If you didn’t catch it, the Westword picked up the story about the Denver Public Health Department’s campaign against having any sound you can recognize as music in the city.
After that story hit the streets, Wax Trax and several of you stepped up to defend the shows at a meeting with the City to discuss changes to the ordinance. Instead of taking our language, the city proposed an idea of their own, which essentially boils down to changing the festival ordinance to allow more frequency of events (four vents every three months).
While this does amount to progress and would allow Wax Trax Sidewalk Shows once a month, it kinda misses the main point of the Community Performances Amendment Wax Trax put forward in February. Our idea is that there should be a difference in how the city regulates a free, open to the public, non-commercial and short-duration show (which could be considered a public good) and a paid massive music festival (which is music as a commodity or a private good).
Anyone in the city should feel empowered to put on a public music event for their neighborhood, and if it’s not for profit and low impact, why should the city be involved at all? The city’s role is just to ensure that people are not harmed by an event– and if an event is not harmful in any way, why should it be made to jump through hoops just to exist?
Make sure you’ve signed the petition so we can keep you involved.
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