As the 75th season of the Aspen Music Festival kicks off next week, it’ll be interesting to see what, if any, fallout there is from the renaming of the music tent. As one who, in my misspent youth, jumped a BMX bike off the stage, skateboarded on the roof, got chased from the grounds by caretakers and then — incredibly — became a paid employee on the tent crew, I feel an oddly vested interest in the now somewhat tepid topic. I still call the newly christened “Klein Music Tent” what I always have — simply, “The Tent,” much as I refer to the Invesco Field or whatever they call Mile High these days as “Mile High.
” What’s in a name? As far as names go in Aspen, there’s always fertile history behind the nomenclature. Call a place something else, add or drop an “s” or pronounce it wrong, and you’ll likely be at the business end of a public browbeating that’ll leave you with a bitter taste in your mouth for days, if not longer. Over the years there have been numerous docudramas regarding the renaming or mislabeling of places and things around Aspen.
There was the kerfuffle surrounding the renaming of Buttermilk to Tiehack that lasted all of a fleeting ski season. The one that really gets a burr underneath my saddle blanket is the grotesque renaming on Tiehack of “Ego Hill” to “Eagle Hill.” Don’t even get me started on the “Highlands” Bowl renaming debacle.
Just so you know what kind of monster you’re dealing with, I accidentally — or.
