Marc Maron

Neptune Theatre

Seattle, WA

11.25.11

So you’re probably thinking, “Jesus Christ, Devon. What the fuck?  This goddamn show was, like, two months ago. What the hell took so long?”  I know.  I understand.  I’m a little upset about it all myself.  But here’s the thing, see… it’s Marc Maron.  I love the guy, I really do, but sometimes he can be a little rough for me.  Not him or his material per se, but the thing is that, when I talk about Marc Maron, or when I think about Marc Maron, I can’t help but think about myself.  I can’t help but think about how I think about myself, how much I do, and why and when.  Once I start getting into self-examination like that, well, it can get a little overwhelming, and it can get a little paralyzing.  But at the end of it all, it’s why I love Marc Maron.  It’s why I’ve listened to all two-hundred forty-something episodes of his podcast.  It’s why I bought all four of his stand-up records, and why I’ve read his book more than once.  It’s why I snagged a ticket to 2010’s Bumbershoot festival, just so that I could see a live taping of his podcast.  It’s all because I know that I should look inside myself – I want to and I feel like I’m ready to- and it’s not something that I was ever compelled to do before I got into this one stand-up comedian.

Marc Maron has been doing stand-up for over twenty-five years.  He’s been on my radar since junior high, back when I’d come home from school and watch whatever was on the then-nascent Comedy Central.  Every day I’d listen to In Utero, drink Dr. Pepper, and watch clips of stand-up comedians on Stand-Up Stand-Up and Short Attention Span Theater, a clip-show that Maron briefly hosted in the early ‘90s.  For years after that, I’d occasionally flip by Marc Maron’s half-hour Comedy Central specials on television, and his name always popped up in conversations I’d have with my other comedy-nerd friends – one of whom would make a point to see him on his unbelievably frequent appearances on Late Night with Conan O’Brien (the comedian has performed over forty times on the show).  Marc co-hosted Morning Sedition on the defunct left-wing talk-radio station Air America and I can still remember a close friend telling me that the only way that he could listen to the show was to get up in the middle of the night and stream the East-Coast feed over the internet.  It was something he did as often as he could.

When he was coming up in the 80s and 90s, Marc was part of the Alternative Comedy movement.  His shtick wasn’t about sport coats or “Do you ever notice?” Seinfeldian musings.  Maron turned his comedy inward.  He was unique because when he got up on stage he talked about things that happened in his life; the same painful and self-critical things that exist in your own life, but that you probably didn’t even talk about with your own friends.  It could get a little uncomfortable now and again, but it was always smart and always personal, even if it did hit upon rage and regret.  The genius of all of it was that it wasn’t until the bits ended that you realized they were bits in the first place.  They weren’t just stories or confessions like you thought, but they actually had structure and they actually had beats and punchlines, subtle though they were.  Nothing seemed forced or egregious, it just seemed natural and intimate.  You laughed because you “got it.”  Maybe you were the same way.  Maybe you yelled at someone like that or maybe you doubted yourself the same way.  Maybe those same voices in your head tore you down the same way that they did Maron.  Marc’s honesty onstage was what drew you to him, and it’s something that you had to be ready for.

During the late 2000s, Marc Maron was at a crossroads.  It’s something that he’s often talked about in interviews and on podcasts, but to put it bluntly, his career was at a standstill.  The radio gigs were up.  The clubs were half-full.  He’d been doing this for how long?  He was how old?  His 2009 double-disc album, Final Engagement (recorded in Seattle at the “renowned” Giggles comedy club) isn’t necessarily a depressing experience, but it most definitely isn’t an uplifting one.  The comic veteran’s exasperation and frustration is on full display – he opens the record by referring to himself as a “marginalized act” and goes onto voice every concern about his future and faltering career to the audience.  He says that people leave his shows saying one of two things: either, “That guy’s hilarious” or “I hope he’s okay.”  It’s clear that something had to happen, and that something turned out to be WTF.

