Eve and I went to see The Thermals at Warsaw on Thursday, and, despite the fact that their openers were awful, it was an amazing show. There wasn't much of a crowd as Hutch & Co. were getting set up, and we were worried that people just weren't gonna turn out, but by the time they started playing, there was a great, vigorous throng. Their set list hasn't changed much since the last time I saw them, but that was fine; they were still admirably tight and angry. Kathy Foster cut a striking figure -- her bouncy hair, kind of her signature, I feel like, was swept forward into a sort of 'fro-hawk -- and she and Hutch faced off on some of the harder numbers. She's got this captivating, stolid grace about her that... well, I won't get into it lest I get into "trouble." I am a faithful man, after all.
The bouncers at Warsaw are these creepy Polish skinheads (at some of the artier shows, Nina and I have played "Polack or hipster?"), and they were managing the crowd pretty actively that night, really front and center, up close to the stage. As I find is often the case, they paid special attention to me (height? Jacket?), even though there were plenty of jackasses in the audience, including a really smelly dreadlocked goth dude and his really smelly girlfriend.
For encores, the band covered a Built To Spill song that was okay and a Wipers song that was pretty cool. And nobody puked this time, so that was good, too.
I'm having a hard time putting into words why I didn't like the Gogol Bordello show I went to on Saturday night with Nina, Randy, Winnie, Evan, and David Bell. All I know for sure is that I was in a good mood when I walked into the joint, but within five minutes I kind of wanted to leave.
Maybe it's the music -- I've never really been sure whether I like them or not, ever since Eve lent me Gypsy Punks a year ago. On the one hand, they've got tons of energy and swell instrumentations with all sorts of old-world instruments playing in minor keys. (To picture the guy who plays the violin for them, imagine Armin Mueller-Stahl in Eastern Promises, but wearing bondage pants and a leather vest with no shirt.) On the other hand, though, the songs aren't really that catchy -- or at least, I can't remember what they sound like when I'm not hearing them. And the tone of the whole thing is kind of problematic: These guys have been compared to The Pogues, but whereas Shane MacGowan is acknowledged as a fond historian of Irish folk who's earned the right, through research (and time on a barstool), to sort of queer the genre; Eugene Hutz doesn't strike me as much of a good shepherd of Gypsy music. Either Gypsy music just isn't that good, or the band is making fun of Gypsy music -- or Hutz just isn't that smart. Or he doesn't speak English that well. With lyrics like this, it's sort of hard to tell:
Have you ever been to American wedding?The guy sounds like a Ukrainian Andrew WK. And Andrew WK was kidding, wasn't he? At any rate, it's not like Hutz hasn't had a dark and terrifying life -- Wikipedia sez his family were refugees in the wake of Chernobyl -- why's he writing party songs for college students spending a year abroad?
Where is the vodka, where's marinated herring?
Where is the musicians who got good taste?
Where is the supply that gonna last three days?
Where is the band that [light on fire]?
Gonna keep it goin' 24 hour!
That's pretty much what the audience was like. Lots of chubby white dudes in popped-collar Polo shirts, lots of spacey girls with frizzy hair in long flowing dresses (too dark to tell, but I bet there were some Henna tattoos). Every problematic rock concert audience trope was on display -- the skittish girls who didn't want anyone dancing around near them; the guy and his girlfriend trying to have a slow, protective cuddle in the middle of the mosh pit; the insanely sweaty guy really swingin' his elbows around with his eyes closed, enjoying some private groove in a contemptibly public way.
Maybe it was the venue, though -- Terminal 5 used to be Club Exit, which was basically a warehouse for bridge-and-tunnel techno douchebags, and nothing has changed besides the name. (Except that they're booking underground rock shows there?) It's got shitty access to the entrances and exits, the bars are irritatingly inaccessible, and the space is shaped such that it's impossible to navigate the types of crowds that form in front of the stage. I don't know how other places do it right, but these fuckers do it wrong.
Nina lost her phone in the crowd, but by the grace of God some nice lady found it and returned it. It still kind of works, too! We went out for dinner afterwards at Renaissance, which totally my new go-to diner for Hell's Kitchen. I'm there so much, you see.
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