Happy 2012 everyone! If you’re reading this, the world hasn’t yet ended, but of course, some are saying that won’t happen until right before Christmas 2012. So just in case, do your shopping late this year.

However, if you want to give CDs as a present next year, you might do well to buy early.

It’s been alleged that whether or not we make it to the end of 2012, it looks like our little plastic friends won’t be joining us in 2013.

Rumor, internet lore, and some actually reliable media outlets are reporting that while not all CD production will stop, the major labels will cease producing your run of the mill, regular CD release. Limited edition discs with bonus material are alleged to be surviving.

Now we won’t know for some time whether or not these rumors are actually true, as no major label has actually made any official comments on these stories, and quite frankly, I’m torn as to whether or not the CD has run its course or not.

The part of me that has a whole wall of discs that I rarely, if ever listen to (because I already have them in more accessible — and automatically alphabetized —digital format) could care less if the CD survives. As a pragmatist, I realize that few CDs have any artwork that can’t be appreciated just as easily in the iTunes cover flow format. And, I realize that the ones that do have crazy cool packaging and true artwork will still be released as special editions.

But as a collector of music, a completest who doesn’t get an album just because of one song, I’m sad to see a tangible product like the CD disappear, and much more so, I wonder what the trickle down effect will be to retailers, and more importantly, the guys behind the counter at those retailers — that’s the real loss here, lest we forget.

Blame will be pointed in several directions including the labels themselves, the internet and illegal file sharing, but if folks are really looking for someone to blame, they should blame their kids, and the artists they listen to.

You see, pop music has always been the backbone of record sales, and even if you don’t like pop, it’s that share of the market that allows you to walk in to a brick and mortar store and walk out with a title from some obscure band from halfway around the world.

But kids brought up on the internet could care less about collecting tangible music these days. Yeah, some of them still buy CDs, but not nearly in the numbers they used to. Yeah, some of them illegally download or share their files, but that’s still not the nail on the head either. The real issue is that in their short attention span lives, and in their Google-warped minds, they know they can access what they want when they want, even if that means having to watch and listen to some crappy mobile phone video that’s as shaky as a meth head on a binge.

Studies have showed that kids don’t care about information they can find on the internet, that they don’t retain the information, but instead retain only the search terms needed to retrieve it.

So like the bumper sticker that urges you to “hug your kids at home, belt them in the car,” I suggest adding to that “and make them sit down and listen to music as they hold real product in their hands.” It’s the only hope for the future of physical media and for the guys behind the counter at our local stores.

See you at the shows.

The issue you hold before you is the start of our eighth volume. That means that we’ve survived seven years in a down-trodden economy in a business that people claim daily is dying.

Print is dead? My ass!

I think if nothing else, we’ve proven in the past seven years that while big mainstream publications that are trying to be everything to everyone are, in fact, failing miserably, specific niche publications like The Marquee are being sought after more and more by readers. Niche publications are beginning to be viewed much like the community publications that this nation once relied upon, before those publications were homogenized, monetized and squeezed of all life. It’s a formula that continues to fail, not just in publishing, but other industries as well. There are no profits when a product has no life.

I may be archaic in my thinking, but I’m a firm believer that little papers and magazines are blossoming because they are crucial institutions to our sense of community. In an era when every community has the same big box stores, the same chain restaurants on every corner and the same crappy newspaper as the next town (because they’re all owned by the same companies these days), the spirit of an independent rag like this one can’t help but thrive.

So if you’re picking us up for the first time, or if you’re one of our beloved readers who have all 84 back issues stashed neatly away on your “music porn” shelves, thank you.

Supporting your local music magazine is like supporting your local record shop. Yeah, the giant chain might have some better selection, and yeah, Amazon can get you pretty much anything you want in 48 hours, but wouldn’t you rather make a personal connection with someone and something real? We sure would.

So again, thank you for picking us up, for standing by us for seven years, and for leaving copies on the back of your toilet when you have a party. It means the world to us and we couldn’t have done it without the community support.

See you at the shows.

You see, five years ago this very month was the first ever issue of The Marquee in the form you see it now — it was the first month where we went from being 100% newsprint to having that sexy glossy cover that is now such an identifying element of the magazine.