WTF is Marc Maron’s podcast, one that he started in September 2009.  It’s early days were like this: Marc and a comedian friend sat down and talked for an hour.  That was it.  It started with some rants from the host talking into a microphone about his day, his insecurities, and his rage.  From there he would swap road stories and career tales with a fellow comedian – maybe someone like Dave Attell or Kyle Kinane.  I first heard about WTF a few months after it hit iTunes.  I’d been heavily into podcasts for a few years and I was definitely interested in something new, especially something with comedians riffing and complaining.  There were three months of WTF episodes available in the iTunes store and, as soon as I listened to Episode One, I knew that I’d found something goooood.  It was like I’d suddenly stumbled onto a new group of friends; a group of clever guys reminiscing about their careers and deconstructing the art of stand-up comedy.  I felt like I had a real connection with Maron, something that I hadn’t really felt throughout all of that time that I’d been watching him on television.  On the podcast, he was even more open about his own life, so much so that it made me feel like I should be too.  I could relate.  He made me – just some chump listener – feel like he was a friend.  I couldn’t stop smiling when he talked about something mundane, like how upset and embarrassed he was after he bought those boots that didn’t fit and then, how he felt like they were forever taunting him from the closet.  I’d felt the same way about a handful of awful shirts that hung in my own closet.  When he talked about loneliness with another stand-up I felt a certain kinship because I had those exact feelings too.  And, even while I couldn’t relate to his stories about blowing up at a colleague or being a callow youth, there was an energy and a confidence in his voice during every story that made me feel like it was alright to open up about your mistakes and missteps.  Sometimes Maron and his guest would get on a jag laughing about ‘80s stand-ups that I remembered watching on Comic Strip Live and I ached to be part of the conversation.  During his on-air eulogy for Greg Giraldo – a stand-up who died of a prescription drug overdose in September 2010 - I heard Marc’s heartfelt sobbing and hurt and I nearly broke down myself.  Months later, when comedian Greg Fitzsimmons was a guest, I came close to tears again; only this time it was because of how infectious and joyful it was to hear two friends – two guys who had come up together in the Boston comedy scene, decades ago – joke, laugh, and rib each other the same way that we all do with every one of our close friends.  The purity and sincerity was undeniable and it was made all the more poignant because it felt like an ordinary green room hang-out session and not an episode of one of the number one-rated podcasts on iTunes.

So, anyway… now Marc was coming to the Neptune Theater.  I knew that I’d be there.  I couldn’t not be.  But, as excited as I was for the show and to see one of the few comedians that I felt like I understood and related to, I was nervous.  This was partly because it was Marc’s first solo theater show – his first time out of the clubs – and I felt a little nervous the way that you would for any friend who’s taking a big step forward.  But mostly, I was worried, because I knew that I’d be in the Neptune alongside hundreds of people who felt the same way about Marc that I did.  Hundreds of us would be sitting side-by-side and it scared me to think that this very show could mean the end of the illusion that I, and I alone, had a truly personal connection to Marc Maron.  It scared me a little to think that Maron wouldn’t be mine.

I worried about who would be there and how this would affect my enjoyment of the show.  I had seen Marc Maron perform at a suburban comedy club about a year earlier.  There was a two-drink minimum and the feature act was a middle-aged Texan woman who did thirty minutes about how her boobs sagged and how her teenage daughter had a nose ring.  What I remember the most about that night wasn’t so much that I sat at the lip of the stage or that Maron looked me right in the eye as he ranted about his notebooks and his cats, but that the crowd wasn’t “hip.”  I remember looking around the club and noticing how many people – middle-aged and “regular” people – came out, not because they wanted to see “Marc Maron,” but because they wanted to see “comedy.”  It fell on a Friday night and it was just something to do.

But now, I thought, we were just one year later and within that time WTF had exploded.  Marc had been profiled in the New York Times and the Onion AV Club.  His show had pulled high profile guests like Gallagher (who stormed off the show) and Robin Williams, Ira Glass and Brian Cranston.  And we were in Seattle.  Would there be a theater full of mustaches and skinny jeans?  I was nervous that the person sitting next to me, the person sitting behind me, and the people sitting seven rows back would all be WTF-ers too, that they’d too know every detail about Maron’s life and had brought cookies and clever t-shirts for him.  Most importantly, I was worried that there might be a collective sense of over-enthusiasm at this show and that it would weaken the connection that I felt I had with Marc, that I would be forced to confront the fact that I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

Before the show, I wondered what it  was that Marc would talk about.  Would he have a new act?  How new?  How much would I know from the podcast?  He just tweeted about shaving his mustache, I wondered if he’d have facial hair.  I wondered if his girlfriend was there.  I wondered if he’d talk about his cats Boomer or LaFawnda.  I thought about that story that I’d recently heard on WTF about the raccoon that died under his house and whether or not that would turn out to be part of his act.  I started feeling like I knew too much about Marc Maron.

At 9:30 it was time.  We’d already heard a little AC/DC canned music pumped over the speakers and we’d seen the opening act.  This was it.  Maron walked out onstage.  He wore black boots and had a 5 o’clock shadow.  The facial hair was on its way back.  He wore a blazer.  He wore Levi’s.  They were just like mine.

He opened his set by talking about the poster advertising this show.  It was an homage to a famous Lenny Bruce poster, from when the legendary comedian had performed at San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium.  Maron stood onstage comedy-nerding out about it, how flattered he was that someone had put him in such company, and also about how scared he now was that he’d have to try and live up to that mythology and legacy.  Marc segued into a line about his own relationship with his audience and how his tendency is to harangue everyone in some sort of unconscious effort to push them away, pull them back, and then push them away again.

