Allmusic.com recently paid tribute to the year 1979 in their “Allmusic Loves…” series. That write up reminded me that with every decade, music fanatics like me going though a period of dismay and aggravation with the state of music. In 1979 so-called music critics declared punk rock dead, and many people followed like lame sheep. Record company execs were more than happy to fill “the void” with bland pop, the likes of Toto.
Today we are going through that phase once again. Thankfully, Tyler “Danger” Jacobson, co-founder of Denver’s Lipgloss dance night, has joined with Jake Ryan present SPLIT, offsetting the state of dismay caused by Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga infatuation. A night dedicated for music lovers like us.
You can guess SPLIT’s origin from a variety of sources: Tyler’s split from Lipgloss in 2009, the split from the ironic banjo bands where one dies to cry out “the emperor has no clothes!” or for fans of Lush, SPLIT was influenced by that band’s third album title. It’s all those things and more.
SPLIT happens one Saturday every month at Paris Wine Bar, an intimate venue located at 1549 Platte Street in Denver, featuring a playlist that beckons back to 90’s British indie rock, farther back to those late ‘70s Iggy Pop days, and up to 2010, spinning British, American and Swedish indie tunes found on their weekly digital radio podcast show, Danger Radio (www.tylerdanger.com).
In April, SPLIT goes down this Saturday, April 17, bringing in guest DJ Tower (who guest DJ’d on Danger Radio this week) while Jake Ryan tromps around Madchester and London.
Tyler has always thought of himself as being part of that counter-culture, similar to the Beats who would make My Brother’s Bar their drinking hole, the kids who frequented CBGB’s in New York in the ‘70s, The Troc in San Francisco in the ‘80s, or the Merc in Denver in the ‘90s. In the way Tyler started Lipgloss with Michael Trundle years ago, filling a void for indie dance fans wanting to get away from d-bag havens like The Church and Vinyl, he and Ryan have created a night for alienated music fans to gather and share their love of music found under the radar.
Essentially, SPLIT is an in-person Danger Radio session where you can be as opinionated about your musical tastes as the hosts and discover new tracks to add to your iPod and/or concert calendar.
“We don’t want to be responsible for filling a dancefloor if the dancefloor is filled with Timberlake & Metro Station fans,” said Tyler. “Split isn’t a night for people graduating from Radio Disney…”
“This is cerebral,” Ryan adds. “This is art.”
Check out Danger Radio podcast, which appears every Tuesday, including the show from a few weeks ago where Tyler and Ryan were kind enough to allow me into the studio to spout about all the great music I saw at SXSW 2010 and play my selected tracks.