So it’s really fitting to have an interview with Warren Haynes, once again, in this issue because, like Haynes, 2010 is the year I’m going to focus on my baby again. As our writer Hap Fry explains in his story, the Mule is Haynes’ main focus this year, after several years of working on other projects — and it’s a feeling I can relate to.

Like Haynes, I put my life’s passion on hold in recent years, to explore other possibilities, see other perspectives and learn (or at least try to learn) along the way — and I’m happy as can be that I did. Being away from The Marquee full-time made me miss the hell out of it and made me realize how much more could be done with this humble little magazine.

Early in my career, I was a reporter for a community newspaper in a tiny little town. The paper was a true mom and pop shop, with a husband and wife team that ran the show. I always wanted to own that paper, but now many years later, I find myself having an even better reality.

In recent months, The Marquee has become a mom and pop shop itself, with my wife, Jess, officially joining the front lines of the magazine (she’s been a long-term behind-the-scenes supporter, of course). So now, instead of a family-owned business that covers school board meetings and planning commissions, like that other paper I worked for, we get to have that same community feel, while covering our community, the music scene.

With 2010 upon us, here we are: revitalized, rejuvenated and ready to nurture this little beast into the publication that it can become.

Thankful for the lessons learned in our past, and the opportunities we were able to experience along the way, and with great optimism and hope for the future, The Marquee is like the little indie band that has once again found its roots and its voice.

See you at the shows.

I received an international phone call from a  friend in Europe who read it online and thought we were going to re-shape the mag entirely. I got a very endearing e-mail from a local reader who begged us not to change any content.

To those people and others who did not reach out, I ask you to please breathe. This baby of mine ain’t changing in any drastic way.

But we are going to be making some small changes — the first of which you can find this month on page 24. It’s a new colum called “Local Love,” which is designed to highlight a couple of local bands each month. It’s kind of amazing we haven’t done this before, but suddenly last month, the light bulb went on about how to properly implement that idea.

There’s also been discussion about resurrecting our “Overheard” column that gives little tidbits of news around the Colorado music community — you know, the “So-and-so won an award,” “Such-and-such band added a new player,” etc.

When I said last month that the cannabis community has been embracing us wholeheartedly, and that we plan on doing so in return, I meant just that. But what I failed to say is that our music coverage wasn’t going anywhere, and that this support was only going to help us do some things we’ve never had the opportunity to do.

Sure, we might implement some medical marijuana columns, but we’re not going to make knee-jerk reactions when it comes to our content. We’re NOT reshaping the magazine, we’re just opening our minds to the endless possibilities.

For those who were concerned, I really and truly cannot thank you enough. It means you care. It means you “get” us. It means that all of the struggle we’ve put into this magazine hasn’t gone unnoticed and we are so incredibly grateful for that. But think about the changes ahead kind of like losing or (something I’m more familiar with) gaining weight. It’s not going to happen overnight. You’re not going to suddenly wake up and find The Marquee 50 pounds fatter. But we’re going to add a little here and a little there each month, until we’re a nice plump publication that you can’t wait to sink your teeth into — full of juicy music with some nice garnish and side dishes of cannabis. It’s going to be a fun journey and we’re honored to have you along for the ride.

See you at the shows.

What an amazingly awesome turn of events, and content, we’ve had in The Marquee over the last two months. It kind of caught us off guard, but the medical marijuana movement has come through huge for us and we couldn’t be more grateful.

Back in the mid-Nineties, when I was still a relatively young reporter, my dream was to write for High Times magazine, and after a whole bunch of rejections from them I was finally given the chance in early 1996. As part of the Highwitness News Team, I was on the front lines of the medical marijuana movement. It got to the point where, in between freelancing for HT, I used a week’s worth of vacation time from my corporate newspapering job to volunteer with NORML. Yes, I felt so strongly about it, I gave up vacation time. Now here we are more than a dozen years later and I find myself again near the front lines of that same movement.

Since things caught us so off guard, we weren’t really able to prepare the magazine for the change in advertising and we hope to, within the next few months, find a way to balance what we’ve always done — bringing you stories on Colorado’s live music scene — with some information about this movement that is happening before our eyes.

