Text and photos by Tim Van Schmidt

Out of the Box: Unique NOCO Musicians

The news that the great Fort Collins music festival, FoCoMX, has been postponed from its usual April dates until the fall is a raw reminder that we aren’t done with this pandemic yet, but it has got me inspired.

I have decided to have a “music festival” right here and right now — at least on paper.

The theme of my festival is “out of the box” and the musicians I am going to feature are some of the most unique players I have ever seen in northern Colorado.

Number one on my list would be Steve Amedee, the world-class percussionist for the subdudes. Amedee has figured out how to prepare and manipulate a “mere” tambourine into sounding like a whole drum kit. Amedee is a rhythm genius and a great vocalist to boot.

One story I’ll tell to illustrate Amedee’s willingness to explore would be from a KIVA recording studio session in Fort Collins. Amedee had agreed to work on some tracks for my own CD release, “Sunshine Songs,” and when it came to a particular piece, I had the idea that “chest thump” best described the bottom basic rhythm of the piece.

So that’s exactly what we did — we put microphones on Amedee’s back and sides and he thumped his chest to the tune, which may have turned out to be a little longer than he anticipated. We also added a “knee slap” track as well. Amedee proved right there and then that he is more than willing to put himself into a rhythm.

Next, I would invite Francesco Bonafazi to perform — he doesn’t play an unusual instrument because he is the instrument. He is known as The Jazz Whistler and he makes alluring musical sounds with his own breath. This has taken him into the recording studio and to international whistling competitions.

Then to get an outrageous dance groove going, I would call on WhiteCatPink. You can’t miss this flamboyantly costumed character when he’s in the room or guess what he’s going to do. He might play drums to disco hits or bring on a belly dancing troupe to help entertain.

Since we’re calling WhiteCatPink, let’s also call Magic Cyclops, another character who acts as part DJ, part grumpy troll with a strong British accent. He also happens to be a regional air guitar champion.

On the folk side, I would get former Fort Collins musician Steve Eulberg on a plane from California and have him bring along all those great dulcimers he has collected and, more importantly, plays with heart. Especially, I would want to hear the hammered dulcimer — it is a mesmerizing instrument, percussive and bright.

For some years there was a program called Streetmosphere in downtown Fort Collins — putting area musicians on street corners to make cool sounds for weekend shoppers — and I’d like to bring in a few acts I saw there.

That would include an ensemble called Synesthesia, which featured a harpist — yes, playing a real harp. Another act I would definitely invite was called Musical Gestures. This guy played the very unique electronic instrument called the Theremin to classical music recordings. He played the melodies with pitch perfect accuracy with just the position of his hands within a field of invisible electricity.

Another performer I enjoyed on the busy downtown streets was Alyk the Traveling Marimba Busker. I don’t think she was a Streetmosphere act, but when I saw her on the corner of Mountain and College one afternoon, I had to not only respect that she played her instrument with aplomb, but also just that she would wheel the thing around to entertain passersby.

Since we’ve talked about the FoCoMX festival, I should mention some musicians I saw at various FoCoMX events. One would be Christi Mikles, a musical saw player I saw working with a couple of bands — she made otherworldly sounds with just a saw and a bow. I also would call an act named Rejected Kauses, a guy who had a unique rig mixing together electronics with percussion.

Let’s also include a FoCoMX performing group I’ve never seen before or since called Faded Freak Show. While not a musical act as such, one of them did something I’ve never seen before — he sent a guitar string through one pierced cheek, into his mouth and out the other side. I had to squirm when he pulled it back and forth like it was dental floss.

I would also tap More Than Physics, a group I saw at both FoCoMX and the Sustainable Living Fair, featuring a musician playing what looked liked flying saucers and sounded like muted steel drums.

I’ve seen just tons of great acts at the Bohemian Nights festival that piggy backs onto the NewWestFest in August. But the one I’d call immediately would be Jam Key Jam, featuring a master sitar player. Some find sitar music hard to understand, but I particularly enjoy listening to its intoxicating sound.

Of course, I would have to also include my former partners in rhyme, a group called two fingers, namely David Zekman and Mark J. Rosoff. Originally they came from a group called fingers, which played stream-of-consciousness “sound art” on anything from electronic keyboards to household utensils and electronic toys. I enjoyed their irreverent attitude towards music so much that I wanted to join the band.

But by the time I got to them, there were only two of them left and together we formed an ensemble called TVS and two fingers. I’ll mention that besides playing toys and unusual instruments like masking tape to back up original poetry, one of the main attractions to our live sets was Rosoff’s “lid-a-phone” — an instrument made from pot and pan lids that sound like a collection of exotic gongs and bells.

To clean up, I would ask Widow’s Bane to be the party band at the end of my “festival.” Their ghoulish make-up underscores their story about being the crew of a pirate ghost ship. Their music gives a new meaning to “folk” music like polkas.