Maron talked about the Occupy Wall Street movement and read a snarky and accusatory email that he sent to his cousin, a high-class stockbroker that he hadn’t seen since they were adolescents, jamming on a Rolling Stones tune in a relative’s basement.  Marc talked about his girlfriend and, in what was probably the most telling moment of this evening, he didn’t say, “My girlfriend and I” but rather, “Jessica and I.”  He stood on stage, called her by name, and immediately followed that with an acknowledgement that, yeah… we all knew who “Jessica” was.  We knew all about her and their relationship from the podcast.  It was that one tossed-off line, “You all know Jessica” that meant a lot to me and seemed to sum up, not only the entire evening, but also where Maron is right now in his career and in his life.  It was right then that everyone in the theater unconsciously realized that, when it came to Marc Maron (and especially to the post-WTF Marc Maron) that we all had a relationship with one other and with the man with the microphone standing before us.  Even if we’d never met, we were somehow still pretend-friends.  It was almost as if this one phrase had let us all know that there was no longer the same fourth-wall barrier between performer and fan.  We all agreed, in one way or another, that we were there because we had something in common and because we had this weird affection for and intimacy with one another.  Maron recognized this and it was at that moment that I realized that there really was unique energy and comfort in the air.

Most of the other bits I knew from the podcasts, and some I recalled from previous performances or from Maron’s most recent album, 2011’s This Has to Be Funny (recently named Record of the Year by Laughspin.com), but it was never a let-down or a retread to hear them again.  In fact, it was even more interesting to see these routines onstage.  On the podcast they were stories, but in seeing and hearing them told again to a sold-out audience, you couldn’t help but notice how they had progressed into becoming fully-formed pieces of his routine.  I think that we’d all come to this show because we were comedy nerds, and because we loved the craft and the craftsman.  Seeing Maron trim the fat off of the stories that I’d already heard (and that nearly all of us had already heard) about his near-death experience on an airplane or about masturbating in his hotel room was fascinating because I knew that he would do those same routines at every show – maybe up to 6 times in a weekend – and that each time it would sound the same and each time it would feel the same to everyone in the audience.  And, by saying it would feel the same, I mean that it would sound like the story was that spontaneous every time, and that it was new and exciting.  When Maron joked about how he thought that he honestly might die when his plane hit that turbulent patch and about how his moments in his life flashed before his eyes, he spoke in a way that had all of the energy of something that only happened yesterday, instead of months ago.  It’s all so natural and yet, we all knew that it was practiced and refined.  It was all incredible to watch, because it showed me his growth as an artist and a performer.  Maron suddenly seemed like more than just a comedian, he was a bonafide storyteller and monologist.  Even in the space of one year, from the time I’d seen him perform at that suburban club last February, I could see how much better he was, even at just talking.  He was comfortable and engaging in a way that he hadn’t been before.  He wasn’t a man trying to win anyone over or take control; he was a man holding court over a group of friends and acquaintances.

Throughout his set, Marc worked through a bunch of his new material.  He’d occasionally pull out a scratchpad that he’d penciled-up backstage and talked through what new bits he liked.  He tried out something about how he was trying to work out a bit about heel inserts.  He continued this way, talking through thoughts that he’d had and notes he’d scribbled on a napkin.  He talked about how ridiculous it was that he’d decided to vacation in Seattle in November.  He hit upon some standard Seattle tropes like coffee and rain.  He affectionately called us “wine-drunk Earth-nerds” and lampooned our aversion to umbrellas.  The comedian talked about his Thanksgiving dinner at a vegetarian restaurant (“Nothing is more exclusionary than large groups of people having a good time”) and his trip to the EMP rock and roll/science fiction museum (where all he could think was, “What is this place? A room of Kurt Cobain, a room of Jimi Hendrix, and then whatever the hell else we could think of? A room about Avatar? Sure! Why not?”).  He launched into something he calls his “honest mic check,” a routine where he alternates, “Check…check..one…two” with lines like, “I disappointed my parents” and “Bad career choice, dreams fading.”

Somewhere around halfway through the evening, Maron began to do some of his older stand-up material. He even introduced these old bits by saying, “I like to do some of my older material at these shows, because a lot of people just know me from What the Fuck.”  This was honestly some of my favorite material from the set, and not because it was necessarily better or more touching, but because they were all moments when I could truly see Maron act and perform.  They were more practiced and a little more conventional than the material that had popped up earlier in his set.  He’d been doing some of them for years but, instead of being stale, they were infused with an enthusiasm that came from his excitement about recreating his former self.  His stories about his drug addiction turning into ice cream addiction, or about being put in the outfield during Little League weren’t just routines tailor-made for theater-sized crowds, or routines that were hilarious regardless of how funny you found Marc Maron (or if you found him funny at all).  They were routines that harkened back to the angry, pacing Marc of yesteryear, rather than the -as he put it- more contemplative and sedentary Marc that we knew today.  Seeing him exaggerate and pace the stage like his younger self and watching him gesticulate and raise his voice gave me an entirely new appreciation for him as an artist and I respected it, both as a performance, in and of itself, and because it showed me a sense of Maron’s own self-reflection and the growing sense that he had about his own legacy and individual place in comedy.

