Family. Friends. Music. Humor. Art. Intelligence. Photography. Bicycles. Fast prime lenses. Films. Food/Cooking. Used books. Used bookstores. Used people. Used people stores. Libraries. Museums. Thrift stores. Diners. (independent) Coffee shops. Walking. Cities. Nature. Skin. Bruises. Scars. Tattoos. Movement. Coincidences. Night. Existentialism. The surreal. The absurd. The grotesque.
Music
Current Playlist
The Standards
I like a wide range of music, including singer/songwriter, indie rock, punk, hardcore, folk, jazz, blues, alt-country, underground hip-hop, classical, electronic. The list is vast, but here are some bands/musicians that I listen to on a regular basis: Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Townes Van Zandt, Nick Cave, Gillian Welch, Mark Lanegan, The Clash, Black Flag, The GC5, Pegboy, Ramones, Jawbreaker, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, At The Drive In, The Dicks, Social Distortion, X, The Damned, Fugazi, Avail, Hot Water Music, Pixies, Dead Kennedys, Minutemen, The Stooges, Bad Religion, Propagandhi, Planes Mistaken for Stars, The Black Angels, My Life in Black and White, The Starvations, Company Flow, El-P, Aesop Rock, Alkaline Trio, The North Atlantic, Jets to Brazil, Bob Mould, Sugar, The Smiths, Iron Maiden, Crystal Skulls, Sea Wolf, Talking Heads, The Veils (latest album), The Comas, The Spinto Band, Cloud Cult, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Cyrus Chestnut, Hank Mobley, etc., etc., etc.,
Most of my musical needs can be satisfied by the incredibly talented and diverse local music scene in Denver. Here are some of my favorite local bands/musicians: Monofog, Git Some, Kingdom of Magic, Planes Mistaken for Stars, Gregory Alan Isakov, Red Cloud West, Bad Luck City, The Knew, Ghost Buffalo, Matson Jones, Bright Channel, Widowers, Mustangs and Madras, Born In The Flood, Vaux, Astrophagus, Nightshark, Ian Cooke, Hearts of Palm, Black Lamb, Reno Divorce, The Wheel, Bad Weather California, Porlolo, Bela Karoli, d.biddle, Gasoline Lollipops, Killfix, Whiskey Kiss, The Machine Gun Blues, Clay Rose, Hello Kavita, The Mighty 18 Wheeler, The Photo Atlas, Reverend Deadeye, Frontside Five, American Relay, The Sputter, Ten Cent Redemption, Rachael Pollard, Tiny Television, Big Timber, Severs, Lion Sized, Eyes and Ears, Bastard Trash, …there are so many more.
Movies
Werner Herzog (Aguirre: Wrath of God; The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser; Even Dwarfs Started Small; Fitzcarraldo; Heart of Glass; Nosferatu the Vampyre; Stroszek; Woyzeck, Lessons of Darkness), Bela Tarr (Damnation, Almanac of the Fall; Werkmeister Haromonies), David Lynch (Blue Velvet; Eraserhead; Mullholland Drive; Wild at Heart; Twin Peaks), Terrence Malick (Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line), Coen Brothers (Big Lebowski; Barton Fink; Fargo; Miller’s Crossing; Raising Arizona; O Brother, Where Art Thou?), Woody Allen (Annie Hall; Bananas; Broadway Danny Rose; Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex; Love and Death; Sleeper; Take The Money and Run; Zelig),Andrei Tarkovsky (Andrei Rublev; Solaris; Stalker), Stanley Kubrick (2001; A Clockwork Orange; Dr. Strangelove; Full Metal Jacket; Lolita), Jim Jarmusch (Coffee and Cigarettes; Dead Man; Down By Law; Ghost Dog; Night on Earth), Christopher Guest (Best in Show; This is Spinal Tap; Waiting for Guffman), Akira Kurosawa (Hidden Fortress; Madadayo; Ran; Rashomon; Sanjuro; Seven Samurai; Throne of Blood; Yojimbo), Mel Brooks (Blazing Saddles; High Anxiety; The Producers; Silent Movie; Young Frankenstein), Monty Python (all of it), Guillermo Del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth; The Devil's Backbone), Misc (El Topo; Repo Man; Napoleon Dynamite; The Usual Suspects, Wings of Desire, Hard Boiled, Resevoir Dogs; Manos: Hands of Fate; A Fish Called Wanda; The Science of Sleep; Being John Malkovich; Ed Wood; Freaks; Pecker; I (heart) Huckabee’s; Borat; Rushmore; American Beauty; Catch-22; MASH; Taxi Driver; Apocalypse Now; To Kill a Mockingbird; Empire of the Sun; Betty Blue; La Double Vie de Veronique; Europa Europa, Arthouse / Foreign / Black & White / Independent / Surreal / Absurd Comedy / Weird.
Television
I don’t watch television anymore. In the past some of my favorite television shows were Twin Peaks, Arrested Development, Office UK, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Frontline.