As with any new industry, people are going to want reviews and for us to hand out kudos to their shops, and we will be doing that from time to time. But as we venture into this, we will make this vow to our loyal readers — any praise will be handled with the same care that we provide for our musical coverage. What that means is that you’re not going to have to search through negative reviews to find the good establishments. Those who read us each month will notice that we never run CD reviews of less than two stars. While it could be argued that we give everyone good reviews, it can also be argued that we don’t waste our time or yours telling you why something sucked — instead we just want to tell you what’s good.

So keep an eye out for those changes that are heading your way and by all means voice your opinions about them. If you don’t mind the magazine looking elsewhere for content, tell us, and if you do mind, tell us that as well. Without your feedback we’re blind, so let us have it.

For those of you who don’t care for the movement, we hope not to alienate you. We’re not going to completely change our voice. It’s our opinion that the only reason we’re still here after nearly eight years, is because of our hard line “nothing but music” attitude. But we also think that changing things up from time to time and adding fresh life is a worthwhile venture.

See you at the shows.

The circle of people who surround this magazine, as I’m sure you can imagine, are very near and dear to me. The amount of tireless hours that go into this magazine each month from them still astounds me.

Of those people, there is no one who has given more volumes of quality content to The Marquee than Timothy Dwenger. Tim has written more stories for this magazine than any other writer (including me) and single-handedly shaped the contents of these pages, and my own personal music collection, because of his work.

Well, Tim got married this month as this issue was going to press, and you’ll notice that he still contributed two stories (I told him not to and to take the month off, but he insisted).

I don’t want to get too gushy, but I wanted to take this space to wish him and his lovely bride Lindsay all the best in this new chapter of their life. They are one of the most loving and inspiring couples I know, and my wife and I have spent many an evening with them enjoying some of the very artists that Tim helped turn me on to. Best of luck, you guys. You deserve the world.

Their marriage leads me to another amazing couple in The Marquee family who also tied the knot this month. Amy Rist — who like many Marquee people, has come, gone and then come back to Marquee-land — this month, married her long-time boyfriend and fellow Marquee distribution manager Joey Wilkinson. I’ve always loved the fact that Amy’s strong Boston voice is as loud and as powerful as mine, and that she’s never afraid to use it. So, I’m bracing myself for the phone call I’m soon due about missing their wedding. I’m so sorry you guys. Despite my absence at the ceremony, you know I love you both and wish that your future years together are as fun and fulfilling as your years up till now have been.

For those of you who don’t know either of those couples, I’ll get back to my pointless, incessant ramblings in next month’s issue — which I also promise you is going to feature an out-of-this-world interview: our first inter-galactic, inter-species interview that is not to be missed.

See you at the shows.

However, we still have a few great days outside before we become vampire-like again — and the Monolith Music Festival, yet again, is proving to be one of the best two days of outdoor music this year.

There’s an element of discovery at this festival (now in its third year) that is unparalleled anywhere in the Colorado music scene.

Sure, we have some of the best festivals in the world here — bar none bluegrass festivals, superstar mega-fests and, of course, our hippie, jammy celebrations.

But Monolith is a different beast.

Whereas those other festivals can be somewhat predictable in their lineups — aside from the occasional big surprises that promoters throw in — Monolith is full of surprises, and prompts more “Who the hell are these guys?” questions than any other event in Colorado.

And that’s exactly what it’s meant to do, by design.

Festival directors Josh Baker an Matt Fecher spend more time seeking out up-and-coming, just-off-the-radar bands than any other promoters and have grown this “new music” festival into Colorado’s closest equivalent to SXSW.

It’s an incredibly important role to our entire scene. The excitement of “Who’s next?” and “What’s that?” is a contagious virus that spreads to the clubs, infiltrates the South Broadway indie scene and fuels excitement long after the stage has been cleared and the gear hauled away.

That “new music” moniker is an important one to keep in mind. True, that most of the bands playing Monolith can be filed under “indie,” but indie-what is the real question. From acoustic singer/songwriters, eccentric indie pop acts, off-the-cuff rock acts and straight-up hip-hop, the Monolith umbrella is as vast as Red Rocks itself.