He brought up Jessica again and discussed the details about when and how they first met (again referencing, with a smile, how he was sure that we all knew the story already).  He explained how she was a fan who hooked up with him at a Portland comedy festival and, not long thereafter, moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles (but, “Don’t worry,” she said, “I’m not a stalker”).  From there, he detailed their tumultuous courtship, how his Blackberry would get alternate picture messages from Jessica (of her vagina) and then from his carpenter (of a custom-made bookcase).  “And I gotta be honest, I was a little more excited about the bookcase.  I’m not afraid to put things in that.”  Maron closed out the bit by talking about a particularly gnarly screaming match that they’d had, in which a frightened neighbor had come to the door and pleaded with them to stop arguing.  It was that night when they first said “I love you.”

But in spite of everything that I’ve written here, in spite of the times that I used the words “rage” or “anger,” I really want to emphasize that Marc Maron never got truly dark or truly angry.  The descriptors of those emotions came through as parts of his stories and as major themes of his act, but real and true misery never once came through in his attitude or mannerisms.  Throughout the evening there was never anything but a feeling of warmth and togetherness, both in the crowd and onstage.  It seemed like even when what I was hearing were stories about shouting at girlfriends, having no one to turn to, or being forty-four years old and still jerking off in the living room, the way in which I heard them was one in which there was still hope and where things would always get better.  Marc Maron’s tone suggested that while it’s true that we can all become angry and insecure, life really isn’t much more than a comedy of errors and maybe if we take a chance and lay everything on everyone all the time we might just get some love back.  Maybe we’ll find ourselves with the love and respect that we always wanted.  It’s worked for him and it’s what we experienced there that night.  Marc Maron is just like every one of us that was there in the audience, even when there are times that we don’t want to admit it to ourselves.  We’re all prone to frustration, anger, and insecurity, and seeing Maron transform those feelings into something and to come out the other side was both refreshing and inspiring.  I didn’t come to see him for an escape, I came because I wanted to learn something about myself and I wanted to grow as a man and as a human being.  I came because I wanted to laugh at the joy that I’m connected to someone else and, on that night, connected to everyone else.  As much as we know that each of our internal monologues are idiosyncratic and unique, there’s a whole lot of people out there who are just like us and, on that night, I felt like we were all together and that we needn’t worry because, as long as we keep at it, we just might get it all under control.

BLITZEN TRAPPER
DAWES
Neptune Theatre
Seattle, Wa
11.11.11

Last month we posted a brief write-up, along with a ticket giveaway for The Belle Brigade, Dawes, and Blitzen Trapper show at the Neptune here in Seattle.  The contest was super last minute and even more last minute was my decision to pop on over to the show and photograph it.  My credentials came through that evening and I decided that, if I had a photo pass, it would probably be worth swinging down there for it.  With a baby and a bunch of other shit going on, responsibility-wise, it’s not as easy to simply fly out the door on a moments notice anymore.

Blitzen Trapper was the obvious draw for me.  I have their album, FURR and the Black River Killer EP and am familiar with the Wild Mountain Nation record that was released prior to those, but I never really listened to last year’s Destroyer of the Void or heard anything off of their newest release, American Goldwing, which came out in September.  I remembered them being a fairly solid live act, but I hadn’t seen them since they played a free outdoor show by the Space Needle back in July of ’09.  I expected to be guestlisted for last year’s show with Wye Oak at Seattle’s Showbox during City Arts Fest, but when it turned out that I wasn’t, I said “Fuck it!” and rolled up to the see fellow SUBPOP label-mates, The Vaselines again for their overlapping festival stop at Neumos; a decision that I didn’t regret.  The Blitzen Trapper fans that I know didn’t seem too impressed with Destroyer and even BT frontman, Eric Earley who “cobbled together“ the album referred to it as “a patchwork of songs from (his) past and present which hung together like a house of cards.” American Goldwing, on the other hand, was created out of inspiration and, for all intents and purposes, was finished before the tour for Destroyer of the Void ever began.  While the group promoted the latter in front of the largest audiences of their careers (festivals, TV appearances, etc.), Earley concedes that, throughout that entire time, he knew “that this new record (he’d) recorded was the real record, the Blitzen Trapper record to come.“  Of course, that never did anything to prevent fans from defending Destroyer to death in the comment sections under any review that was less than high praise.

Even more vocal have been DAWES fans in the comment sections under reviews regarding their opening slot at this recent Seattle show.  The event itself was advertised as part of a “co-headlining” tour for DAWES and Blitzen Trapper, with the Belle Brigade operating as their opener.  I was mostly unfamiliar with The Belle Brigade, aside from random advertisements for the duo that had previously graced this site, a random late night appearance that I caught, and a YouTube video of the brother and sister team sitting in a bathtub while performing an acoustic rendition of their biggest hit, “Losers.”  I missed their set entirely, but the reviews have been generally favorable.  When I arrived, DAWES had already started playing.  I worked my way down towards the front and a lady touched me on the shoulder, in an effort to direct me as to where I should be standing to get a good photograph.  No, she didn’t work there or anything; she was just some random woman with her husband, but I guess that she just figured that we were all good friends at the show that night and that she was being helpful.  [No thanks, I think that I should be able to figure this one out for myself.]

