Blog: The Donnybrook Writing Academy

Forging a music career is like choosing to have multiple-personality disorder. You have your creative hippie guy personality making music every day; you have the strict music teacher telling you to practice every day; you have your social butterfly dude telling everyone about your next show; and you have your cold, calculating jerk guy managing the band. You have to maintain all of these personalities, constantly. It takes some mad coordination. It's no wonder musicians need help with their careers. That's basically what the Denver Music Summit is about - helping bands get their careers rolling and get [...]

Most Likely To: overwhelm with healthful and invigorating goodness. Of all the headscratchers in pop music history, the complete obscurity of Scotland's Orange Juice , at least in the United States, is one of the scratchiest. How the band completely managed to elude U.S. label interest during their early 1980s heyday is baffling. If bands like the Joboxers, Danny Wilson, and Haircut 100 - all of whom lifted Orange Juice's sound pretty in toto - could find American label homes and subsequently have hits on this side of the Atlantic, how in [...]

The idea of contagion cannot be better visualized than someone sneezing into the face of another person. A sneeze seems to be no more than a simple, sinister transmittal of germs - a virus hacking our bodies and momentarily taking control of our motor cortex so that it may manipulate a series of muscles and organs into executing a hiccuping, dispersing expulsion. Sneezes package pathogens in projectile form - as huge gobs of snot and mucus - and as particulate matter that floats gently through the air for extended periods of time, wafting to and fro before finally [...]

Like This and Like That is the new column from Snobcast extraordinaire, Father Guido Sarducci IV. The procedure: Every morning (OK, maybe not every morning) Guido will snatch the first crisp, clean & new mp3 he stumbles upon, listen to it at least once, and then find an old song (ten years or more) for some good old-fashioned compare and contrast. The purpose: To draw a line between the modern and the out-of-date. The premise: To expose the kids to their past while also showing the unfashionable adults that there's great new music being made every day. [...]

Most Likely To: somehow charm the hell out of you while stealing your lunch money. Grab your spiral notebook and a No. 2 pencil, because Anya Marina 's Spirit School is about to make learning fun again. The singer-songwriter's self-produced EP is made up of four new tracks and a remix of "Satellite Heart," which appeared in its original form on the Twilight Saga: New Moon soundtrack. The notion of a "spirit school," in Marina's own words, is a place in which "all of the misfits are welcome, where dreams [...]

Check out this awesomely shot video for the classic SRRS song, "Dead Men's Words." Thanks to Speaker Snacks for premiering this on their site yesterday. What a gem. SRRS draft3 from Vincent Comparetto on Vimeo .

The Magnetic Fields last tour t-shirt was simply the slogan "Listen to The Magnetic Fields," which at first sounds like the kind of pandering frat boys would use to justify their terrible taste in reggae music, but the catch was "THE" took up the majority of the shirt. Passer-bys would have to squint to read the nearly invisible "Listen to" and "Magnetic Fields." The shirt perfectly sums up the band; they take what publicity they can get, but they won't beg for anything. Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and The Magnetic Fields is the documentary equivalent of the [...]

Most Likely To: be on Jack Skellington's iPod. Just as the original punk movement split into several subgenres, it shouldn't be surprising to learn that the Hot Topic generation's version of punk would do the same thing and splinter into all sorts of smaller chunks. I don't shop at Hot Topic or read Alternative Press often enough to know what any of these subgenres might actually be called, but one of them is obviously a 21st century version of Goth. But where the punk of the Sex [...]

Donnybrook is about to embark upon a grandiose redesign for the next few months. We're getting new e-chandeliers and a new Olympic-size e-swimming pool at the Manor. We'll probably keep our slogans "A society for cultural advancement" or sometimes the age-old "Elitism. Concern. Blazers with kerchiefs" or our part-time favorite "We're laughing at you," but we thought we'd open it up to the huddled masses to see if you all have any ideas for a slogan. If something is extra special, who knows. We might use it. Some slogan ideas to get your mental wheels greased [...]

"DENVER UNDISCOVERED is a documentary about the independent music scene in Denver, Colorado. It provides a unique snapshot of the musical talent that Denver has to offer, featuring interviews and performances from a wide variety of bands, including: The Warlock Pinchers, Snake Rattle Rattle Snake, Achille Lauro, The Don'ts and be Carefuls, Git Some, Sole and the Skyrider Band, Air Dubai, The Pirate Signal, Old Radio, Lil Slugger, Candy Claws, The Swayback, FLASHLIGHTS, Gauntlet Hair, Tjutjuna, Woodsman and many more." -Dane Bernhardt ( Crazy Horse Studios ) Denver Undiscovered - Trailer from Crazy Horse Studios [...]

