My concert budget has been exhausted for the next few decades... but I’m back nonetheless.

      As I mentioned in last month’s blog, I bought tickets to see Paul McCartney in the Bay area on July 10 after receiving reliable assurance that the former Beatle would not be coming to Denver on what is rumored to be his final tour.

    The best laid plans of mice, men and Beatles fans are subject to the whims of Maxwell’s silver hammer.
    I’ve been following the news surrounding Paul McCartney’s Up and Coming Tour for several months. That has not been the easiest thing to do.
    Most artists release a tour schedule that acts as a reliable navigation tool. Although dates are often added, cancelled or postponed for various reasons, the schedule, itself, usually maintains a basic integrity. But ex-Beatles don’t necessarily play by standard procedures in the music industry.

     This blog and its accompanying newspaper column are brought to you by... email! That’s right, email. Electronic mail. Communication without borders. Letters without paper or conventional standards of grammar.

    Fifteen minutes of email, instead of phone calls, could save you 50% or more on the time you might otherwise spend on social interaction... whether or not your car insurance is hawked by an Australian lizard on TV.

    You’ve seen billboards proclaiming adult-oriented retail to be “cheaper than dating”? Well, email is cheaper than dating and making long-distance phone calls, combined! And it’s the only efficient way to book interviews for a monthly music column.

    Plus, let’s face it, email is downright sexy.

   The ineffable combination of a semi-colon, a dash and a right parenthesis, in that order, can add a knowing allure and a certain savoir faire that Henry Mill could not have imagined when he invented the typewriter in 1714. ;-)

    See what I mean?

   It’s that time of the year... again.
    I’m playing... arguably losing... another hard-fought game of “cat and mouse” with Denver Botanic Gardens. I don’t know if I’m the cat or the mouse, but neither is an enviable position.
    Okay, it’s better to be the cat.
    Every April I beg, plead, borrow and make promises of an early May embargo – all in pursuit of an advance copy of that elusive Gardens concert schedule. I do this not out of impatience, sloth or to rile the universe, but from a need to meet my May deadline for LIFE Music, my monthly column.

    It must have been a slow month on the Denver music scene.
    On Feb. 21 I was the guest speaker at the monthly meeting of the Colorado Music Business Organization... or cleverly, COMBO... at the Irish Snug on Colfax.
    It was the most sparsely attended get-together in the history of the music industry trade association. That’s a record worthy of my Facebook page, and a boost to my foiled career as a public speaker.
    But I won’t take it personally. I’ve had worse luck in a bar, believe me.

           Who knows what mysteries lurk in the next “LIFE Music” column?

            If you have a clue, let me know. Frankly, I don’t have a grasp on what the subject will be in the March edition of my monthly column in Life on Capitol Hill either. Revelations from soothsayers, barflies and stock brokers are accepted.

            Putting together a column of this nature is always something of a crap shoot. You inquire as to the availability of certain touring musicians, then wait and hope that at least one of them will find it in his or her marketing-based consciousness to spend some time answering your brilliant questions.

    I know now that I’ve raised my 8-year-old son just right.
    Forget CSAPs, public television and table manners.
    When a kid – of his own accord – begins a conversation on the topic of the Beatles, I know my parenting is better than anything Dr. Phil has imagined.
    All you need is love, right?

    It’s official: The Swallow Hill Music Association is taking over production of the summer concert series at Denver Botanic Gardens, beginning with the 2010 season.
    Is it a marriage made in heaven for two of Denver’s scientific and cultural mainstays?
    Perhaps. Or maybe a match made in divorce, after the controversial bookings of the high-decibel B-52s and Los Lobos during this last summer’s soirees.
    “There are some artists that are great artists, but they’re just a little bit too loud for the Denver Botanic Gardens and we learned that lesson very clearly (this year),” Gardens’ executive director Brian Vogt remarked at a kick-off of the partnership.