It’s not surprising to discover that DAWES had been part of the touring Dave Matthews Band Caravan festival this year, because the crowd looked like they followed them directly from a DMB show… or maybe a Jack Johnson / Ben Harper performance or, dare I suggest it, a Jason Mraz gig.  I snapped off a couple of shots from where I was standing and then moved to the other side of the crowd, which found me surrounded by young, early-twenties college kids who seemed to know all of the lyrics.  Frontman, Taylor Goldsmith has just enough scruff to be the guy with the guitar at the party -looking rugged but not ragged- and the set, which had an equivalent vibe, simply fell flat for me.  They’ve been described as having that “Laurel Canyon” folk sound, which makes sense, because they actually did record their debut album, North Hills, in Laurel Canyon.  [Zappa lived there too, but that's, obviously, not the sound that they're being compared to.]  That album spawned the track “When My Time Comes” which you may have heard soundtracking the History Channel’s recent Pawn Stars/American Pickers promo.  It’s a well enough written song which, if you only heard that track alone, could place Dawes on the fence between, “Hey, I bet these guys probably have a solid collection of nicely constructed folk tunes” and “This is some contrived, emotionless Hollywood singer songwriter jive turkey bullshit.”  The fact that the official video was a tribute to Cool Hand Luke was encouraging and had me hoping that they were a little more Neil Young and less VH1.  Unfortunately, their other big song, “Time Spent in Los Angeles” seemed to suggest that they were, in fact, very much of the Video Hits folk variety and that they wouldn’t likely be venturing too deep into any John Prine or Heartworn Highways territories.  Their set had the energy of an award show performance and the solos were as clean and uninteresting as could be expected.  The show ended just as their fanbase must have hoped, with both of the aforementioned hits played back to back.  In other words, without any surprises.

On paper it would almost make sense to mash Blitzen Trapper and Dawes onto the same bill.  Now that BT recently switched their management to Big Hassle (same as Dawes) I can see someone thinking, “Hey, these are our two folky rock outfits and, if we put them together, this would be a match made in heaven. Plus, they could fill out the bill for each other, depending on what town they’re in.”  In Seattle, Portland-based Blitzen Trapper was the headliner.  In other city’s I’m sure this was switched up.  Dawes plays Dave Mathews festivals and BT plays festivals like Pitchfork.  They could both converge at something like Sasquatch!, but tonight it would be at the Neptune Theatre in the University District.

Since the last time that I saw them, Blitzen Trapper has lost keyboardist, Drew Laughery, effectively making them a quintet.  Adjusting to this, they began the set with a Nord set up in front of Eric Earley for the first couple of songs.  If you haven’t seen the group before, it’s important to note that some of the members will move around between instruments during their sets.  Earley plays both acoustic and electric guitars, the keys, and occasionally breaks out the harmonica “bridle” around the neck.  Erik Menteer will pause his lead guitar duties to man another Nord, or even to smash the shit out of a tambourine.  Marty Marquis might be on keys, then shift to guitar, or even melodica.  Brian Adrian Koch, even took a moment to man the melodica at this show, between his drumming and vocal duties and, at one point, I even noticed that bassist, Michael VanPelt had some sort of whistle-like contraption jammed in his mouth like a pacifier while he played.  Drew’s absence didn’t seem to affect them too much and they have adapted seamlessly.

Whether their entire set was really that good or simply appeared tobe great in contrast to the band before them, BT had a ton of energy and it came through incredibly natural and didn’t feel forced at all.  They began with “Sleepy Time in the Western World,” the lead off track from FURR and then went immediately into “Astronaut” from American Goldwing, before following it up with the album’s title track.  The set consisted of a healthy chunk from the new release and, as someone who was previously unfamiliar with any of that material, they were able to retain my attention completely.  The new tracks merged in with the older material effortlessly, but still managed to lead the performance into new and interesting directions.  There were a handful of cuts from Furr, a couple of tracks from Wild Mountain Nation, and even one (technically, 2) song(s) from the Black River Killer EP.  There was only one from Destroyer of the Void.

The set breathed up and down and expanded outward, but the shifts didn’t necessarily come strictly from song to song, but rather moment to moment, as well.  Every thing meshed and transitioned well from one tune to the next and the guys really steamrolled through once they got rolling; accelerating, slowing down, dropping through loops, and zipping up and around the walls like a TYCO Niteglow electric slot car race-track.  I spent the majority of the show in front of Menteer, watching him viciously chop away at his guitar and drain the life-force from his keyboard, while Koch pummeled away at the drumkit behind him.  During a few select moments, the typically more composed, Earley haphazardly flung himself across the stage, showcasing his ability to strangle out shrieking guitar solos of his own.  They encored with “Fire and Fast Bullets” before dropping into an immediately recognizable Zeppelin riff and ending the night with “Good Times, Bad Times.”