Study our “Must Hears,” do some myspacing ahead of time and get in some good stretches before the gates open and you should be able to tackle enough material to fill a vault over the two day period. Remember, Monolith is not your average trip to Red Rocks. You won’t be a passive audience member — and if you are, you’re missing the point.

See you at the shows.

Love Phish or hate them, if you’re a fan of any kind of music these days, you kind of have to marvel at what their reunion this summer has done, the excitement it has spurred throughout the industry, and the holy-shit-is-that-Phish-in-a-mainstream-media-outlet attention it has spurred.

But one thing that it has also shown is greed, and this time I’m talking about greed within the fan base, not the normal outlets we point our fingers at, like Ticketmaster and scalpers and such.

I was talking with some friends the other night and we were sharing stories about how we got our tickets and who we know that got shut out and all of that. It’s a conversation I’ve had several times this summer and in EVERY conversation it is always inevitably revealed that at least, at least one person used a slew of credit cards from family members, friends and old dead relatives to try to score their seat. I’m sorry but I think that sucks. It’s that kind of activity that fuels the greed of scalpers and ticket agents.

Let’s take these Red Rocks shows, for example. They sold out almost before they went on sale. Just for argument sake let’s say that there were one million people vying for these (roughly 40,000) seats. If everyone who was trying for them used two cards each, then, duh, no wonder it was so hard to get tickets — not to mention the bastards who used five or more cards.

That fervor is what creates all the opportunity in the world for fans to get ripped off in the long run. Now, luckily, some of the monster prices that were happening have settled down and most tickets for the Phish run (as we go to press, just a week before the actual shows) are hovering at around the $200 to $300 mark — which is still obscene, but not as bad as when there were extra zeroes.

I don’t know how we begin to curtail that over-the-top, I-gotta-have-it demand for big-ticket shows, but as music fans we’re the ones who end up screwing ourselves by acting so damn eager. It doesn’t take a business genius to realize that it’s dumb to sell a ticket for face value when someone will pay five times that — blame scalpers all you want, but they’re just cogs in the wheel at that point, and they’re not even driving.

Next time there’s a show you would sell your first-born kid to go to, take the high road and enter one card number. If you’re one of the people who are “supposed to be there” the universe will make it happen, or maybe it won’t, but won’t you feel better about yourself? If you said ‘no,’ you just proved my point.

See you at the shows.

I’ve written about her case before but just to recap, Thomas-Rasset was found guilty in 2007 of illegal file sharing on Kazaa. At that time she was smacked with a $222,000 fine from the federal jury. But, a new trial was ordered after a judge claimed he erred in giving jury instructions.

Well, Thomas-Rasset was back in court last week and by the time happy hour on Thursday rolled around, she was found guilty of violating music copyrights and she was ordered to pay an even larger fine than her first ruling — $1.92 million — $80,000 per song — to the recording industry.

Take that in for a second. Eighty grand per song. Eight-zero-zero-zero-zero. I’ve heard some pretty awesomely amazing songs in my day, but never have I heard one that was worth $80,000. Or, think about it this way: Thomas-Rasset could have purchased 80,000 songs from the iTunes store for what they want her to pay for sharing just one of her songs (she was found guilty of sharing 24).

What blows me away — besides the ungodly high and arbitrary penalty — is only one download of her songs was ever shown as evidence in court, and that was a download by a copyright security company. Get that? They never proved that anyone else ever benefited from Thomas-Rasset’s sharing. They simply argued that it was “logical” that other Kazaa users would have downloaded the tracks.

I’m sorry. That’s just retarded. It’s almost as bad as Thomas-Rasset’s defense claiming that maybe someone else, like her ex-husband or kids, downloaded the files.

The case will obviously go through more appeals and be argued all over again, but I and many others still don’t see what the point is of slapping a mother with a fine she’ll never be able to repay. That $1.92 million isn’t going to help the record industry rebound from their claims that P2P sharing is killing their revenues — and I think that ludicrous penalty will do little to deter file sharing simply because it’s so unrealistic. Sue someone for $1.92 million or $192 million, or $1.92. If they’re broke already, they’re already broke and you’re not going to get your money.

Someone needs to come to their senses on this case.

See you at the shows.