...is what I heard a guy say at one of the CMJ shows I went to this week. And, you know, sure -- the publications and record labels that organize all the showcases do dopey, corporate things like create "dossiers" of bands, organized by supposed genre. But I do the same thing in Google Docs as I'm planning which things to go to, optimizing my travel time between venues and sampling the pool of artists using an advanced heuristic based on how punk the band's name is. Truly, it is the only way to survive musical Hell Week. The festival started on Tuesday, I think, but I'd spent that night with the decidedly non-underground, non-emerging-new-act Gwar, so Wednesday was the first night of CMJ for me. I started at Spike Hill, where I wanted to see Fast Years. They played lo-fi, melodic garage-punk, and all the dudes looked like different Lord of the Rings characters. But they had the misfortune of playing an early bill, so the joint was pretty empty. I was surprised to see a familiar face in Ace Reporter, band that came on next -- it's fronted by Chris Snyder, bandmate of my friend Previn in the lost and lamented The States.
Nina met me outside and we jogged over to Trash Bar to see her friend and former colleague June's band, Vagina Panther, play a set. They're always fun and since the band is peopled with professional designers the swag is always cool. This year their goodie bags included some new stickers and a copy of the LP that corresponds to my beloved "titty" poster that we picked up at a show of theirs a few years back. We spent a few minutes talking to some other old SEED Magazine types, and then we were off again! Our next stop was Cake Shop, where we were hoping to see Punks On Mars. We got there late but were in luck -- there'd been a re-ordering of the set times, and they were going on right when we arrived. I'd been drawn to them because of their name. I liked the obliqueness of it; was it supposed to evoke something funny? Something sinister? The actual aesthetic of the band was endearingly dorky, like if Max Fischer from Rushmore had a punk rock band (shouldn't he have?) in the 50's. And they've got an expertly tuned sound: Elastic keyboard and guitar, stylized vocals that call to mind Television or early Blondie.
We bailed on Cake Shop after their set because I was anxious to check out what was going on next door in the back room of Pianos. Looking at the front room / bar, you'd never guess that there was a hipster convention in progress; that place is always slammed with meatheads and Neil Strauss types. Such is Pianos. But we knew we were iin the right place when we noticed with some surprise that our musical -- and, to be honest, non-musical -- crush Shilpa Ray was taking tickets at the entrance to the back room. We considered signaling our recognition but decided that would be creepy. Black Light Dinner Party were setting up as we got there. They were alright, although they weren't my kind of thing: electro-clash? Not sure. But it was more keyboard than I wanted, singing a bit too polished. And they'd loaded the room with friends, which, I'm not gonna lie, is creepy when it's not my band and the venue's not in Bushwick. Devin (née Devin Therriault) was the act I wanted to see. He fronts an eponymous band and looks like a punk He-Man or maybe like a more together version of Jon Voight's character in Midnight Cowboy. As his dudes were setting up, this fat Hell's Angel type jumped on stage to do an impromptu introduction. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said. "This band is the eighth wonder of the world! They will drink any shot you buy them." They pounded out a terrific, jangly guitar-punk set. Their drummer was monstrously fast and precise, but it's obvious why the band's named after its lead singer. He's got terrific stage presence, bopping up and down the stage, yelping and going "watch this" with his face. As promised, the band drank one shot, purchased by their M.C.
Whew!
On Thursday night I took the L out to Grand Ave. to go to The Paper Box, which is literally across the street from the Little Venue That Could, Shea Stadium. Bel Argosy had been booked to play at the Box a few months ago -- we'd had to cancel, as we so often do these days -- and I'd remained curious about what the joint was like inside, because it looks like an East Williamsburg speakeasy, or, I don't know, a gun store from the outside. Turns out it's neither -- it's actually three different things. The stage area is low-tech and industrial, pipes overhead and plenty of exposed brick, but the bar a few feet away is an upscale dealie, all white-frosted glass shelves of fancy booze; bar, bartenders, and bottles lit from below like props in a Grey Goose ad. And then there's a little lounge area that you get to through an accordian-folded hallway (which somehow incorporates a taco stand) that looks like the backstage room of high school theater or, actually, like the lobby of the original Manhattan Knitting Factory. Plastiq Passion was setting up as I got there. They're a four-girl ensemble that calls to mind The Shondes in their visual aesthetic: Suspenders and pompadours are involved. And like The Shondes their songs inherit from a number of loosely related musical genres. There was some riot grrl punk in there, some Gypsy Rose Lee, too. They played a luxurious set (by CMJ standards) that included several audience requests. Their EPK describes their drummer as an "animal," and it's not wrong. She was great; she was all arms.
