I don’t really “Blog” on this thing but I’m feeling the need to “write” about the last few days given how busy I’ve been and, too, how little I write for just myself (a problem for another day and a less complicated sentence1). I just saw five shows in six days, each one dramatically different from the last, not a one at all disappointing. Let’s see if I can say something.2
I saw Mike Watt and the Missingmen on Thursday at Schubas. The opening band was a new and local (I think) band called Nones who weren’t very good yet (they said it was their third show) but who were astoundingly garagey and likeable. They had a sub-Meg-White drummer who had way more fun than Meg White has. They did some cover I didn’t recognize and closed with a song called “I’m Really Mad” which was navel-gazingly punky and goofy and had silly backup singing. They had a real good attitude and I hope they make it through their first year so I can see them open for someone else again later when they’re better.
Watt and his dudes were outstanding. Not a moment to breathe. Fist pumping, hip shaking. Loved watching the interplay between a clearly tight trio of people. I wish profoundly that more shows of this energy level were at Schubas, because that kind of propulsiveness swells to fit the space. Watt called the room like a “chapel” on his blog, I think, and he’s right. Putting something so expansive inside turns it transformative. Inspirational. He closed the set by yelling “Start your own band!” and then dragged out the big garbage bag of merch and sold shit right from the stage. Handed out stickers and high fives.3
Nothing on Friday. Got drunk at Kuma’s. Maybe insulted a new friend. Don’t mix gin and Hatebeak.
Wolves in the Throne Room / A Storm of Light / Krallice / Indian on Saturday at Bottom Lounge. Bottom Lounge is great for a show like this. Not sure how to articulate why. Big and dark. Wish it didn’t kind of smell like bad calamari?
Loved Indian, who I had not yet seen. Tight and well well rehearsed without seeming wooden. Love to watch a drummer who looks like he’s suffering. Guitar player had this fabulous nervous twitch that disappeared during the set. Wondered what the bass player’s day job was. Thought a lot about Lightning Bolt and cascades of repetition.
Krallice kinda boring to me, though by no no means bad. Nerded out like hell over their sound check to the point of my own frustration. If you can’t hear your buddy in the monitors watch his hands. Or just play your song and hope for the best. But by all means shut up after 20 minutes of hollering at the sound guy. Anyway some very epic moments, at their best when they loosened up. No songwriting to speak of, however.
A Storm of Light was like being in a scary bong.4 They had a lady singer and at a certain point a dude behind us yelled “Take It Off” and I spent a large portion of the rest of their set getting mad about that which I realize is stupid because that guy is an idiot but there are so few women at metal shows, and even less making the music, I don’t understand why you would want to make that problem worse. Who was that joke even supposed to be for?
Wolves slayed me. I can’t articulate it well. I saw a lot of awesome and different things this past week so I can’t rank em but part of me wants to say this was the best. How can so many different songs share a mood? How come I like those vocals even though I hate snarling? How can a song be so propulsive but also cause you to feel like you are suspended in glass?
On Sunday I went to see Destroyer - just Dan Bejar solo - at Empty Bottle. I do not know the man’s work intimately and I have actually seriously resisted Destroyer for several years now. I only recognized a handful of songs that evening and yet somehow had not even one moment of being bored. I think this is a pretty serious feat considering that watching a guy play a bunch of songs on an acoustic guitar can be REALLY BORING if you don’t know the songs, or the guy, or are sober. But he was so, so compelling, and it’s a unique experience to feel like you are not just clapping for a performance, but to say, “Thank you for writing that song. My life is better because of it.” That’s something special and I take back the snarky things I said. Paul: you were right.5
Monday was Melvins covering Houdini at Empty Bottle with their original lineup. They played for about forty minutes before they even hit Houdini. They started out with a bunch of punk songs from when they were first a band in 1983 and then sort of shifted through a bunch of other stuff to transition them up to the Houdini point, which was kind of mindblowing - they’ve had so many different sounds over the years. Owen bought me one of the Jay Ryan posters which the band had signed that they were selling in the back. One of the dudes in the band wrote “Fuck” instead of his name. I could probably make more money selling that poster than I can make working a week at this shitty fucking temp job.
I also thought a lot at Melvins about how people like bands for totally different reasons. I don’t totally remember the song but at a certain point a Pit broke out. Not an extreme pit by most standards although there was this backpacker dude who looked like Scott Ian from Anthrax who really wanted to fuck people up (and dudes hugging each other’s heads and whispering things in between songs; does anyone else find that shit unerringly fascinating to watch?). I know that Melvins are heavy and loud and that they fucking rock but I think of that band as being a Weed Conduit in so many ways that it sort of blows my mind that anybody has the presence of mind to mosh. Then again, I was sober. So it takes all kinds.
Last night I went to see Stinking Lizaveta at Empty Bottle. Not crowded at all, which made me think a lot about how I tend to go to Trendy Shows and how while I am so glad I see things when they are new and upcoming I wonder sometimes what I’m missing. Lone Wolf and Cub opened. They are local; I will see them again. I like a band where the two guitar players and the bass are all sort of playing the same thing in different octaves, because all the dudes’ hands move at the same time and that shit is fuckin hypnotic.
Then was this dude Darsombra who came out with these three crazy pedal boards, an eight-string Ric bass, and um maybe an Epiphone guitar? (edit: I have been informed that it was a Gibson Les Paul Custom. It’s a guitar.) Then he basically transported us to Valhalla. I sort of fell asleep, in a good way.
Stinking Liz were phenomenal. Just by their appearance alone I loved them: the guitar player was like David Crosby via the Old Norse Gods, the drummer looked like a lady high school librarian, and the bass plaeyr was your Standard Metal Bro but he played a giant blue electric upright bass. It was like watching an incredibly heavy jazz/jam trio. Dude kinda gave us a Ginsberg yawp instead of vocals. Owen pointed out that lady drummed like a man, and usually that would piss me off but he had a fucking point. She had these great faces. They played a cover of Hendrix’s “Power of Love,” which is a ballsy fucking thing to present to a roomful of metal heads. More, they SOLD IT.
I am out of steam. I do not have a thesis. I will say this: with the exception of my gentleman friend and maybe my closest bros, I do not wish to see anyone with a beard again for several days.
1 Not-at-all suffice to say, if you let it academic writing can do this awful thing to your brain where if you can’t envision a clear audience then you can’t construct a thesis and without a thesis you can’t write a damn word. That’s another part of the weary bleary academic’s disease, too, this sick and desperate reliance on a thesis to write anything, that addiction to Having a Point or Making a Purpose, as though we really thought our ideas were so fucking lifechangingly important, or as though unspooling the sentences didn’t feel fantastic on its own, as though that wasn’t why we started in the first place, perfecting a tiny snippet of syntax on a rainy walk home to make sense of all that inner strum’n’drang.
2 Writing that fucking footnote made me lose my train of thought.
3 Is it weird that I still get giddy when I “touch a celebrity”? Is Mike Watt a celebrity?
4 This is not all I have to say but it’s a great sentence. Go to their myspace.
5 Paul also said something about how if he weren’t such a big Pollard fan he’d be a Bejar devotee and now I’m intrigued for real.
