John Golter, GLOB GLOB GLOB, Pt. 1

 The following is an interview with John Golter, resident and proprietor of GLOB GLOB GLOB:

Eddie: Alright, so... who are you?

John: Um... I'm just a guy (laughs).

Eddie: Okay, but would you be in the vicinity of John Golter?

John: I am John Golter.

Eddie: Very good... So I met you in probably 2008, but when did Glob start?

John: September 1st, 2005.

Eddie: And had you been involved in venues prior to Glob?

John: When I was in high school, we would go see the bands play at Mesa State, they had a room and a stage, and I don't think they would charge the promoter, and I would go to all the shows there. Then there was this coffee house kind of place, we'd catch shows.

Eddie: And that was in Grand Junction?

John: That was in Grand Junction. And, towards the end, I knew a little bit about equipment, and there was a show going on, and I ran down the hall to where the radio station was and I was like "Hey there's a bunch of bands playing, it'd be really cool, and easy, if we broadcast it live, but we won't tell the bands that so they don't intentionally try and cuss" and the guy's like "Huh, it actually wouldn't be too hard to go from the board to this set up, and broadcast it live" and the guy's like "I don't think we've ever done that before" 

So we got a long snake and ran down the hall with the snake, and I told the board operator, "Hey, this is going live to (the radio) DON'T say anything, cause if you tell them (the bands), they're just going to cuss" so the (board operator) is like "Oh cool, I'll just put it on these two outputs" and they broadcast like 4 bands live over the air, kind of an improv thing and I guess that was the extent of my involvement with shows (in Grand Junction). I played instruments but I was never like, in an official band, 'til I got to Denver.

Eddie: And how old were you when you moved to Denver?

John: I believe it was election night 2000, so that would have made me... 22. It was election night 2000.

Eddie: And when you moved to Denver, did you pursue musical things, or how music come into the picture?

John: I guess when I moved to Denver... I'm kind of an introvert, I didn't know anyone other than the girl I was dating and living with and I just went to a bar and happened to meet someone I'd known from back in Grand Junction and literally that night, we were like "Let's move in together!". So Kyle and I moved into a house for about a month, but the crime was so bad in the neighborhood, we moved out in the middle of the night. 

I moved back into my girlfriend's house and I really... I was debating whether I should play bass or guitar. (I decided) "I'll stand a better chance of being in a band if I play bass" and I enjoyed playing the bass more. And there was an opportunity like in 2001, to be in a band with my brother's roommates. And they were more into like, jam band stuff but I just didn't really care, cause I like didn't have any friends and Denver was so like...everyone had their group, no one was like "Yo, come hang out with us!" ya know, it wasn't like that and I not good at just like, jumping in and meeting people. It was more like, "I'll be in the band just to meet people and have fun" 

And I wrote a bunch of music and the guys were like "Oh these are really good! Let's write a song around your piece". So I did that for three years, and it was... I met a BUNCH of people and it was like, ya know, my social kind of thing. Cause I was working a video production place and it was just me and the boss. It was... I didn't work at a place where it was like, 100 employees, and we could do like, employee friends. 

So I like didn't know anyone, it was like... it was kind of weird. It was like the first time in my life, like I just wasn't hanging out with my friends. Cause like in Junction, I like always had a house with like 3 roommates and we had a band room, we'd play music and like, I grew up there, so I knew everyone. But I get to Denver and I don't know anyone. I don't know anything.

So at the Highlands house, I met some people, that were already living there, and they were in bigger Denver bands, like Scott Bao Army, members of Angels Never Answer... and I met Jacob Isaacs there. He moved away right after we first met. He eventually moved back to Denver, but... it (the jam band) was more of a social thing. I'm just as happy sitting in my room, doing bedroom recordings with my instruments. I don't need to do, like, a show. It's fun, but it's nothing I'm dying to... jump up and (say) "Everyone look at me". 

Eddie: So you started out with this jam band for three years and when did you move into this Highlands House?

John: 2001.

Eddie: Was that after the Jam Band or was that -

John: No it was during... So I lived in the Highlands and we had a practice room and that's where I got my start recording. It was a really weird set up, there was the live room and then it was kind of like separated and that's where I had my recording gear. So all the bands that practiced there, I would just be like, "Hey, can I record you?" (and) I slowly got a little better and accumulated gear and... met more people and had parties and shows at that house. 

Eddie: Ahh, okay

John: So that's where we got started throwing shows.

Eddie: Was in the Highlands?

John: Was in the Highlands. 

