July is for Entertainment

Sun, 29 Jul 2018 01:38:58 GMT

Somehow July turned into my month for being in the audience.

Dead and Company were at Folsom Field in Boulder for two nights. The first set of the Friday night show was a little underwhelming, but the second set was amazing, with highlights including Terrapin Station, Saint Stephen into The Eleven, All Along the Watchtower, and Throwing Stones: every song was played exceptionally well. The Saturday night show was stellar from beginning to end, including a great The Other One into Drums and Space back into The Other One. It's a lot of fun to be with a football stadium full of people who know every song well and reflect a lot of energy back to the band. I may have spent too much money on tie dye on Shakedown Street.

I saw The Colorado Shakespeare Festival's productions of Love's Labours Lost and Richard III. Somehow I'd never seen or read the former, and it's a really good play (rising above some Shakespearian tropes) and the CSF cast did a great job playing up the comedy. The Richard III production was also well done, with some really neat witchy action from ex-queen Margaret. After watching three or four times productions in the last ten years, I think I finally understand everything that's going on in that play.

As a birthday present for Kelly's inner child we saw Disney's Little Mermaid at BDT Stage neé Boulder Dinner Theater. The costuming was pretty fun, and they had a good fluidity of "imagine that we're underwater." I think I ended up eating some dairy at the show (maybe the bread), so I felt lousy the next day :-/

This week I saw Bombino, a fantastic Tuareg guitar player in the tradition of Tinariwen and Ali Farka Touré, at the Boulder Theater. The performance was fantastic, and they had a fun humble and thankful energy, with the bass player apologizing that they don't know much English (having been colonized by the French). Local Afrobeat band Atomga opened. I saw them a few years ago; they seemed to have upped their game and their set totally rocked; on par with the main act. Lots of good dancing opportunity, particularly since the theater wasn't very crowded. I guess the rest of Boulder didn't realize how fun this show would be.

I also managed to fit in two trips to the Monday evening Bandshell Boogie. And I skipped the Buckethead concert at the beginning of the month because I was too.damn.exhausted.

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From the Mind of Trevor Stone

July is for Entertainment