I had planned my coverage for this show -if any- to be a photo set, at best.  I generally keep to myself at shows, but I wound up talking to a young intern who was shooting for the Seattle Weekly that night and, while editing through my photos, I decided to bounce around and see if I could find whatever images other photographers at the show came away with.  Whether it was the Weekly, The Seattle P.I./Blogcritics.org, or the website Sound on the Sound, I began to recognize a pattern, as well as a mind boggling anomaly, throughout: for the most part, I actually agreed with them.  It was pretty clear to everyone that Dawes fell flat on the stage, while Blitzen Trapper put on an engaging and high energy show for their greatly deserved headlining spot.  Another defining thread between the reviews were the comments by Dawes supporters under them, which ranged from overly defensive statements to responses as simple and minimal as “Wrong.”  One person even inaccurately claimed, “Jeez – That’s the first review from this tour that had anything bad to say about Dawes.“  Perhaps, but it definitely wasn’t the last and I couldn’t find another one regarding this particular show that felt any different.  However, as stated before, the Belle Brigade set that I missed, was met with fairly positive responses, prompting some to insist that they outdid the supposed “co-headliner.”

It’s true that there shouldn’t be any real need to compare Blitzen Trapper and Dawes or to pit them against each other, but when you advertise something as weird as a “co-headlining tour” and the sets are so lopsided, it’s hard not to imagine how off it would have seemed if their performance orders had been switched.  Another thing that I began to notice was that Dawes‘ latest release,  Nothing Is Wrong was continuing to gain some hype and being suggested as one of the best albums of 2011 (Paste, Rolling Stone, a guy I know, etc).  I found a video of the song “A Little Bit of Everything” from the album, which Dawes played right before their other 2 hits that ended their set.  In this version, Taylor Goldsmith was performing solo acoustic on a radio show and it was still being referred to as a “new song.” The fucked up thing about it was that it actually sounded fairly credible and a hell of a lot better than when I saw it live.  The vocal delivery was direct and understated, as was his delicate guitar work.  There was an emotional quality to it that I hadn’t experienced at the show and his intention and ability to create a story with his lyrics were commendable enough.  I still wasn’t in love, but I understood the appeal a bit more and it showcased some promise for Goldsmith as a songwriter/lyricist.  From there I found a video of him performing the song with nothing but piano accompaniment.  It was generally the same version, except that it was slightly worse.  Whereas the lyrics had floated over gentle plucking of the strings prior, the piano was now making it less subtle by emphasizing the cadence in the verses, and the guitar work, which was the highlight of the last version, had devolved into nothing but a strum.  Finally, I found a recent live video that demonstrated the “evolution” of the track and it mirrored what I had experienced in Seattle.  The song begins with the frontman mussing up the back of his hair, while the piano, drums, and bass come in.  By now he has abandoned the acoustic, altogether, in favor of an electric guitar that’s simply hanging around his neck without him even playing it.  There’s a smirk on his face, because he knows that people know the lyrics now, so he begins to perform the track to the audience, making it more about the idea that they’re playing it, than about what they’re actually playing.  Everything that made the original sound authentic was gone; the drums have little military-style snare hits here and there and Taylor is accentuating the lyrics, both with his vocal delivery and by pantomiming stupid shit along to them.  The cheesiest parts of the lyrics, which were just barely overlooked in the stripped down version, are now said much louder, “It’s the death of my first dog!“  “So, pile on those mash potatoes and an extra chicken wing!“  He bellows these to the audience, but with more of a matter-of-fact talking voice, as if to say “How about that guys?“  He’s attempting to overtly turn it into more of a “story” and failing.  Sure, Neil Diamond can pull that shit off, but this guy can’t.  He’s no  Ol’ Blue Eyes-style crooner.  He’s more of an Adam Duritz type and, when showing the video to my girlfriend Kim, she thought that it reminded her of the yelped out songs by an even more emotionally inauthentic Adam: Sandler.  It didn’t help that the song that I saw them perform right before it, “Coming Back To A Man,” has an almost identical cadence to its verses, causing it to feel even more stale.

Blitzen Trapper, on the other hand, are at their best when they allow shit to get weird.  While their critics and/or Dawes fans might complain that they are unfocused, I’ve witnessed the Portland crew’s penchant of drifting into otherwise conflicting musical territories pay off handsomely and this night was no exception.  With a set sprinkled so heavily with new material, they sounded surprisingly cohesive,  while managing to make even the older work sound like it was advancing forward.  Their abilities as musicians and as a collective skilled at venturing out into heavier moments of distortion and experimentation actually work as a benefit, allowing them breathe and come to life, like they were summoning a mammoth hoof-swinging beast from the underworld.  Earley starts by crafting a foundation of solid tracks and, from there, the rest of the band can fill in the sound or help give it legs to move around.  For example, take the title track from “American Goldwing.”  It’s a good song, but it’s Marty Marquis‘ work on the keys and the little guitar riffs by Erik Menteer that contribute those perfect little accents to make it feel like a truly well-rounded effort.  Everyone in BT is extremely talented and, when it works, they operate as a unit to create beautiful tightly woven blankets of sound.

