TalentDiscovery.com puts you on center stage—the Internet—and this time you get criticized by real judges

by French Davis

Can you imagine if everyone had a video camera in their house that piped images directly to broadcast television and people could do whatever they wanted and put it out there for anyone to see at any given moment?

Welcome to the Internet.
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August 2010

by French Davis

Mandy Harvey can flat out sing. Her feather-light tone and pitch-perfect approach place her in a fairly elite group of jazz musicians across the country, let alone ones that grew up in Longmont and attended college at CSU…and oh, by the way, she’s also deaf. Harvey wasn’t born that way; instead, she had her entire childhood and adolescence to build her dream of becoming a jazz singer before all sound was cut from her life. And then, she realized that while she couldn’t hear any longer, her voice worked, and there was no reason she couldn’t still sing. Now, she’s in heavy rotation at Fort Collins’ Jay’s Bistro and has been featured in JazzTimes. Here, she discusses perfect pitch, learning to sing twice and the freedom of deafness.
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August 2010

FCC takes steps toward regulating Internet providers like Comcast

by French Davis / illustration by Zachary Williams

Cautiously optimistic.

That is how we should be feeling about the FCC’s proposal last month to develop a new “third way” to regulate broadband Internet Service Providers—such as the ones offered by Comcast for its high-speed Internet customers.
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June 2010

In the annals of the singer-songwriter genre, Colorado has had plenty come and go. Most trickle down from a creek of folky John Denver run-off, clad in denim, acoustic guitar in tow. John Common is nothing of the sort—he’s an educated music historian made up of equal parts Nick Drake, Miles Davis and Wilco. His latest outing, Beautiful Empty, is an under-produced gem featuring some of the finest players in Colorado, and one that stands out not only as a personal best but a sublime work, completely at home sandwiched between Ray LaMontagne and Tom Waites on your iPod. Here, he talks about assembling the A-Team of Colorado musicians, his rigorous exfoliating regimen and that awesome Chuck E. Cheese band.
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June 2010

Summer is no time to mess around.

There’s work to be done and where there’s work, there damn well better be beer; ice cold and in sufficient quantity to beat back the baking heat of the day. But when gulping ice cold beer, a man must still be able to deftly maneuver his cutting machine around the wife’s azaleas and avoid giving little Debbie’s Barbie in the yard the Freddie Krueger treatment. This calls for the Right Stuff.

Just as you wouldn’t try gaping a spark plug with a church key, don’t go trying to cool off with a Russian Imperial Stout. The last thing you need is a heavy, overly hoppy, alcohol-laden beer that takes you straight to hangover mode in the sweltering heat of the midday sun. No, you need a beer that you can quaff with ease, again and again that doesn’t leave you with an injury-inducing buzz.

So you can arm yourself with the right tools for the job, I have—after much liver-straining research—assembled a Top 10 Summer Brews list. Here you’ll find quenching refreshment that won’t cloud your ability to manhandle that mower or finesse the hedge trimmer around the shrubs. These brews are somewhat lighter in alcohol, but not in flavor or character, and lend themselves to ice cold quantitative consumption.
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June 2010