Profile: 715 Panhandle and the NPNR label

I was talking to some friends from Austin the other day when I actually had to pause and reassess something I had just said out loud. "Denton has six D.I.Y. venues." Six. Count them. Secret Headquarters, 8th Continent, Fra House, X-Treme Dudes Manor, House Of Tinnitus, and 715 Panhandle. It seems that Denton is in the middle of a renaissance for this particular type of venue, and people far and wide have taken notice. I've never been a blind supporter of Little D (don't call it that), but I often hear people from around the state gushing about how good Denton has it, even compared to the super-hip Austin, a place I have always blindly supported. When talking with out-of-town bands, I hear pangs of envy when referring to the wealth of great places to see shows in Denton, which is starting to be come known as a place where you're likely to see almost any kind of act you can think of at any one of these venues on a given weekend. And out of the six thriving epicenters of Do-It-Yourself culture around town, 715 Panhandle in particular seems to be almost completely free of any type of sonic or social agenda.

715 Panhandle is kind of the positive little brother of the Denton Do-It-Yourself circuit, with a stronger link to the history of that culture than you might expect. It's shows cover a wide variety of music, from acoustic singer-songwriters to free jazz, and poppy indie rock to spazzed-out hardcore. The house is inhabited by four young lads with an assortment of tastes that dictate the mixtape-like nature of the eclectic line ups and add to the overall spirit of the venue. And speaking of tapes, the house is also the headquarters for a cassette-only label, NPNR, which stands for "No Parents, No Rules." The name actually provides a fairly good summation of the fun-oriented fliers, shows and overall feeling of the cassette label and the ethos it embodies, as well as the venue itself. I really enjoyed doing the research for this piece, including actually attending a Panhandle show, since the extremely upbeat attitudes of all involved with both the house and the label are a nice change from the typically jaded seen-it-all pose of music scene people, which I myself am quite guilty of. The enthusiasm for each show held there as well as the care put into the label is quite an admirable and refreshing break from the norm. The show I attended was witnessed by a cross-section of Denton's community of musicians, students, and grown-folks alike, comprising a group that differed slightly from the familiar faces you see at other places. It was such a mixed crowd, in fact, that I constantly saw little groups of people pointing at each other and simultaneously blurting, "What are you doing here"?! With such large numbers of people from diverse crowds and walks of life, its actually pretty remarkable that 715 has never had a problem with police intervention, even though it seemed like the crowd I encountered was a body short of spilling into the street, which is apparently a regular occurrence at the place.

Inside the house, people were shoulder to shoulder, moving, dancing, pushing, swinging and swaying. This is all too rare at shows now days and the energy from the bands and the crowd was easy to get swept up in as everyone seemed to move without the usual constrictions of self consciousness. 715 Panhandle is definitely a place to see a lively show, free of the extreme intellectualism or hardcore dogma you might find at similar places, but I don't mean to suggest that there isn't a lot of thought put into the music at the shows. It's just that the"No Parents, No Rules" motto does truly convey the feeling of the place: one of being at a house party someone threw when their parents were out of town, which often provide some of the best memories of growing up. Bands from out of state and as far away as Scotland have played 715 in addition to the usual Austin/Houston travelers and many DFW acts, including such diverse local groups as Unconscious Collective, Daniel Folmer, Trifle Tower, and Koji Kondo.

Again, I don't mean to make it sound as if the men of 715 Panhandle and NPNR are just here for the party. The NPNR label is a project founded by Clint Butler of Denton's Angry Businessmen, who started the label as a viable but cheap answer to the glut of "burned CD-R's with the Sharpied on title." NPNR releases include artwork and lyrics and are assembled with more care than you typically get from the aforementioned CD-R or myspace.com/mp3 formats. The first release was by singer-songwriter Sparlin, Jessels, the second will be from the Teenage Cool Kids, available at their release show this Saturday, and Angry Businessmen themselves will see their release on the 21st. The bands record onto an 8-track hooked up to a computer, where the music then finds its way to a master tape on a deck and is finally duplicated with a high speed duplicator. The releases all come in editions of 100, with represses possible if warranted. The idea of the cassette label seems more radical than ever in today's online dominated world of music, and hearing NPNR's story reminded me of labels like ROIR from the 80's and the now legendary status of those cassette-only releases, which have all eventually found their way on to other formats. Clint hasn't completely ruled out the possibility of another format for the self-released imprint, indicating that a 7-inch is possible at some point.

The next 715 Panhandle show will be at 8:00 pm on Saturday, which will be right about the time the headlining Fry St. Fair acts go on...three stages. I've got nothing against the Fry Street bands, and frankly it's quite mind boggling to think of the over-abundance of quality there must be in Denton right now when the biggest music related event in town can't fully represent what takes place there at so many different venues on a weekly basis. I'm as shocked as I am grateful that places like 715 Panhandle fly in the face of my typically jaded seen-it-all pose, even if my pose does happen to be pretty cool.