With Dawes, Goldsmith is actually weakening his own music by not recognizing where it’s strengths lie.  Trying to gain credibility for rootsy Americana while embracing more and more polished approaches to production is not serving him well artistically, even if it is doing wonders for his pocketbook.  He’d be better off playing some of that shit acoustic and not trying to work in weak arrangements with his younger brother and two other dudes, because the extra bodies actually seem to equal less life.  It’s clear that he prides himself on becoming a great singer/songwriter, but even in that respect, he’s not quite there.  It’s a tricky game, trying to tell a story about (often fictional) characters, while infusion them with powerful emotion.  Blitzen Trapper craft those type of story-based tracks, as well, and, to be honest, neither of these groups are writing “Sam Stone” or “Pancho and Lefty” quite yet.  Most artists will never ever find a lyrical voice that is as incomparable, unique, subtle, and powerful as Prine Van Zandt or contemporaries like a David Berman or Bill Callahan; it’s an incredibly rare gift to have such poetry spill out of your head and a skill that develops over time.  But that’s not really the point with BT, because the lyrical content is only one aspect to their song development, not the entire selling point.  One group is a full-on band and the other is just one guy, hoping to push a Jackson Browne vibe with a supporting cast that interact and feel more like studio musicians, even though he’s related to one of them.  The irony is that, although BT are experimenting with areas that seem like they would conflict with the Americana aspects of their sound, they actually sound a hell of a lot more organic then their co-headliners that are trying to confine themselves to that bubble.  When Earley‘s outfit launches into the space-rock or psych moments, it evokes those visuals that I’ve always imagined of the members of The Traveling Wilburys spun out on acid trips.  I’m not saying that Dawes doesn’t have a Dylanesque vibe of their own, but it’s Jakob and the Wallflowers.  They just don’t come to life off of the page for me, but that’s not saying that they won’t be successful, because I believe that they will be.

I believe that Dawes will continue to grow but, whether they become mainstream VH1 successful or simply gain some devoted fanbase that shitty bands like O.A.R. have managed to generate and maintain, I couldn’t say.  It depends on what you want out of life and your career.  Remember, The Black Eyed Peas‘ first 2 albums looked promising, with cameos by De La Soul and Mos Def, before they recruited a former Kids Incorporated/Wild Orchid songstress to piss herself live on television.  Blitzen Trapper will probably never get huge.  Most likely, the best that they could hope for would be to gradually gain a Wilco-like following in size and fervor.  Even then, I don’t see Eric Earley becoming inflicted with an actual rock-star complex.  But, for whatever my opinion’s worth, I’m actually interested in seeing what the quintet can pull off next and in delving into to American Goldwing to give it a chance.  Even if the recorded material doesn’t draw me in, I know that they are still an act that’s worth making a trip to see live.  As for Dawes?  I’m not really interested in following their careers, but for those of you who have the desire to pick up and seduce young, idealistic, upper middle-class liberal arts co-eds, you might want to start bumping their jams in your Subaru on the way to the frisbee golf course.  And, in the case that those references are outdated and are coming about a decade too late, Nothing is Wrong should still make an equally sufficient stocking stuffer for any of the soccer mom’s that those young women have turned into.

Blitzen Trapper Setlist:

Sleepytime In The Western World
Astronaut
American Goldwing
God And Suicide
My Hometown
Furr
Might Find It Cheap
Love & Hate
Fletcher
Love The Way You Walk Away
Black River Killer
Girl In A Coat
Miss Spiritual Tramp
Big Black Bird
Street Fightin’ Sun
Wild Mountain Nation

-Encore-

Fire And Fast Bullets
Good Times, Bad Times (Led Zeppelin cover)

BUILT TO SPILL

City Arts Fest 2011

The Moore Theatre

Seattle, Wa

10.21.11

I first heard Built to Spill from across the hall in the dorms.  When I lived in the dorms, I tried to keep myself off the radar.  The natural manner that my floor mates had with group dynamics made it clear that they were the fittest Darwinian specimens and that I was going extinct.  It came to a point where I, more or less, waited until I was confident that the halls were clear, before coming and going (a habit that has, unfortunately, penetrated into apartment life as well).  In the dorms, I became very skilled at dodging social interaction with the  people that I lived around.  However, some things are inescapable: things that become the air you breathe in such close quarters.  You can’t burn enough sage to satisfy the evil spirit that is the pervasive smell of Easy-Mac.  There is nothing that you can do to soften the rumble caused by charging stampedes of post-shower man-boys.  And certainly, you cannot close enough doors to dampen the constant noise of dormish this-and-thats.  Built to Spill was part of the “this and that”.

