The midsize fund, which offers what McNamee calls “the T.L.C. of venture capital” to mature companies facing technology-related challenges, represents something of a comeback for him. In 2001, he had two strokes and underwent open-heart surgery. But a professional setback two years later was, in a sense, more devastating. Though it has never been made public until now, McNamee was ousted in 2003 from his previous fund, Silver Lake Partners, the renowned investment group he’d founded only four years earlier with three others. Now he’s out to show that Elevation and his band can rise concurrently, and he with them.

So far, Elevation has taken stakes in five companies: videogame developer Bioware/Pandemic; Move, a network of real-estate-related websites; the dubbing and subtitling company SDI Media Group; Forbes Media, publisher of Forbes magazine and Forbes.com; and, most recently, the handheld-computer manufacturer Palm. Though it’s too early to assess Elevation’s performance—it hasn’t even invested all its money, much less realized returns—those last two plays caused some head-scratching among industry observers. Elevation paid about $250 million for 40 percent of Forbes (essentially a huge bet on Forbes.com) and $325 million (its biggest investment yet) for 25 percent of Palm. Some tech experts doubt that the embattled smartphone maker can compete with the iPhone, the BlackBerry, and the unpredictable impact of Google’s entry into the market.

McNamee, of course, believes. Staying positive—or more precisely, suspending disbelief—has been one of the defining characteristics of his professional life. He also has faith, against all odds, in his band. He likes to say that building a band is just like building a company: You need capital, ideas, the right people, and, above all, patience. “Everything has a natural rhythm,” he says, gurulike. “You cannot rush it.”

After years of playing music for fun, McNamee says he’s dead serious about making Moonalice work as a business. Until then, he’s a rock-and-roll sugar daddy. For the trip to Denver alone, he chartered a jet and paid for 10 rooms in a four-star hotel—and the tour had only just started.

But that’s not the most audacious thing McNamee has done to feed his fantasy. Concerned that his stage patter lacks verve, he has created an alter ego—dubbed Chubby Wombat—and a backstory he calls the Moonalice Legend. A hippie shaman with a self-effacing smile, Chubby Wombat always wears jeans, a purple T-shirt, and a loud party shirt, unbuttoned. And without fail, at every show, he talks about the joys of smoking dope.

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