These outriders of music are just some of the most unusual examples of what our music scene has to offer. If you could gather the above musicians together, I guarantee that you would have a most challenging event because they all share something special — crazy ideas for making cool sounds.

2021 Baseball Cards: Want to Trade?

Spring Training is now in session in Major League Baseball for the 2021 season. But Spring Training means more than just the start of the baseball pre-season — it also means the new baseball cards come out.

I was a baseball card nut when I was a boy. It started in Illinois, where I was a young Cubs fan. All summer long I would scrape together my nickels, plunk them down on the counter of the drug store and take home a handful of “wax packs.”

At home, I loved the ceremony of breaking open the packs. I was disappointed with doubles — and triples — but was thrilled with finding a star card. I didn’t care one bit for the bubble gum that also came in the packs — I just liked the cards and hastened to put the new ones into my collection.

When we moved to Arizona, I found that I was quite popular at trading sessions because I was a new kid from out of town. Apparently cards I collected in Illinois were a little more scarce in the West. Plus nobody there cared about the Cubs and I didn’t care about the Dodgers or the Giants, so there was a lot to trade.

That was a golden age of card collecting. It was about being in awe of our baseball heroes and about managing our cherished collections — trying to improve your holdings with every trade. But it wasn’t about business.

Baseball card collecting, however, did become about business. People started hearing about the fantastic prices dealers were getting for old cards, so they rushed up in the attic and pulled them out, looking for a fortune.

New baseball cards became very popular as collectors started speculating on what would be valuable in the years to come. This speculation brought with it a rush to grab new releases when they came out. Card companies met the demand while enthusiasts started following delivery trucks around to get the freshest stuff.

The big difference here is that these were no longer kids who were buying cards. These were adults.

I sold some of my old cards to a couple of dealers in Fort Collins when I first moved to town, but it felt like someone was bargaining for my childhood.

I eventually sold the rest of my stuff directly to collectors on eBay.

I recently wondered what CO-VID baseball cards would look like, since 2020 was certainly a strange sports year, so I ordered up a “blaster box” of 2021 Topps First Series baseball cards.

I thought receiving my order at home would take some of the luster out of getting new cards, but there was a small thrill of anticipation in waiting for the box to arrive.

It was also fun cracking open my “blaster box” and digging into seven 14-card packs — 99 cards in all — plus a special release to help celebrate Topps’ 70th anniversary.

Actually there are several special releases and designs. These include a series of contemporary cards using the 1986 design, as well as another series using the 1952 design. Plus there are cards with special borders, foils and more. There are also cards commemorating Topps history as a company. The one I got proclaimed that Topps became the “official trading card” of MLB in 2009.

The card I was looking for — one that illustrated how weird 2020 was in sports — was number 258, titled “Walk-off apart, Distant celebration.” It shows the San Francisco Giants as they “stay six feet apart to celebrate” a walk-off home run by Mike Yastrzemski.

The stats on the back of the cards are perhaps the most glaring proof of the CO-VID season. For instance, Dominican slugger Yordan Alvarez played 87 games for the Houston Astros in 2019 and only 2 in 2020. Rookies such as Giants catcher Joey Bart, Marlins outfielder Monte Harrison and Nationals second baseman Luis Gracia, who debuted as the youngest player — at 20 — in the Majors, fared better, but topped out at 40 games. This has got to mess with your stats.

The 2020 World Series is commemorated in several action cards, including an awesome snap of pitcher Clayton Kershaw, but I also got other Dodgers cards including a ’52 release and a base card of Cody Bellinger and a good one of Mookie Betts. On the Tampa Bay Rays side, I also got a ’52 and a base card of Blake Snell.

I learned a lot about contemporary pitchers thanks to the League Leaders cards featuring NL ERA leader Trevor Bauer of the Reds and AL wins leader Shane Bieber of Cleveland. I only got one Rockies card — featuring rookie pitcher Ryan Castellani — but I did get some Cubs cards including Columbian pitcher Jose Quintana.

If I had to pick favorites, though, I especially like the ’52 design cards and scored both Mike Trout and Jo Adell cards. An ’86 design card I’ll treasure is of Nationals ace Stephen Strasburg. And it was cool to run across a base card of the venerable workhorse Albert Pujols.

My favorite card, though, is a horizontal action shot of Pirates first baseman Josh Bell sliding into base — it’s got the thrill of baseball all over it.

All of my old cards are gone, but now I have a lot new ones — and the baseball season is just beginning. Anyone want to trade?

Movies to Stream

In the far future, less fortunate people in space get some of the worst jobs.

In the new 2021 Sci-Fi feature on Netflix from South Korea, “Space Sweepers,” not only do workman spaceship crews have to retrieve all the junk floating in orbit around the Earth, but they also have to compete for it. The winners grab salvage pay while the losers get nothing.