So we had big parties and just had bands upstairs and we had a friend group where we would hang out on the weekend and party and do "band football" where you'd reach in a hat and be like, "Oh I'm playing drums" and this person's playing this and we'd just all rotate. And some of the members that were hanging out, would go to that, one of them is in like... The Night Sweats, and everyone kept doing the band thing for like, years and years and years. Obviously, one of them is still doing it like, very professionally. But we had a pretty big group. 

And the jam band thing kind of petered out. I just wasn't like... we did really well, we had a good guarantee, I could do it as a great part time job, um... and it was fun. But that wasn't really the scene of music I liked, at all, but the guys in the band were friends. And it fractured, all kinda fell apart. And I formed another band at the house in the Highlands, called the Purple House, and it (the band) was called The Artillian Death Sword.

I put together a trombonist, a violinist, and a drummer and then I played bass and wrote the songs and they'd spin off that. That's where I started to do a little bit more recording, get better gear and get a little bit better. And I think in about 2004... the girl I moved to Denver with, just broke up and moved out in the middle of the night, so to speak. Annd... I was so heartbroken, so destroyed, like, "I can't believe this...". 

Soo... it took me about a year to find this (GLOB GLOB GLOB), and constant interviews with landlords, just being upfront, "This is what we're gonna do", throwing parties, having bands, recording. But being a little bit... better, better space, easier to work, cause that Purple House gets so fucking hot upstairs, it was cramped, the neighbors wouldn't let us play til, past 10:30 or so, just didn't want to deal with that. 

So the first guy I met up here, Kyle, who I lived with in a house with, before the Purple House... he and I had been good friend--we're still good friends--we went looking and we found this and moved in, September 1st, 2005. And my brother rented a room, for some of his equipment, so it was just the two of us (Kyle and John) living here. 

Halloween we had our first party. It was...it was.. awesome. We had a bunch of bands play. You know, the Artillian Death Sword, etc. Johnny DJ'd.

Eddie: Johnny...?

John: Johnny Wohlfahrt, his projects called Nerves and Gel. He would play at the Purple House, and he DJ'd and we had a bunch of bands, had a bunch of kegs, a lot of alcohol, a ton of people, it was a lot of fun.

It was good!

Outside of that, ya know... we had a bunch of bands practice here, and I had a project that I would record, practice out here. Then I joined Pleistocene in I think... 2006? or '07? And that was a big band, they got a lot of press, um... that was a 12 piece band. And they had a lot of friends, so I met that whole group of people... that was a 12 piece.

It was the first time in my life where like... I'd only been in like, two bands... it was the first time they basically handed me the notes and were like, "Hey, play this" (and I was like) "I don't have to like, write the songs?" and I was like, "Let's see if I can do this". This stuff (was) like really complex, for rock music. And the songs were really long, and you're dealing with a trumpet, trombone, banjo, guitarist, ya know, violinist, drummer, and it was like "Ya gotta be on, you gotta be the rock" and played for about three years before everyone moved on, had kids or whatever.

Eddie: So were you always... So much of what Glob (was about), even from the beginning, was kind of avant garde. And was that something that you found as you found more of this friend group that developed? Or was that a natural inclination? Was that something that you were hoping to have be a part of it? Or that... things gelled that way?

John: No, that was what I was attracted to, ALWAYS, always. Attracted to more art-leaning stuff. Whether low brow or high brow, um... really creative stuff. Always been more attracted to that. And the more artistic bent, ya know? Um... whether it be performance art, comedy, whatever the more artistic, kinda weird bent. Always. From minute one. I don't know why... The entire time. Like I said, I loved my friends in that jam band, and we made some good music, but it was even kind of weird for the jam scene. But that's not where I wanted to be. It was always, wanted to do projects that were really creative and kind of weird. Like Artillian Death Sword was a violinist, a trombonist with effects and a big drum kit. 

And that music was.. was different. Was creative. I loved it. And Pleistocene was... different. Um... very different. 

So I've always been attracted to that. So I'm gonna--you get--when you have a venue, you get requests from everyone, ya know, constantly. Ya know, "Hey my band's coming in!" or "My buddy's project... we'd love to play your venue..." you listen to it and it's like... "...I don't want to see that live", it's not really what I'm interested in.

It's not that that band is terrible, it's just that, that's not what I was cultivating. And really, the first couple years, I didn't get a lot of requests, cause people just didn't know about it, cause it's just like, a house... throw parties, like with friends.

Eddie: And this was like an abandoned part of town, it wasn't a hip area at all.

John: No, it was just junkyards. A lot of junk yards, and car repairs, and we had a bar. It was pretty close to downtown, but there wasn't... ya know...

