Horaldo's Burrito Factory

Davetofel Dome
South Denver, Colorado

Stability is key in a high-speed burn across the flats of Nebraska and on to an equally unassuming eastern portion of Colorado... we contemplate mythic sacred rites of ancient weirdoes transplanted to comment on the unutterably strange rituals of living weirdoes... we stare at the Iguanas and meditate on the quite literally breath-taking view... then we ROCK.

"The book has not yet steered us wrong," I said, pressing my finger on the page of the guide like a preacher pushing his finger down on a page of the Bible.

"Yeah, but it's three hours out of the way," Jon replied. He glanced quickly to his left. "Damn. That guy just passed us and we're goin'..." he trailed off and looked down. "We're goin' 85."

"Sweet Jesus." I tuned back to the subject at hand. "I know, I know. It's just an option."

"Well I kinda wanna go, too."

"I know... Carhenge. It sounds so epic." We passed the mangled carcass of an unrecognizable beast. We couldn't quite tell what it lived its life as, though it certainly didn't look like a deer. Nebraska rolled on flatly.

"It says that it's an exact replica of Stonehenge. I wonder if that means it's synched up to the sun the same way, too."

"I dunno," I shrugged. "I wonder if the guy was smart enough to think of that. If it were a solstice, we'd totally have to go."

"I'm sure there'd be mad Druid rites or something going down," Jon suggested.

"Yeah, the hedonistic dance of the American ironicists."

"That's what I'm talkin' 'bout."

"It's probably best left on paper. It sounds like one of those things that one can understand without actually being there."

"Yeah, like a John Cage piece."

"Exactly."

"So, you wanna skip it?"

"Sure, let's haul ass to Denver."

***
After some botched directions, we discovered my friend Dave in a house by himself, living in the land of milk and honey. With his housemates migrated back east for the summer, Dave has a nifty little spread going; swimming pool, wonderful stereo, plenty of light, and a barbecue, all in a quiet little neighborhood.

"Colorado's a pretty recreational state," he explained this morning, just before we set off on a brief tour of the area. "A lotta people do outdoor stuff. What do you wanna do?"

"I dunno," we shrugged.

"I could take you to Red Rocks," he offered.

"Could we get in?"

"Sure, you can go up on the stage and stuff."

Twenty-five minutes later, we were curling up roads in the lower outskirts of the outlying Rockies. An empty parking lot came up on our left, dust rising in the pre-noon heat. "Hold on," Dave said, and swung abruptly into the parking lot. "We're here." He cranked the wheel violently to the left and jammed down viciously on the breaks. We swerved in a screeching arc before coming to a stop in a thick cloud.

"It's right up there," Dave said, coughing.

Jon and I chugged along behind him, heaving in the high altitude, me lugging a guitar and getting psyched to live out a rock and roll fantasy. We climbed up a winding path around the side of a gorgeous cliff. The ramp's incline was somewhere in between the level ground below and the angle of the inclined rocks that it hugged. At the top, we saw the side of a stage, and then - above that - rows and rows of something across between benches and stairs.

"This place is tiny," I exclaimed. Looking straight up from the stage, the view was dizzying. Rows and rows of unoccupied seating was dizzying, like the Sea Of Holes sequence in "Yellow Submarine". Above that was sky, flanked by mirrored jutting rock formations. I unpacked the guitar and Jon retrieved his Jew's Harp from his backpack.

I pressed record on the tape deck, an old D-6 wired with a one-channel microphone, called into action for the sole purpose of recording the event for posterity. The tape is fairly over-saturated - I forgot I was recording on a fairly cheap no-name tape - and is filled with echoes. Behind the distorted acoustic guitar, one can hear Dave moving around on stage on his skateboard, the noise filling the speakers and stopping abruptly as he falls off.

While we were playing, a day camp made up of seven and eight years olds in brightly colored red shirts wandered into the amphitheater. As they got closer, I realized the shirts didn't match. A small group of girls and a few boys stood near us, looking somewhat sheepish. Whenever we would look over at them, they would look away embarrassed.

We played a couple of songs and stopped. On the tape, several voices cut in at once.

"THANK YOU RED ROCKS!"

"WE LOVE YOU RED ROCKS!"

And then a collapse into hysterical giggles, with the vague and amused clapping of several bystanders clearly audible in the background.

Dave's voice came on. "That girl just asked me if you guys were the band playing here tonight." More giggles.

One of the girls from the day camp looked at us. "What's the name of your band?" she asked.

"Uh..." I wasn't quite sure.

"Horaldo's Burrito Factory," Jon filled in, dubbing us after a Mexican joint in his home town. The girls squealed.

"How long have you been a band?" another asked.

"What time is it?" I replied, in an answer I thought was worthy of the press conference scene in A Hard Day's Night.

"What?" she asked confused.

"About 20 minutes," Jon said quickly.

"Oh." The girls were confused.

Jesse Jarnow can be reached at jesse.jarnow@oberlin.edu or by his homepage. Previous tour journals are located here.