted #1 music venue in this week's "Top of the Hill" awards). The audience consisted of: (a) old folks out way past their bedtimes, (b) tall, lonely-looking music geeks obsessed by the sound of Rawlings 1935 Epiphone Olympic archtop guitar, and (c) a few stray hippies who were more interested in Rawlings' backing band (three members of Old Crow Medicine Show) and the evening's New Belgium beer specials.

Standing close to the stage while his friend M.ck attempted to (illegally?) record the proceedings using a tiny Iphone, Richard revelled in 150 minutes of sheer guitar mastery and beautiful Gillian Welch backing vocals in a set consisting of excellent originals, hootenanny classics ("Hot corn, cold corn!"), and a set-closing cover song jamboree in which Bright Eyes' "Method Acting" morphed into Neil Young's "Cortez the Killer" before giving way to Dylan's "Queen Jane Approximately" and culminating in an audience sing-along of The Band's "The Weight." (Chip: "Which band?" Richard: "THE Band, damn it!").

Richard gives the show four out of four hippie-microbrews and feels sorry for the hipsters down the street at the Replay at the same time listening to Baiowolf (yes, as in Scott Baio), although those same hipsters were also certainly feeling sorry for those of us at the Granada for shelling out 20 bucks for a transcendent musical experience.

Chip: "Okay, but there's still one thing I'm confused about. Were there any sorostitutes at this show?"

Pictured: Rawlings and Welch

















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Local hipster siblings Aaron and Kendra Marable have brought us a lot of joy over the years with their DJ sets and their art, and tonight brings the opening of Kendra's new "found art" show at Wonder Fair. She describes her work as follows:

"Perfume bottles, bird nests, broken toys, religious icons, rusty spoons, feathers and teeth settle in together allowing their meaning to shift within the poetry of relation."

Let's take a look:




















Richard: "The lock featured prominently at the top of this piece potently suggests the difficulty of retrieving ("unlocking," if you will) the lost world of childhood imagination and all its variety. I'll vote art."

Chip: "What I like about this piece is the bunny. Art."