Eddie: It always just felt kind of abandoned to me, the whole area just kind of felt... abandoned.

John: I was in a project (with) the previous tenant, his name was Daniel Crosier. And he made movies and had an illustration degree.

Eddie: Moved in to Glob, you mean?

John: He was moving out, I was moving in. So we got to talk and he was like, "Oh! You're a musician! I need a musician for this project I do!" It was called, um... O.F.M. And what he was doing with O.F.M., he would use this space (Glob) to make these crazy, samurai type, costumes. Like these giant crazy huge costumes, and he would have this, like performance, where they had this whole thematic, like theatrical kind of thing, and... they would fight, samurais, huge samurai swords. And they would hit certain parts of the armor and just, blood, would splatter everywhere. And... it was really odd. And... he was just out of RMCAD (Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design) and was like, "I need someone to do a live kind of music thing", I'm like, "I can do that, I can do noise, just like really weird stuff with the bass, with some noise and effects and kind of build, and take down, and be creepy"... we had a bunch of practices and did a bunch of shows, but it was so bizarre. So odd. And Dan's just a great guy. They practiced here for a long time. I dropped out cause I was in Artillian, Pleistocene and O.F.M. and I was like... I need to keep it to just a couple projects.

Eddie: And those are like, many parts, many revolving parts of all those bands.

John: Yeah...

Eddie: So it's not just like a two piece, you get together and play your set and you're done, it's like a more involved...

John: Setting up a 10 piece is like... and the practices go like four hours, we had a lot of material. Between the two bands we probably each had an hour and a half of material, so it's like I'm memorizing three hours of material, ya know. Plus, what O.F.M. was doing and practice with that, and I was starting to do more and more recordings and getting better equipment. And I don't know... I want to say the first show that was like, "Oh... shit" was the Microphones.

Eddie: And what year was that? 

John: '06 or '07?

Eddie: Okay, cause you mentioned to me at one point that initially that most of the bands that were playing here were your friends bands and you mentioned that you were receiving solicitations or invitations from people wanting--

John: Later, later, like after year two, I think. I would get... after year two or three, I would get solicitations from touring bands. Once I got on everyone's sort of radar, there's stuff that circulates that, for touring bands that's like..."If you're in Sioux City, Iowa, go here" or "In Chicago, request here" and Rhino (Rhinoceropolis) started getting more shows. But they were bent, really, more toward the RMCAD kind of thing, where they were doing the art gallery kind of thing. And yeah they had shows, and they got some good ones, but it took, it took years.

Eddie: Was Rhino here before Glob?

John: Yeah, they moved in in May and I moved in in September.

Eddie: Okay, so it wasn't like a long time either one was like, here. So, eventually, things developed in a way that you were getting like Monotonix and No Age and all of those guys, that got a considerable amount of national press...

John: But that took years and years and years. I'd already been doing it for years and years, and then having a few parties in Junction and throwing some parties at the Purple House. And then I got here, I was 27, I would say by the time I was... 29, 30, I started getting requests from bands and people all over the place.

Eddie: Gotcha.

John: But a lot of it was, to be honest, you could put your website out there, you could put everything on Insta, well not at that time but, put everything on MySpace or Facebook. And...you're not going to have No Age...dm'ing you. It was just people I got to know. Like it was the people at Breakdown Books... and like Chris Adolf, that would bring in like, the Microphones. It was just other people who had connections to these groups.

Eddie: Gotcha

John: Ya know... cause a lot of these bands, they would tour here when they were smaller, and get to know people, and then... when they got bigger, they would still reach out to those people, and be like "Is there any place?" and the people would be like "Oh, I've heard about this place called Glob, or Rhinoceropolis" and it would just go from there. 

And once you get the ball rolling, more people, if their friend's band is coming in that's really kick ass, they'll dm me and be like "Hey," or if I already knew them, they would text me. And it was... it just takes years of word of mouth, cause I couldn't offer too much up on social media. It just takes years to get the ball rolling, it's not just "Open the doors! Here we go!" (laughs).

Eddie: So... part of that building things up-- I'm curious about how Tit Wrench got started up and how it got chosen to be here... And more festival kind of things, but more with unique purposes.

John: Well... Sarah is good friends the people in Pleistocene--

Eddie: And Sarah is...

John: Sarah Slater, the founder of Tit Wrench, and she was an activist, and she still is. Um... and... I talked to her every once in a while, ya know, and it was one of those things, you know, a show at Rhino, where she's like "I've got this idea, what do ya think?" she's like "I want to do an all female music festival for a couple days and it's going to be called Tit Wrench. What do you think?" I said "That's awesome, let's do it" or "You should do it, if you want me to help, I'll help, whatever." and she's like "Can we throw it at Glob?" I was like "Yeah, of course, all three days, let's do it".

