More new music

You can download some new free music from Mansions on the Moon here

Serenades "Come Home"

Serenades "Come Home"

Tivi

Tivi says it's going away ... and it's having a RIP sale of whatever's left. Enter code RIP to get 20 percent off your purchase at their store

M83 adds tour dates

M83 is coming to Denver! April 30 at the Ogden.

Here's this. Get in the mood:

Satchel's on Sixth

As A says, Satchel's on Sixth is making its way on to our list of favorite places in Denver to eat, joining Fruition and Sushi Sasa. (A also likes Parallel 17 for weekend brunch, Domo and Jelly. (C also likes those, plus the pesto breadsticks at The Walnut Room that are half off during happy hour, but now we digress).

The reason for our ardor for Satchel's: The butternut squash soup!!! A, S and C all tried it this past weekend. It's got a maple flavor, and it's thicker than your typical soup, making it the perfect thing to warm up your soul on a chilly day. It happened to be our soup of the day, which I guess means it's not on the menu every day, to which I have to say, "Why???" It's fantastic!!

We also tried the duck mac and cheese. They had us at "duck." Then A ordered the braised short ribs with a parsnip puree. Soft tender meat, as you would expect, with a rich flavor mellowed by the parsnip plus some greens. S and C both got the scallops (nicely seared with roe on top), with butternut squash risotto with that al dente type feel, little chunks of squash.

Tried the rasta chai (chocolatey) and the orange/cranberry cheesecake (just fine, but no need to splurge for it)

Atmosphere is relaxed, comfortable. I think Chocolat was the movie playing with no sound on the big screen in the background. Friendly staff. Small, open room. Neighborhood vibe.

Bittersweet restaurant ... to be continued

So far, we've only tried 3 dishes at Bittersweet on Alameda, so can't really form a full opinion yet. But we did try the bacon, eggs and toast, a dish of three thin slices of toasted bread topped with pork belly and poached quail eggs. A delicate, decadent appetizer. We also tried the grouper with cippollini and cauliflower salad, with a smoked mussel sauce underneath. The smoky flavor comes through. This is a meaty fish, balanced with the lighter cauliflower and cippollini. A got the butter-poached lobster tail served with mussels, potato fingerlings cooked in duck fat, and andouille. The lobster picks up the distinct vanilla/corn flavor of the sauce. The andouille adds some kick. The lobster tail was fresh and fat. Other than that, this is a cozy restaurant split into two intimate rooms. We sat in the one with the small bar and fireplace adjacent to a patio.

We would've eaten more at Bittersweet, but we were tempted into stopping at The Lobby first for pumpkin pot stickers (delicious! but more like a dessert than an appetizer. 5 small potstickers come with a sweet cream and candied nuts) and a half portion of mushroom risotto (the half portion was plenty! Nice thick texture to the risotto, good mushroom flavor.)

Charcoal restaurant

On a sunny, cool Denver morning during Thanksgiving weekend, while seemingly everyone else was either hitting the slopes or watching college football, we supported small business Saturday by brunching at Charcoal on 9th and Acoma.

Charcoal's chef is Scandinavian, the menu is solidly European, but on weekends, the brunch has lots of Swedish touches thrown in.

Here's what A and C thought:

The tasting menu is the way to go. C got the semla swedish pastry. The fluffy brioche and cream were very filling, the almond portion was heavy, and the warm milk made the thick bread go down easier, but this was way too much of one sort of flavor and entirely too sweet for one person for breakfast. But if you're a jelly doughnut or lover of stacks of waffles and pancakes, perhaps you'll be able to swallow the whole thing.

A got the tasting menu _ a brilliant idea because you get to taste the more traditional brunch offerings, plus the special Charcoal ones. "All the courses were delicious, but most of them were so flavor-intense that a full platter of any single one would've led to taste bud fatigue/boredom. The 5 courses were vanilla yogurt parfait with granola and dried cranberries and fresh raspberries and blackberries; cardamom french toast with hazelnut cream, syrup and tiny chunks of watermelon and grapes underneath; potato pancakes with lingonberries and pecan smoked bacon; brisket hash with pickled golden beets; chocolate souffle with mousse. The French toast was fantastic, as were the potato pancakes with lingonberries and bacon. Bacon was nice and crisp. Pecan-ness was very subtle, I barely noticed it even knowing it was there. Golden beets were too vinegary for my tastes (most pickled things are), but went well with the hash. I probably could have enjoyed an entire dish of the hash, with little or no pickled beets. Souffle was too dry for my tastes, but the dryness was offset by the mousse. A bit of a shame, I love dark chocolate and its potential dryness doesn't bother me, but I expect cakes to be moist," A says. "The service was attentive and friendly without being overbearing. Caveat: We were there at the tail end of brunch, so the dining room was fairly empty."