In between sets I poked my head in at the taco window and bought a couple of vegetarian tacos. They weren't bad! They were even a little spicy. Bikini Carwash was up next -- they were the act I'd come there to see, three dudes and a lady who looked like Tank Girl-era Lori Petty. Their songs were perfectly serviceable if a little too polished and too dependent on newschool punk gimmicks; they wore their influences on their sleeves. I was trying to put my finger on exactly which band they were trying to be when they busted out with an early-in-the-set cover of Beat Your Heart Out. Oh, I thought. Well, there you go. But 'Carwash doesn't have the darkness or depth of Brody & Co. Worse, they had a substantial contingent of dwarfy little male fans in the audience who were apparently "regulars" -- the lead singer seemed to recognize them and dropped down into the crowd to cuddle them. So I think I liked them, but they were too eager to please. (The bikini made an appearance, although not the carwash.)
After they were done, I raced over to Metropolitan Ave. to meet Nina and Evan at The Knitting Factory for the Sub Pop showcase. Evan was there to see Metz; Nina'd liked what she'd heard from King Tuff. The show was totally sold out, but the venue was doing a thing where they'd sell a few more tickets every time someone'd leave. So Nina and Evan had copped entry that way, and when I showed up they sort of snuck me around the barricades and into the little box office cubicle right as some tickets were getting freed up. Sorry, (fellow) hipsters! The main room was insanely packed, like, shoulder-to-shoulder not-gonna-budge level. We squeezed in just in time to see Metz setting up. Their set started in the dark, and when the lights came on they were dim and focused like flashlights, giving the band a kind of ghoulish caste. Man was I glad I'd put in earplugs -- Metz are fucking loud. But they're also really, really good: Super tight, with perfect sound on every instrument. They'd turned the sustain way, way up for the guitar; fuzzed out the bass like crazy; and the drums had this throbbing, rubbery quality. The lead singer was a total beast on the mic, although he and the bass player looked and were dressed like total poindexters on the bus to a chess tourney. Who invented the Jekyll-and-Hyde nerd-goes-ballistic thing in punk rock? It's pretty effective. Metz were dope.
King Tuff came on next. There's four dudes in the band, but they're rocking enough hipster-scumbag accessories for, like, a small orchestra; multiples of: Basketball jerseys, baseball caps, wifebeaters, gold chains, handlebar mustaches, big scruffy beards, fiveheads, exposed chest hair. Which is not to say they werent good -- they were good, although they were orders of magnitude more chilled-out than their opener. 'Tuff plays punchy, honky-tonk rock songs, maybe a little like Dan Pujol, whom I'd seen on the same stage a couple of years ago. They saved their single 'til last, and it's kind of their best song. Maybe they've gotten sick of playing it, but I'm not sick of singing it to myself: "I'm a ba-a-a-a-ad thing!"
Weirdly enough, I hadn't been able to find any bands in the line-up for Friday that I hadn't yet seen and was desperate to see. So instead I walked over to The Sidewalk Cafe after work, where The Deli Magazine was hosting an anti-folk showcase. I knew Beau would be performing with his anti-folk "super group," the Ray Brown-based collective called Go Love. And indeed, I saw him at a table in the back of the room when I showed up, and he beckoned me over. Andrew Choi, whose stage name is St. Lenox, went on a few minutes after I got there. Beau'd contributed a quote to his Deli listing, to the effect that he "sounds like a beautiful robot from the future," and it's true. Andrew sings over I guess what you'd call a "beat" (an instrumental track from his iPod) and he has a strange, warbling voice. One of his songs ("Bitter Pill") was about sifting the memories of a departed lover and included a line about a fortune from a fortune cookie "from that Chinese restaurant that we had tried." Thinking about the small, self-involved activities that fill the hours of a relationship -- a couple undertaking to eat at a new restaurant, say -- made me feel very sad for some reason. My eyes got misty, even. But most of his songs are more upbeat and strange. I hung out with Andrew at the bar for a few minutes afterward and asked him about his native Columbus, Ohio. Turns out he's heard of Musicol, the Columbus company that pressed Bel Argosy's EP.