And it was really that simple, it was like right there at Rhino. I still remember her, I was like "Yeah, why not".

Eddie: Right on. And was that as things were getting bigger? Or was that kind of a cause of things getting bigger?

John:...I don't... I don't know at what point-- I never had it in my head that it was like, big, it's still just like, a bigger group of friends. Ya know, I'm like, sure, the Microphones are big, but of course he's going to play at a place like here. He's friends with like Chris, and these other people... he could go to somewhere else. 

But the bands that played at Monkey Mania, were connected to Josh Taylor, Josh Taylor was sending them all to Rhino. The bands that would play the Zine Library and Breakdown (Books), (were getting sernt over) because both of those were not spaces any more. I was more involved in the Zine Library when I lived in the Highlands and I got this space and their space went away, so I still had connections. So they'd like, they'd send like, the Microphones here, and... like, whatever else. 

And at that point, (I) was pretty good friends with Rhino, and if they had something that they didn't really wanna... host... or no one was gonna be around, they would send me shows. But they... even from the very beginning their focus was on, art gallery and throwin' shows, through their connections at Monkey Mania. So they were throwing a lot more shows than I was. That wasn't... I was busy recording bands, performing, working. And it was just me, they had a whole house full of people to help out. (Here) it was just me.

Eddie: I was just gonna ask--

John: I'd get people to help me but, the people who were living with me were like "This is not our deal" (laughs) "I gotta work at six a.m. bud" (laughs).

Eddie: Sooo, what are your top three shows from when Glob was goin'?

John: Oooo, oh boy, um.... I really like...um, Skeletons. I really just thought musically they were... absolutely fuckin' incredible. And they were really, they were really doin' it. Ya know, they'd just got done with a big European tour, they were fuckin' smart as fuck, everything about that band when I listened to them-- and they were ones that reached out to me on MySpace and asked to play, and I fuckin' about, dropped my-- I was like "Whaaat?" I had been listening to them for a little bit cause I just loved what they were doing, and for them to just reach out, I was like "Duude, woah, this is incredible, of course. I'd love for you guys to come out" That musically for me was just... I mean musically... amazing.

Eddie: And what was the set-up of Skeletons?

John: That would have been a standard, I think, two guitars, bass, drums and two of the guys sang. But they were like music majors. They went to like, college for music. And just, what they would pull off and do... at the time I just was...

And then Horse Lords. They played twice and I thought both times, that was just like-- once again just... they were true Band Guys, and it was just like you could tell, like "What is going on? This is amazing"

I mean the bigger, bigger shows like, Dan Deacon and Wolves in the Throne Room, they were great shows and a lot of fun-- ya know, Lightning Bolt, especially opening up for Lightning Bolt, a couple times, one time in here, ya know we did really well. And I was a fan of Lightning Bolt in... ya know, 2001. Just like "This is one of the best bands I've ever heard in my life" and then fast forward, 8 more years or whatever it was, 10 more years, was it 2003? Anyways, when I first heard Lightning Bolt, I was like "What the fuuck?" Fast forward a decade later... I'm having like numerous conversations with the guys.

That was cool but, like, gives me fucking goosebumps... Skeletons, like Horse Lords... ya know, stuff like that. Leif One, ya know, blew me away, and the guy's one of the best DJ's I've ever seen. But its... 

Itchy O's performance here was pretty fuckin' magical. That was magical at the time. Seeing the whole room go crazy when they came in, that was fun. Um.. and everyone was so confused. 

Yeah, I'll have to think of the third one...umm... I liked Health and Thee Oh Sees when they played next door. I had never, ya know seen... humans react that way-- just go absolutely bananas and having Thee Oh Sees perform in Denver numerous times and after wherever they played, they would come back and stay here.

Eddie: At Glob?

John: Yeah. 

Eddie: Oh, cool!

John: Yeah, cause I thought they were so amazing. And we would watch musical movies every time. We would get a different musical movie, like Hedwig or just whatever, and then watch that, eat popcorn, they'd cook, ya know, and whatever, and hang out. They were really nice. Ya know... now they're... playing Red Rocks (laughs). Different times.

Umm... Future Death, ya know, they didn't really have a name, not that many people showed up... (but) they were fucking unbelievable... there's... so many, but...

Eddie: Sparkler Bombs of course.

John: Sparkler Bombs of course... yeah, there were so many, like, great, great shows.