Books
Jack Kerouac (On the Road; Desolation Angels; Dharma Bums), Jean-Paul Sartre (Nausea; The Wall; The Flies; No Exit; The Age of Reason; The Reprieve; Troubled Sleep; Existentialism is a Humanism; Dirty Hands; The Condemned of Altona; The Words), Albert Camus (The Stranger; The Plague; The Fall; Exile and the Kingdom; The Myth of Sisyphus; The Rebel; Resistance, Rebellion, and Death), Charles Bukowski (Run with the Hunted; Post Office; Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame; Love is a Dog from Hell; Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit; Dangling in the Tournefortia; Ham On Rye; Hot Water Music; War All the Time; Last Night of the Earth Poems; The Laughing Heart; Bone Palace Ballet; Sifting Through The Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way; The Flash of Lighting Behind the Mountain), Hunter S. Thompson (The Rum Diary; Hells Angles; Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72; The Great Shark Hunt; Generation of Swine; Songs of the Doomed; Better than Sex; The Proud Highway; Fear and Loathing in America), Henry Miller, Hemmingway, Steinbeck, Herman Hesse, Gunter Grass, Knut Hamsun, Dostoyevsky, Kafka, Nietzsche, Anais Nin, Salinger, Shakespeare, Arthur Miller, Edward Abbey, William Least Heat Moon, Cormac McCarthy, “A Confederacy of Dunces”, “Catch-22”, “Naked Lunch”, “A Clockwork Orange”, “Brave New World”, “Lolita”. Anything History or Philosophy related. Music books like "Please Kill Me" and "We've Got the Neutron Bomb".
Heroes
"I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints. Heroism and sanctity don't really appeal to me, I imagine. What interests me is being a man." [Camus]
I am a lot of different things, but you've probably wandered to my profile because of my photography. I am a self-taught photographer. I mostly shoot live music shows in Denver, often local bands in smaller venues, but I also shoot national acts (Tom Waits, Gillian Welch, Peter Murphy, John Doe, Daniel Johnston, Sea Wolf, Pela, B52s...). My photos have appeared in Westword and The Denver Post, both online and in print, and I’ve regularly contributed to both publications. Occasionally I'll also write a live music review, and Aversion.com published my photos and review of Tom Waits in Tulsa, OK. At the moment I am a contributor to Reverb, the Denver Post music blog. A selection of my favorite music photos can be found in my Pics section, and a larger portfolio is available on my website: http://doug-beam.com.
I'm also a vegetarian and I've got some tattoos. I'm probably not who you think I am, so don’t try to categorize me, because you'll be wrong. I'll surprise you. My online persona tends to be much darker and more serious than my real life persona. When in good company I laugh much, forget all my problems, enjoy life with a Dionysian lust, and amuse those around me.
That's about all I can say for myself. If you want to know more, you can ask. The following words and images speak volumes to (and maybe of) me:
"I’ve lived out my melancholy youth. I don’t give a fuck any more what’s behind me, or what’s ahead of me. I’m healthy, incurably healthy. No sorrows, no regrets. No past, no future. The present is enough for me. Day by day. Today! Le bel aujourd’ hui!" - Henry Miller
"I am abandoned in the world... in the sense that I find myself suddenly alone and without help, engaged in a world for which I bear the whole responsibility without being able, whatever I do, to tear myself away from this responsibility for an instant.” - Jean-Paul Sartre
"Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am vast, I contain multitudes." -Walt Whitman
Miller: A lot o' people don't realize what's really going on. They view life as a bunch o' unconnected incidents 'n things. They don't realize that there's this, like, lattice o' coincidence that lays on top o' everything. Give you an example; show you what I mean: suppose you're thinkin' about a plate o' shrimp. Suddenly someone'll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate o' shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin' for one, either. It's all part of a cosmic unconsciousness.
Otto: You eat a lot of acid, Miller, back in the hippie days?
"A wholesale grocer’s cart came by, and I saw it was filled with potatoes, but out of fury, from sheer obstinacy, I decided that they were not potatoes at all, they were cabbages, and I swore violent oaths that they were cabbages." - Knut Hamsun (Hunger)
"I get knocked down and then I get back up.
Live your heart and never follow.
I'll speak my mind you can't cover it up.
Live your heart and never follow.
I'm picking up the pieces as they break and fall.
Live your heart and never follow.
I'll take on every day standing up, standing tall.
Live your heart and never follow."
- Hot Water Music (It's Hard To Know)
"I’m 34, regular looking, but in my jeans and eerie outfits people are scared to look at me because I really look like an escaped mental patient with enough physical strength and innate dog-sense to manage outside of an institution to feed myself and go from place to place in a world growing gradually narrower in its views about eccentricity every day – Walking through towns in the middle of America I got stared at weirdly – I was bound to live my own way….But I was determined to be glad! – Dostoevsky said “Give a man his Utopia and he will deliberately destroy it with a grin” and I was determined with the same grin to disprove Dostoevsky!" – Jack Kerouac (Desolation Angels)
Hey, Doug!!! How was Nick Cave show last night? I went to Stephen Kellog @ The sixers again... They are good... and I think yesterday... almost sold out show? Happy Weekend, mio
so im going to the open stitch night for a bit afterwork at fancy tiger tomorrow (thursday). maybe if you are free or have a moment you would accompany me for a drink next door. i know that i would enjoy that. if not just know you should pay rent in my mind. i think i just quoted fugazi unintentionally. damn im awesome. but im more awesome in your presence.
oh, that's grand news!!! lots of potato mashing going on eh? relocation is postponed til Spring perhaps....but there are big things coming...watch for it :D
