DIY Venues Incorporated

 The following interview with Bryan and Sean Ostrow of Flux Capacitor was conducted at What's Left Records in Colorado Springs on December 14th, 2021. (photo by Ben Stegeman) Eddie: So first of all, what was your guys' introduction to DIY? Bryan: For me, I used to, I started going to- well, my real introduction to DIY was going up to shows at like, Blast-O-Mat, or like Rhinoceropolis. Shows like that, maybe three times a week, we would go to Denver all the time, and we were just kind of like, as I mentioned to you before, "This is so cool, why don't we have this down in town [Colorado Springs].  And I'd say before that, my real introduction to DIY would just be house shows. We used to do house shows at our houses, go to house shows, stuff like that. Sean: Yeah, I would agree, it's the same thing, we used to go to house shows, my brother would host house shows, a long time ago when we lived out in Falcon. Then yeah, Blast-O-Mat was the first DIY,  DIY I ever wen

 The following interview was conducted with Madeline Johnston of Midwife via email Wednesday, October 27th, 2021. Q: What was your introduction to DIY and what appealed to you about it? I think I was going to DIY shows before I really knew what that meant. Growing up in Santa Fe, there wasn’t a ton going on, especially for teenagers. We had a venue called Warehouse 21 where I went to my first DIY shows in middle school. The first show I saw was this amazing emo/scremo band called Kidcrash, they were our hometown heroes. Warehouse 21 was a non-profit teen arts center, but it was mostly organized by the youth, it was totally a DIY operation, looking back. There were touring bands and local bands. It was the first time in my life I had encountered this environment: I was intrigued and intimidated at the same time.   I think this is when I started paying attention to the older kids - I looked up to them, tried to be like them, and wanted to learn from them. I’m still doing that, but now I’

 The following interview is with Aaron Saye and was conducted via text about 7C on 08/11/2021: Eddie: Hey Aaron, should we go for it? Aaron: Sure! Eddie: So firstly, what was your entry point into the DIY community? What was your introduction? Aaron: ah, cool! The first truly DIY shows I went to were in 2005. There was a spot called the Fallen Skate Warehouse at 22nd and Lawrence, where the people who were renting the place had built a bunch of huge skate ramps and bowls inside this half-block-wide warehouse, and they threw shows there. The first time I saw a band there, they played on a stage made of wood pallets stacked on top of beer kegs. It was great. I started going to local punk shows there, saw a lot of touring bands play there throughout 2005 as well, and when it got shut down at the end of 2005 and my friends’ show that was supposed to happen there got moved to someone’s basement, that was my first house show. The person whose house hosted that last-minute show started throwi