Cookies does a cover of "Janet Jackson's Love Will Never Do Without You."

JOHN HEART JACKIE

Have you heard John Heart Jackie's cover of Prince's "When You Were Mine" yet? Well, have a listen here.
They are in:
Boulder, 10/16, @ Laughing Goat;
Denver, 10/17, at The Walnut Room;
Seattle, 10/23 @ Columbia City Theater.

Speaking of covers, we heard Harper Blynn at Moe's BBQ in Englewood before a really blah show of The Damnwells over the weekend. HB's cover of "Halo" was great. It sounded a little like this:

You can have access to a free download of TV Girl's new EP here or wait for the pink play button to pop up and just listen

Concerts

American Tomahawk plays 8 p.m. Sunday, 7/24, at the Denver Post's Underground Music Showcase

American Tomahawk also plays free 7/28 at Illegal Pete's downtown

Boyz II Men plays free at Taste of Colorado, 5:30 p.m., 9/5

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. returns to the Hi-Dive, 9/6

Free music

Check out "Teenage Tide" by Letting Up Despite Great Faults. It's a free download today.

Juggling + Xylophone

If you have been to the 16th Street Mall in Denver at the right time, you may have seen this guy:

Early word...

Henry Cho is back in Colorado for shows June 23-25 at Comedy Works in Greenwood Village.

Get excited... "The Art of Flight" will play for one night in Denver and one night in Boulder in late September. It premieres in New York on Sept. 7.

Jesse Ledoux says he'll have a pop-up gallery in Seattle in October.

Cibo Matto plan to have a new album by early 2012. Tour dates this summer

Death Cab for Cutie

Listen to the new album from Death Cab for Cutie over at NPR.

New music from Seattle

A has been listening to Half Acre Day

Summer Fiction

We've gotten hooked on Summer Fiction. Listen to the album free at bandcamp.com to see if you want to buy it. (It's cheap, $8)

We really like the songs "Chandeliers", "By The Sea," "She's Bound to Get Heart," "Throw Your Arms Around Me."

Good music

We're listening to American Tomahawk

Happy Friday!

We're listening to the new album from Ennui over at I Guess I'm Floating. Here's a free single

Dispatch from NY

This St. Patty's Day weekend, Brooklyn hosted the three-day American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, and F. and C.P. from Team Delicatessen participated for the very first time!

This is THE tournament of "Wordplay" fame, the one run by New York Times crossword puzzle editor Will Shortz and featured in The Wall Street Journal's middle column.

Puzzlers compete to see who can finish 7 puzzles in the fastest amount of time with all the squares filled in correctly. You get 10 points for each correct word. Each puzzle has a time limit varying from 15 minutes to 45 minutes. If you finish early you raise your hand and a proctor comes to collect your paper and note the time. You get 25 bonus points for each minute before the deadline, but for each wrong answer you will get 25 points deducted from your bonus, but not beyond.

F. and C.P. did crosswords online every day beforehand.

F: "The crossword tournament was fun. I really lost out on game 5 which was the hardest, and the theme was hit songs so I could not take advantage of using the theme either. I did finish early on at least games 1 and 7. Don't remember if I did on any others."

F. sat next to a guy originally from Mumbai, India. This was his 4th tournament. He normally comes with his friend by the same name of F.

F: "People went into the hall early the first day to grab seats. We did not go in until 10 minutes or so before start time and most of the seats were already taken. We had a hard time finding ANY empty seats, let alone together!"

C.P.: "The puzzles were pretty much what I expected. F. almost made the top half. I was about 10 places behind her until the last puzzle on Sunday. It was the usual Sunday Times puzzle. Not difficult but I tanked on it, probably because I had the flu. The judges marked the entries in blue pencils and scanned into the computer. Results were posted in an hour or so in the ballroom as well as the tournament's website. Overall, no real surprises and an enjoyable trip."


According to the results posted online, F. finished in the top 30 among rookies, and C.P. was in the top 50 out of 139 rookies.

As for the big winner? If you've seen "Wordplay," you know Tyler Hinman is kind of like a whiz kid in crosswords, but he was defeated by Dan Feyer last year. Dan won again this year. Ben Zimmer posted videos of the final round. It won't take you long to watch because Dan flies through this final puzzle in less than 7 minutes.

A Sunday short story

A Sunday short story, composed from BY's Facebook post and comments. (commenters' names changed to initials)

A sad thing to encounter at the used bookstore: Momofuku (the cookbook) w/the following inscription: "To Tobias. And to the promise that forever the next noodle will be the best noodle. With love, Julie, Dec 2010." In gold lettering.