Most Likely To: soften even the hardest heart. Summer Camp are the London-based duo comprising Jeremy Warmsley and Elizabeth Sankey. Warmsley isn't new to music, as he's released a few singles and EPs as a solo artist, while Sankey comes to musical performance having trod journalism's bitter road. She has a day job at Platform Magazine , home to London's most humorous hipsters. Warmsley and Sankey posess a deep knowledge of 1980s teen flicks, which they reveal in their song titles. As any red-blooded girl above the age [...]

Most Likely To: beat deliberately, incessantly, remorselessly upon the bedrock of the shore, inexorably reducing mighty boulders to the tiniest specks of sand. Lots of people love the ocean but I think it's creepy as hell. The damned thing is controlled by the freaking moon, for crying out loud, and nothing good has ever come from that. A vast, deep, unknowable force in thrall to a big-ass rock forever circling over our heads held up by a force scientists still don't have a clue how to explain, forever pounding away at the edge [...]

Most Likely To: catch some airplay sandwiched between Avey Tare and Toro Y Moi at your local Urban Outfitters. At only 22 years of age, Texan Spencer Stephenson changes his moniker more often than some folks change their hairstyle. Just last year he was performing as Abacus, but changed to Botany for what his Soundcloud page calls "practical reasons." (Perhaps he is referring to the rather large number of other musical projects that also use the name Abacus.) Stephenson actually released the title track from Feeling [...]

Most Likely To: trouble the soul. It seems that any time I'm suffering from insomnia and lying in bed unable to sleep but want nothing more than to do so, some joker at the radio station I'm listening to will decide to play Gilbert O'Sullivan's "Alone Again, Naturally." Now I ask, under what circumstances would anyone ever want to hear that song at 3 A.M.? Tossing and turning during the wee hours of the morning is prime time for dark and dreadful thoughts, and who the hell needs Gilbert O'Sullivan rubbing it [...]

The 33 rd Denver International Film Festival recently wrapped-up. If you've been paying attention, you've seen our correspondents kicking-ass with film coverage. Here, Fritz Godard and Antoine von Frankenstein wrap-up their covergae by giving-out some film fest related awards. Starving Artist Award: Echotone. This award is given to the most interesting look at the only two things that [...]

Like This and Like That is the new column from Snobcast extraordinaire, Father Guido Sarducci IV. The procedure: Every morning (OK, maybe not every morning) Guido will snatch the first crisp, clean & new mp3 he stumbles upon, listen to it at least once, and then find an old song (ten years or more) for some good old-fashioned compare and contrast. The purpose: To draw a line between the modern and the out-of-date. The premise: To expose the kids to their past while also showing the unfashionable adults that there's great new music being made every day. [...]

A few months back, Rich LeFevre and I had an idea that Donnybrook should have a wine tasting column, only the host should talk about the bouquet only after drinking an entire bottle. The end result saw our host, the typically excitable but still mild-mannered Mr. LeFevre, morphing into some sort of short-shorts-wearing Daniel Plainfield drunken superbeast, who even seemed to unnerve Magic Cyclops. Mr. LeFevre was left with a wicked two-day hangover and hazy memories of the night, and we were left with tons of video that included scenes we weren't sure our sponsors* would want anything [...]

Action Packed Thrill Lucas says, "We're celebrating the release this Thursday at the final Hot Congress Residency show at the Meadowlark. Fingers of the Sun, Night of Joy, and Ken Arkind with Patrick Kelly will also be playing/poeticizing - you should come (with friends!)" [Audio clip: view full post to listen] [Audio clip: view full post to listen] Hot Congress Related articles Hot Congress Residency at the Meadowlark in November! (godonnybrook.com)

Dear creators of Table Topics: In the future, you may want to give more thoughtful consideration to the manner in which you abbreviate things on your website. I would hope that there is no such thing as "d.p." in my mother's world, but if there is, I'm aghast at the prospect of your promise: something even worse than my mom's d.p. Yours in sincerity, Professor E. Q. Honeydew.

Most Likely To: do nothing to either tarnish or enhance past glories. That Helmet is still a going concern in the year 2010 seems to be as big a surprise to Paige Hamilton as it is to anyone. He apparently tried to retire the name in the early 21st century, long after the band's '90s heyday, but was talked out of it by label head Jimmy Iovine. Hamilton is no longer signed to Iovine's label but he keeps releasing albums under the Helmet moniker, seemingly out of inertia as much as [...]