By J.A. Montalbano
Friday, August 24, 2007
A flag marks their realm. It's a wide, vertical white stripe in between two wide black stripes. It hangs from a wooden stake.
Two knights stand in the middle of a ring set off by loose rope. They stand in the middle of Roosevelt Park on Saturday afternoon. The rope winds around three trees and that wooden stake. It's like a makeshift boxing ring.
"Gentlemen. On your honor. Lay arms."
That's the ringleader. He's got kind of an Irish look going, with kilt and tam o'shanter. He smokes a cigarette.
At his command, two of the members of Intense Medieval Combat, in full armor and mail, with real swords, start whacking each other.
There's a "referee" in the ring, dressed in a Chinese hat and loose wraps.
If the participants' armor doesn't absorb or deflect the blow, it's going to hurt. Maybe break a bone.
One knight tries for a trip takedown, but he's the one who falls to his knees. He's quickly staring at the business end of a sword. Game over.
Other warriors mill about near the relief tent, a black-and-faded-red pagoda with harlequin trim. A participant has his helmet off, his head is shaved. He lights a cigarette.
Soon he wanders away from the group, clanging like a plastic bag full of aluminum cans off to the recycling center. He heads to the far end of the ring, near the video camera set on a tripod. He collapses onto his back. Another knight walks over to join him.
Cl-clunk, flat on his back, too. Under a towering tree. Splayed in the shade.
Another round begins.
"Lay arms."
A young couple sit in the grass nearby eating ice pops. An ice cream pushcart circles the park.
Outside the ring, another warrior is taking a break. He is stripped of his armor down to his waist. His face is red. It's at least 90 degrees at 2 o'clock, and those suits look as if they weigh about half as much as the fighter's body weight.
With his breastplate off we can see what he wears underneath. It's a Metallica T-shirt.
#2
AMP Concerts' series of shows in homes comes to an end after seven years
There are five Russian collector plates atop the mantelpiece of the fireplace behind the "stage" in Jeff Hanson's living room. They are the only precious personal items he doesn't squirrel away when he presents a house concert for about 50 friends and strangers.
His co-host, Neal Copperman, says the plates are pretty safe sitting behind the singer/songwriter types who have passed through to do 100 shows in the house-concert series the past seven years.
"You have to really be going nuts to knock things off the top shelf," Copperman noted.
And even though the headliners on this night are called the Band of Heathens, they turn out to be five friendly guys from Austin who set toes tapping with their sound that recalls the Band and the Grateful Dead.
As the band wraps up its sound check, all is calm as Hanson and Copperman greet guests and put out food before the final show in their AMP Concerts series earlier this month.
Hanson arranges a tray of bright, colorful vegetables. Early arrivals admire his dessert dish: a mango-peach-raspberry trifle, featuring ladyfingers and Cool Whip, with slivered almonds on top.
House concert die-hard Chuck Banks arrives with cakes from a bakery in Las Cruces, one of the unofficial sponsors.
Will Hanson miss the monthly invasion of bands, fans and PA systems?
"I won't miss moving my furniture once a month," he says.
Then again . . .
"I'm worried now that I won't be motivated to clean."
House concerts have cropped up around the country in the past decade as an alternative to smoky bars, chatterbox coffeehouses and other generic venues.
Music aficionados tap into a network of musicians - mostly singer/songwriters and avant garde performers - spread the word and open up their homes to 30 to 70 fans. There's little overhead, performers make a decent buck, and fans get to see fringe acts in an intimate setting.
AMP did it monthly at Hanson's house in a gated community just down the road west of Old Town. Copperman, who used the Bosque house concerts to launch a career as a promoter, is letting Hanson off the hook and moving the series Downtown to the Windchime Gallery.
[cont'd at a later date ...]
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