R.J. L. I hope you bought it. I would have.

M.L. Wow, that is super depressing.

K.Z. Maybe he had the best noodle and didn't need the cookbook anymore. Or maybe Julie's just a psycho.

L.V.S.C. So did you buy it?

P.W. Tobias is clearly a real jerk. Momofuku book is a real gift, as is the endearing Julie. RRrrrrrr.

D.M. This is even sadder than "For sale - baby shoes. Never worn."

E.C. this is the start of a great short story.

J.F. December 2010? Good god, man. You can practically feel the breeze. I like to think that Julie bought the book, had it embossed, and then had second thoughts about Tobias and decided he was not worthy [insert inevitable comment about "using her noodle" here]. Or maybe the embossers messed up (e.g., it was meant to be inscribed to "Tomas") so they gave her a new one to give to him.

Japan

To keep up on events in Japan, AP has an interactive that is helpful. The Before-and-After tab is alarming.

Telekinesis

Is it blasphemy to say I like listening to Telekinesis' recordings more than listening to them live? That's not to say their show at the Hi-Dive wasn't fun. They're energetic on stage, and they got the crowd singing along to their lovely melodies and clapping. But the recordings are crisper, and the mood of the songs comes through more, on "I Saw Lightning" for example. The live show, as expected, is more about getting people pumped. A lot of the songs seem to just end on hard stops. "Coast of Carolina" was still great though. It's always kinda fun seeing a drummer on lead vocals. Anyway.

News from Pueblo

BY CT.

Don Banner had whiffed on a bid to sell water from a ditch in southern Colorado when someone gave him another idea: Turn the surrounding ranch land into an energy park.

While supporters say the Pueblo attorney's idea will provide high-paying jobs and tax revenue, dozens of residents have voiced concerns that his proposal on about 37 square miles east of Pueblo includes not only plans for biomass, geothermal, solar and wind energy but a nuclear power plant too.

Pueblo County commissioners, who must approve a zoning change for the project, held three days of hearings to take public comment on the proposal, days after an earthquake and tsunami knocked out the power supply to a nuclear power complex in Japan, causing radiation leaks.

"I'm a Christian. I believe everything happens for a reason," said Banner, in his 60s. The reason this time? "I don't know why."

There haven't been any new nuclear reactors in the U.S. in a generation, but the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is reviewing plans for new ones.

Nuclear power generation doesn't emit carbon dioxide and can produce huge amounts of power cheaply, after a plant is built.

Rising gasoline prices and concerns about greenhouse gases and imported oil helped nuclear energy gain political backing, but the disasters at Japan have led to at least a short-term pull back for some countries.

"There are a lot of competing interests here. All of that is background for making a very local decision," said Pueblo County Commissioner Jeff Chostner.

Colorado currently has no nuclear power plants. A uranium mill in nearby Canon City hasn't processed uranium in years, but Energy Fuels Corp. has plans to build a mill in southwest Colorado. Powertech has plans to mine uranium in northern Colorado.

Pueblo, meanwhile, is home to an Xcel Energy Inc. coal-fired power plant and a Vestas plant that builds wind turbine towers. Black Hills Energy plans to add a natural-gas fired plant.

Banner proposes creating the energy park on land not far from the Pueblo Chemical Depot, which holds 2,600 tons of mustard agent awaiting destruction under an international treaty.

Banner gives his idea a 10 percent chance of happening. He has no partners or water rights lined up to get a $5 billion to $8 billion nuclear power plant built, saying
he doesn't want to waste time on that if the county blocks his idea.

If the project moves forward, he said, he has agreements from a Colorado family and the family of Mary Clark of Comanche, Texas, to buy their Pueblo County ranch land, where the longest shadows are cast by clouds and power lines.

Clark's son Frazier Clark lives about 50 miles from the Comanche Peak nuclear power plant in Texas and said he has watched it pump tax money into local schools and provide jobs for everyone from engineers to people with shovels.

He said the same could happen in Pueblo County.

"I know the deal in Japan has changed everyone's feelings and thoughts, and I don't blame them," Clark said. "I'm not going to be living close to it, so I hate to say anything much.

"It'd be a great economic boom for that area, but if people don't want it, we'll still be in the cattle business," Clark said.

The U.S. has 104 commercial reactors that supply about 20 percent of the nation's electricity. Residents who spoke at meetings on Banner's idea were split on whether Pueblo County should host one.

Tatiana Floka-Cosyleon lived in the former Soviet Union and considers herself lucky that she left Kiev, Ukraine, one month before the Chernobyl disaster.