So begins an imaginative romp that sees one crew of misfits get embroiled in a titanic struggle to control the power of one special little girl. You might say the movie is a little shallow, with comedy bits punctuating fantastic action, but it is charming nonetheless and there is plenty of futuristic eye candy.

“Charming,” however, is not something I’m particularly looking for in a Sci-Fi movie. I’m looking for intensity and challenges — and big ideas. Think “Bladerunner.”

“Bladerunner,” starring Harrison Ford as a cop who hunts down rogue cyborgs and terminates them, is perhaps one of the finest Sci-Fi movies ever made. The details here are just about everything — from the constant rain soaking the social have-nots stuck on the grimy street level to the opulance of the haves who live high up in the buildings that tower over everything.

But more, “Bladerunner,” asks poignant questions about life and death. Ford plays a fragile human whereas Rutger Hauer plays a super soldier created with only one flaw — a limited lifespan. Both share the uncertainty of the future and the inevitability of an end.

“Nomadland,” a feature movie on Hulu, is more of a tone poem than entertainment. It begins as a hard luck story about a widow, played by Frances McDormand, who leaves a devastated Nevada town to live on the road in her van.

It’s not for fun, but for survival. However, she finds a warm comaraderie with others doing the same thing and it helps lighten her load. The buzz is that this is part fiction and part documentary, using real “van people,” or “nomads,” as part of the story.

The pace in “Nomadland” is slow, but that is the point. While sadness seems to permeate the movie and those who populate it, there is also the sense of people taking charge of their lives anyway, even if it is something that others — more sedentary people — can’t understand.

McDormand achieves plenty of expression with just the composition of her face and the gaze of her eyes. If you watch, a lot of the more static moments in the movie are actually moments of beauty you could only appreciate if you were “out there.”

The 2021 Netflix movie release “I Care A Lot,” featuring Rosamund Pike as a predator targeting seniors, has nothing to do with beauty. It is about greed and greed is such a strong motivator that it trumps even hate.

The set-up is that Pike’s barracuda character, a professional “legal guardian,” traps senior citizens with court orders, tucks them away into facilities friendly to her grift, then bleeds the people’s resources dry. That is until she picks the wrong old lady to add to her roster of cash cows. This results in escalating mayhem when the woman’s son turns out to be a nasty Russian mob figure.

But the movie takes an unexpected turn that underscores the power of greed.

While a very gritty but engaging story, I worry about viewers who might not find it abhorrent to prey on the weak and elderly. I would guess this movie might even be an inspiration to some. For that, I have to question if where this ends up isn’t misguided.

The Lessons of Lego

As a grandpa, you could say I’ve been around the block before. But when it comes to little tiny blocks that fit together to make intricate and fantastic assemblages that spark the imagination, I’m a little lost and must bow to a master.

That master would be my five-year-old grandson who is kind of a Lego genius. I think so anyway and I am worthy only to be his personal assistant in times of intense creation.

Yes, I’m talking about the venerable Lego building brick brand that has been around for ages.

But to my grandson, the word “Lego” isn’t a company, it’s an idea — and it’s one of the first words he has learned to spell and write. The idea is that fun materials and meticulous process yields really cool results — like swift looking space crafts and an underwater hangout for heroes.

He knows what is in those boxes when a new Lego project arrives. He sees the photo and immediately knows what the contents should become.

I can only wait for him to rip open the numbered bags that come with each project before I am of any use.

Usually those numbered bags carry inside them a full million little pieces. Fortunately we have learned that the bags should be opened onto a lipped tray rather than onto the open table where they will certainly bounce crazily, slide off the table and down into the nearest air vent.

But there is no waiting, no hesitation once the bags are open. The master’s eyes dart from the instruction booklet to the mass of tiny pieces in front of him and he immediately begins to build.

I must look at the mound of pieces and make some sense out of it. I sort the pieces into colors and place like shapes together. The master simply grabs the exact piece he needs from anywhere in the pile.

I have acted as the master’s personal assistant on numerous projects and have shared the joy of creation. But I was not ready for what came recently.

I once again had come to serve the master when he pulled me aside and gave me a present — my very own Lego project!

I thought it was just another way to work on something new. But no, the master made it clear that this was not his project, but mine. I was on deck to be the head builder.

Now I was really on the spot. I had to decipher the instructions, squinting at the tiny illustrations, trying to decide exactly what color and shape they really meant for me to find.

I was so slow that the master got busy with something else entirely and I was left to struggle on my own. It was decided that I should go ahead and pack up the pieces and finish it at home.

I did so and was proud of my accomplishment. But the lesson I learned was that there are Lego geniuses and there are those who are not. I may be one of the latter.

But someday I hope to be as cool as the master. Until then, I must train. I must practice. I must build with the laser focus the master does. Only then will I be more worthy.