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Blog Entry 59 of 59 The Lush Report
I'm trying to bring some of the more overlooked stuff from the local music scene. I have to balance it against a full-time real job, so I can't be as thorough as I'd like, but hopefully you'll find some of the stuff that Mark Brown and Ricardo Baca don't cover. If you've got a tip on a great venue for live music or great musicians to check out, e-mail me here. To bookmark this blog, click here.

Blog Url: http://denver.yourhub.com/~JohnsMusicBlog

People’s Kazoo Orchestra a cultural revolution

Contributed by: John Zwick, YourHub.com   on 2/4/2009

Group seizes the means of music production

With a straight-out-of-agit-prop name like John Common, he might have been, in another place and time, at the head of a revolutionary vanguard. And yet, there is still something vaguely revolutionary about Common's latest labor.

On Jan. 28, the Denver indie rocker and his band, Blinding Flashes of Light, hosted the first tryouts and practice for the People's Kazoo Orchestra (PKO), an open-membership collective of like-minded would-be musicians. "Would-be" because many, if not all, of the PKO's members don't play other instruments and, if held back by bourgeois notions of art, might never have had a chance to perform.

"The idea originally came to me," Common said, "because I noticed that at almost every gig, people would come up to me and say 'oh my god how do you get up on stage?' You know what? The only thing keeping these people from doing this is an instrument that's really easy to play."

The kazoo, having perhaps the lowest learning curve of any instrument, Common said, seemed like the logical choice.

Throughout history, the guitar, the ukelele and harmonica have been among some of the instruments famously hyped as "the people's instrument." But nothing frees the creation of music from the tyranny of the talented like a kazoo.

So Common set out to announce the creation of the orchestra and the first tryouts. A little Photoshop here, a little revolutionary appropriation there and, before long, Maoist-inspired PKO posters made their way across the Internet to interested parties.

The first wave of PKO members were the ones to attend tryouts at The Oriental Theater on Jan. 28. Members hummed through showtunes, medleys and rousing classics from Queen to Frank Zappa.

After tryouts, new members grabbed drinks - it is glorious to get drunk, after all - and hammered out a medley to be performed at their debut show Feb. 20 at The Oriental Theater with Common, Blinding Flashes of Light, Ellison Park and Achille Lauro.

It's not too late to join the revolution, but the PKO has been sworn to KGB-like secrecy to protect its plans. For more information, including the PKO's pre-show rehearsal plans, e-mail Common at letters@johncommon.com.


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