Beau and I hung out while he waited for his group to get their turn. He and I and his lady friend walked over to a newsstand nearby and got some soft serve ice cream that Beau swore was life-changingly good. He and Morgan swiftly devoured theirs; I got a peanut butter-flavored one that tasted like chemicals. "I don't know," he said. "They're usually pretty good." His band was good, though! And I love his song, "Wake Me Up When Everyone Is Dead." Is it giving too much away to say that it's about living on a cot in the practice hole up at St. Mary's during the dead of winter? Try to imagine that you are there, in the quiet, in the cold. A faintly glowing space heater.
On Saturday I took a break.
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Oderus & Eve
Wedding season continues. This month, Eve and Jon got married! They did it in Fishkill, up by the Dia:Beacon art space. We took the Metro North train there on Friday night and hopped a cab to what appeared to be the hotel district. Our Days Inn had a sad, unplugged popcorn machine in lobby, but our destination for the evening was across the street at a Ruby Tuesday, where the groom was holding court. We'd just missed Eve, who'd gone to bed early with a high fever, a pretty shitty bit of business though she dealt with it like a champ. We slurped whiskey with Jon and Sean and Kate and tried to be the life of the party. I made a spontaneous joke about a Roman senator combing K-Y out of a horse's tail that made Sean laugh. "Remember that joke I made about the horse?" I asked Nina several times as we were going to bed, still drunk. "I think that was a pretty good one," I said.
The next morning I ate a misshapen waffle in the lobby's breakfast nook with a co-ed soccer team and brought a Danish back up to the room for Nina. A little kid had thrown up in the stairwell. We dressed ourselves and headed out. The buses they'd chartered dropped us off at the Mount Gulian historic site, a sloping green lawn below a handsome stone manor house. It was chilly, but the bride and groom had thoughtfully set out canteens of hot cider (with a bottle of Maker's for those what wanted a spike), which actually made everything feel cozy. They got married by their friend Doug in the middle of the field, looking out over a small pond. After the ceremony, we walked down the hill to the barn for dinner. The rafters were decked out with fairy lights and twigs with small red berries (holly?). There were several great toasts, many of which called out Eve for her bravery. They weren't wrong -- she is brave, a veritable Starbuck of social justice. Some toast-giver mentioned but did not dwell upon the fact that the couple began their relationship as members of a pub trivia team. I guess that's not the weirdest way to go about it. I've heard of weirder things. I knew that something like this would happen when I saw them both taking beer-tasting notes and scatter-plotting the performance of other teams.
Jon being a vegetarian, they'd had the caterers mostly follow suit. It was the easiest wedding food I ever homphed! What wasn't easy was dancing after eating, but we did it anyway, venturing outside at times for hot pie when we needed a break from the now-steamy barn. Eve danced all night despite her ill health. We danced her around the room on a chair. I made Doug carry me around the room in his arms. And then later as I'd promised Sean, I took my tie off and tied it around my forehead, like a "party guy." He did the same thing, but nobody else would do it. After things wound down in the barn, the buses reappeared and took us to a place called Max's On Main in downtown Beacon, a little bar type place that served cheese-based bar foods. The wedding party swamped it. There was a musical act doing their thing at one end of the room, their thing being two-person acoustic covers of heavy metal songs: Run To The Hills, Crazy Train.
And then there was day-after wedding business: Brunch, a friendly car ride back to Brooklyn. I got a nose bleed going over the Brooklyn Bridge.
The following Tuesday we'd bought tickets to see Gwar (!) at the Music Hall of Williamsburg. My co-workers Caitlin and Kevin joined us after some prompting, and we assembled after work and met Nina at the venue in time to see the second band on the bill. They were called Devil Driver; the lead singer was this long-haired beardy guy, an old-man-of-metal type dude who kept saying it was "the Halloween season." He was using this custom microphone that looked like one of those soda guns that bartenders use, or like a control pad for a freight elevator, but it was all lit up inside, and it seemed to be causing all sorts of problems with the sound system at the venue -- it was feeding back into the amps and his vocals kept cutting out. He was pretty upset about it ("Can't hear a fuckin' thing!" "Fix the fucking sound, sound man!") but wouldn't switch mics until practically the end of the set, at which point everything cleared up.
"Who am I kidding?" he said. "We're all here tonight in the Halloween season for one thing: To see Gwar!"