Colorado School of Mines nuclear engineering student Aaron Ackerman, born and raised in Pueblo, said after the hearings that perhaps the disasters in Japan could prompt people to become more educated about nuclear power.

"People are afraid of what they don't know," said Ackerman, who will be a nuclear engineer on U.S. Navy submarines after graduation.

One of the most critical factors commissioners plan to consider when reviewing Banner's proposal is water, Chostner said.

Water will be critical for cooling reactors, but in Colorado, it's a limited resource guarded for farming, ranching, recreation, wildlife and drinking water. Banner hasn't signed any water agreements for an energy park yet.

Commissioners are scheduled to vote April 25 on the zoning change required for Banner's proposal.

Itzhak Perlman

Hard to believe, but we got a little note Saturday that there were actually a couple of seats still left to see Perlman play with the Colorado Symphony in April. People who bought tickets and can no longer attend for whatever reason are also starting to return them to the box office, so there's a chance you could pick up one of those too.

Drive-By Truckers

We're writing a group concert review this time.

The last time we saw DBT in Denver was a few years ago, but the memories still linger of a rollicking, good time that went on for hours while the band drank on stage.

This time, we went to the second of 2 nights that DBT was playing at the Ogden at the end of a bunch of tour dates before they head back to Georgia. They were mellower this time, but it's hard not to appreciate them because they won't quit and will always be interested in putting on a good show.

On Saturday, the Truckers kept things slow for about the first hour. The people in the back by the bar were singing along and dancing to the lovely "Everybody Needs Love" but we were itching to be at a rock show. So it was great when the band revved up for "Birthday Boy," "Drag the Lake Charlie" and "Get Downtown" before things slowed back down. (R. was at the show Friday night too and was surprised DBT didn't keep the tempo up.) But Saturday was more of a journey.

As expected, the encore kept going and going, but we figured DBT was fixin' to have us leave once they started playing "Angels and Fuselage."

If you missed it, someone put a vid up on YouTube:

Cheap gas

Mapquest has a new site to help you find nearby gas stations with the cheapest gas

Blurb

Stephen Colbert will be Northwestern's commencement speaker in June! Can't wait!

Sasquatch Music Festival

The lineup for Sasquatch is out, and oh, my goodness. Foo Fighters, Death Cab for Cutie, Modest Mouse, AND Wilco, Decemberists, Flaming Lips!?! AND Rodrigo y Gabriela, Bassnectar, Robyn, Old 97's, K-OS, Wolf Parade!!!! Guided By Voices, Sleigh Bells, Cotton Jones, Local Natives, it goes on and on and on.

Music we're listening to

Right now for new music, A is recommending The Synthony.

C is listening to Theophilus London but also Ivan and Alyosha's Tiny Desk Concert for NPR (I&A play in Boulder Feb. 16)

And B keeps pushing White Rabbits and Broken Bells

Egypt

If you haven't seen this yet, AP has an interactive to get you up to speed on what's been happening in Egypt and its neighbors. There's lots of content there (map, video, photos, first-person audio from journalists on what they've experienced), and the timeline is updated too.

Denver packed into the Marquis for The Get Up Kids show despite the snow and slush Saturday night. Get Up Kids have a new album, "There Are Rules," but it's the punk songs from yesterday that everyone wanted to hear.

The band obliged. They mixed new songs like "Automatic" and "Rememorable" in with old favorites like "Don't Hate Me" and "Woodson." The old stuff is what got the audience throwing fists in the air, crowd surfing and singing all the words. (At one point, lead singer Matt said, "Now shut up and let me sing it!")

There was a healthy chunk of encores, and at one point, the band broke into their version of Blur's "Girls and Boys" (with Jim singing lead)

Second leg of the tour starts next, with dates in the East.

Get Up Kids

The Get Up Kids are back together, and now they finally have a new full-length album out. On Saturday, 2/5, they come to Denver for a show at the Marquis Theater. $20 if you buy tix in advance.

Food in fashion

No, we mean it. Food is IN the fashion! Check out these photos from Wall St Journal. (The stuff starts getting good around the 4th photo)

Get Up Kids

Check out the new Get Up Kids album at Spinner.com today. They're in Denver on Feb. 5 at the Marquis Theatre. $20 in advance, or $23 day of.

New music

Good morning.

Here's a new song, "Breadcrumb Trail," by Buried Beds of Philadelphia.

Think Indie, which was started to support independent music stores, says it's no longer going to sell digital downloads as of Feb. 15.

Rooftop Vigilantes playing TONIGHT! Go to the Hi-Dive RIGHT NOW!

Or listen here, friends, to "Fists of Gary"