A few words about Gwar: I'd known about them since I was in junior high, but didn't think of them as, you know, accessible, until much later. Maybe it was that appearance on Jerry Springer, but I guess I bought the myth that the monster costumes were part of a twisted, deeply underground counter-culture. What kind of perverts would pay money to get jizzed on by naked guys wearing spike armor?! I had a similarly naive view of the Crimson Ghost stencil-sprayed onto the backs of the leather jackets worn by Tower Video cashiers: Was it a Trystero-style indicator that they were members of a dark brotherhood of evil Road Warrior punks? Somehow it didn't occur to me that guys who dress up in rubber suits and play horror movie metal cannot possibly be scary tough guys. In fact, it is my experience that it is the very rare musician who is also a tough guy. Sondheim aside, thugs don't sing. So it was a nice surprise to find out that not only are Gwar dorks themselves, but they make music for dorks, and a lot of it is pretty cool and funny. Oh, and that Gwar isn't an acronym, it's just a funny word. That one took me a while, too.
Their set that night opened with a dark stage and a voice-over from God, who made it clear that he had it in for Gwar and planned to disrupt their operations and give them a hard time. The lights went up as Oderus Urungus took the stage to vow his disobedience, Paradise Lost-style. The next hour and change was a blur of puppets, fake blood, and guitar solos, but here's what I remember: Their puppets are incredibly detailed and in really good condition. When I saw Green Jellÿ a few years ago, they had cool props, but everything was kind of held together with twine and duct tape. Gwar wheeled out an Adolph Hitler puppet that wound up getting laterally bisected by Oderus' axe, revealing a glistening and detailed set of internal organs and a cross-section of a skull with chattering teeth and rolling eyeballs. An outsize Christ got re-crucified and then disemboweled, returned as a cybernetic horror with a glowing red ocular implant and was promptly dismembered by Oderus. I've always liked Balsac The Jaws Of Death, but I never noticed that his costume includes a delicate-looking pair of truck nuts that dangle behind him as he plays. Obviously, Flattus Maximus -- who's departed to the great Butt-Cannon in the sky -- was absent, but Oderus introduced his replacement (and cousin? Unclear on the lineage), Pustulus Maximus, whose distinguishing feature is that he has some kind of foot fungus. At the end of it all, Oderus realizes that he doesn't have to kill God because, you know, God doesn't, uh, exist?
The mosh pit was pretty rough, and most of the elbow-throwing was coming from ladies! The blood goes everywhere; they ramp up the wetness by degrees, I think. The first little squirt happened almost unexpectedly, like, whoops sorry everyone. But before long there are great clouds of it misting out from the weirdly detailed butthole of a puppet priest who'd taken an axe to the head and then been upended. By the end of the show, the band members and crew were actively manipulating the blood hoses embedded in the props to douse the audience with the widest possible spread. There was no way around it -- we all got soaked with the stuff. Nina'd found a blog post on how to deal with "Gwar blood" (Summary: Won't stain! It's just food coloring and a little carageenen) so I was fully prepared to get it in the face. But to be sure, the floor was a lake of red. And when the lights went up, all the white t-shirts were pink, and our jeans were soaked purple. As we went down the stairs to collect our delicates from the coat check, we passed a grumbling bartender wheeling a mop and bucket behind him.
The next morning I ate a misshapen waffle in the lobby's breakfast nook with a co-ed soccer team and brought a Danish back up to the room for Nina. A little kid had thrown up in the stairwell. We dressed ourselves and headed out. The buses they'd chartered dropped us off at the Mount Gulian historic site, a sloping green lawn below a handsome stone manor house. It was chilly, but the bride and groom had thoughtfully set out canteens of hot cider (with a bottle of Maker's for those what wanted a spike), which actually made everything feel cozy. They got married by their friend Doug in the middle of the field, looking out over a small pond. After the ceremony, we walked down the hill to the barn for dinner. The rafters were decked out with fairy lights and twigs with small red berries (holly?). There were several great toasts, many of which called out Eve for her bravery. They weren't wrong -- she is brave, a veritable Starbuck of social justice. Some toast-giver mentioned but did not dwell upon the fact that the couple began their relationship as members of a pub trivia team. I guess that's not the weirdest way to go about it. I've heard of weirder things. I knew that something like this would happen when I saw them both taking beer-tasting notes and scatter-plotting the performance of other teams.
Jon being a vegetarian, they'd had the caterers mostly follow suit. It was the easiest wedding food I ever homphed! What wasn't easy was dancing after eating, but we did it anyway, venturing outside at times for hot pie when we needed a break from the now-steamy barn. Eve danced all night despite her ill health. We danced her around the room on a chair. I made Doug carry me around the room in his arms. And then later as I'd promised Sean, I took my tie off and tied it around my forehead, like a "party guy." He did the same thing, but nobody else would do it. After things wound down in the barn, the buses reappeared and took us to a place called Max's On Main in downtown Beacon, a little bar type place that served cheese-based bar foods. The wedding party swamped it. There was a musical act doing their thing at one end of the room, their thing being two-person acoustic covers of heavy metal songs: Run To The Hills, Crazy Train.
And then there was day-after wedding business: Brunch, a friendly car ride back to Brooklyn. I got a nose bleed going over the Brooklyn Bridge.
The following Tuesday we'd bought tickets to see Gwar (!) at the Music Hall of Williamsburg. My co-workers Caitlin and Kevin joined us after some prompting, and we assembled after work and met Nina at the venue in time to see the second band on the bill. They were called Devil Driver; the lead singer was this long-haired beardy guy, an old-man-of-metal type dude who kept saying it was "the Halloween season." He was using this custom microphone that looked like one of those soda guns that bartenders use, or like a control pad for a freight elevator, but it was all lit up inside, and it seemed to be causing all sorts of problems with the sound system at the venue -- it was feeding back into the amps and his vocals kept cutting out. He was pretty upset about it ("Can't hear a fuckin' thing!" "Fix the fucking sound, sound man!") but wouldn't switch mics until practically the end of the set, at which point everything cleared up.
"Who am I kidding?" he said. "We're all here tonight in the Halloween season for one thing: To see Gwar!"
A few words about Gwar: I'd known about them since I was in junior high, but didn't think of them as, you know, accessible, until much later. Maybe it was that appearance on Jerry Springer, but I guess I bought the myth that the monster costumes were part of a twisted, deeply underground counter-culture. What kind of perverts would pay money to get jizzed on by naked guys wearing spike armor?! I had a similarly naive view of the Crimson Ghost stencil-sprayed onto the backs of the leather jackets worn by Tower Video cashiers: Was it a Trystero-style indicator that they were members of a dark brotherhood of evil Road Warrior punks? Somehow it didn't occur to me that guys who dress up in rubber suits and play horror movie metal cannot possibly be scary tough guys. In fact, it is my experience that it is the very rare musician who is also a tough guy. Sondheim aside, thugs don't sing. So it was a nice surprise to find out that not only are Gwar dorks themselves, but they make music for dorks, and a lot of it is pretty cool and funny. Oh, and that Gwar isn't an acronym, it's just a funny word. That one took me a while, too.
Their set that night opened with a dark stage and a voice-over from God, who made it clear that he had it in for Gwar and planned to disrupt their operations and give them a hard time. The lights went up as Oderus Urungus took the stage to vow his disobedience, Paradise Lost-style. The next hour and change was a blur of puppets, fake blood, and guitar solos, but here's what I remember: Their puppets are incredibly detailed and in really good condition. When I saw Green Jellÿ a few years ago, they had cool props, but everything was kind of held together with twine and duct tape. Gwar wheeled out an Adolph Hitler puppet that wound up getting laterally bisected by Oderus' axe, revealing a glistening and detailed set of internal organs and a cross-section of a skull with chattering teeth and rolling eyeballs. An outsize Christ got re-crucified and then disemboweled, returned as a cybernetic horror with a glowing red ocular implant and was promptly dismembered by Oderus. I've always liked Balsac The Jaws Of Death, but I never noticed that his costume includes a delicate-looking pair of truck nuts that dangle behind him as he plays. Obviously, Flattus Maximus -- who's departed to the great Butt-Cannon in the sky -- was absent, but Oderus introduced his replacement (and cousin? Unclear on the lineage), Pustulus Maximus, whose distinguishing feature is that he has some kind of foot fungus. At the end of it all, Oderus realizes that he doesn't have to kill God because, you know, God doesn't, uh, exist?
The mosh pit was pretty rough, and most of the elbow-throwing was coming from ladies! The blood goes everywhere; they ramp up the wetness by degrees, I think. The first little squirt happened almost unexpectedly, like, whoops sorry everyone. But before long there are great clouds of it misting out from the weirdly detailed butthole of a puppet priest who'd taken an axe to the head and then been upended. By the end of the show, the band members and crew were actively manipulating the blood hoses embedded in the props to douse the audience with the widest possible spread. There was no way around it -- we all got soaked with the stuff. Nina'd found a blog post on how to deal with "Gwar blood" (Summary: Won't stain! It's just food coloring and a little carageenen) so I was fully prepared to get it in the face. But to be sure, the floor was a lake of red. And when the lights went up, all the white t-shirts were pink, and our jeans were soaked purple. As we went down the stairs to collect our delicates from the coat check, we passed a grumbling bartender wheeling a mop and bucket behind him.
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