Up until recently, BTS was a sound I tried to filter out.  The guy across the hall from me—a gold medalist (to my silver) in the Awkward Olympics—had Built to Spill on repeat the entire year.  As their sound waves found their way through the tiny cracks in my particleboard door, Built to Spill became the backdrop of my dorm experience.  All that to say, I was truthfully, very excited to get the chance to see them perform at the Moore Theatre during this year’s City Arts Fest.  “Yeah great!  I’ve always wondered what they would sound like without a concrete wall between them and me.”

With my ear to my apartment door, I waited until the last rattlings of passersby had settled and then, made my way to the show.  I arrived at the theater to see five middle-aged guys on stage, all wearing loose fitting t-shirts, and either cargo pants or relaxed jeans.  I could have easily mistaken them for the road crew, if it weren’t for the ecstatic sounds radiating from everywhere in the room except for the stage.  The band enters casually and with a remarkable ease.  Built to Spill brought their living room with them, and now you are standing in it.

“Who are you, who come to me to perform in loafers?” I wonder, as they begin their set.  Before this night, I had felt strongly that shows stripped of showmanship had no place in the world.  With the soft-but-fierce competition in media, every band makes arguments and bids for your attention.  Built to Spill offers neither bells nor whistles with their set.  I am a little amazed that they have a following at all—let alone one that easily fills the Moore to capacity.  What Built to Spill gives up with showmanship, they have to make up in musicality and meaning—and that’s what people are here for.  People are clearly not at this show for a spectacle.  There is none to be had.  To quote Keanu Reeves in the blockbuster hit, Speed, “We’re just (2,436) cool dudes, hanging out.”

I begin to re-evaluate my prejudices against showless performances and start focusing on what everyone else in the room cares about: the music.  The sounds are truly elating, as they’re coaxed out of a bramble of pedals, switches and amplifiers.  The ambience of their three-guitar lineup is balanced against the very melodic, occasionally baroque-like movements in their songs—it’s an odd half-breed of shoegaze and jam band.  Even though I have very little interest in either shoegaze or jam band, the way that Built to Spill rides the line is emotive and serene.

I lost myself for a moment in the sad fanfares of Traces.  In case you didn’t know, it’s been proven that infants recognize and respond to music that their mother listened to while pregnant with them.  Subsequently, it’s been hypothesized that preference follows familiarity.  This is all to say, I feel a lot of familiarity with this song; not as if my mom, while pregnant with me, somehow listened to this song 20 years before it was recorded, but like I was indirectly informed of these sounds.  It’s possible that I may have had the seed of Built to Spill planted in my head by the rogue waves that wafted into my dorm room from across the hall.  Even more likely though, in this song, and in Built to Spill’s music in general, I hear so much of what we have come to think of as “the Northwest sound“.

The way in which frontman Doug Martsch bends his strings into a buzz of controlled chaos recalls to my mind the worbly guitars of Modest Mouse’s The Moon and Antarctica.  I listened to Modest Mouse long before BTS, but I am beginning to suspect the actual direction of the comparison: Modest Mouse sounds like Built to Spill, not visa versa.  Despite the two-year discrepancy between the formation of Built to Spill and Modest Mouse, the influence that the prior had on the latter is blaringly apparent.  Deathcab for Cutie also got swept up in the same current of contemporaries.  I can hear something like a seminal Deathcab in Built to Spill’s sprawling melodies, and even in Martsch’s voice.  There’s a fake movie I play in my head in which Ben Gibbard puts on a Built to Spill record and spends hours experimenting with just what shape he has to warp his mouth in order to make his vowels sound exactly like those of Doug Martsch.  By way of familiarity, I am becoming more and more aware that the Boise group isn’t something to shut out, as I have in days past.

By the end of the set, though, I feel a little bit like I’m back in the dorms.  Surrounded by a multitude of people who all have an intimate understanding of what’s going on, I feel lost.  Having been formally introduced to the band only recently, I don’t have any personal significance ascribed to these songs.  To these people, each song is a meaningful, personal experience that I haven’t shared.  Every song is like an encore.  Between the finish of one song and the start of the next, I am surrounded by spontaneous uniform chanting from the crowd.  It’s as if there was a program handed out at the door instructing show-goers what to drone in unison and when.  The faces of the front-rowers are elated.  I can see some not-well-concealed guy backstage who is not at all concerned with impressing his girlfriend by showing any level of dignity.  And he’s not the only one, nor is it just guys backstage.  The room is indignant and ecstatic.  The spectacle that Built to Spill isn’t creating on stage is made up for the fervor of the fans.  My appreciation for the band is far too cold and calculated—lacking all the warmth of meaningful experience—to participate.  So, as in the dorms, I’m on the outside looking in.  Bu,t unlike the dorms, it looks great.  And it doesn’t smell like Easy-Mac.

CRYSTAL CASTLES

City Arts Fest 2011

The Showbox SODO

Seattle, Wa

10.20.11

Walking into the never-ending cavern that was October‘s Crystal Castles show at the Showbox Sodo, I knew that I was a part of something outside of the realms of modern reality; something primitive and thoroughly futuristic all at once.  Everything about the experience seemed to be an oxymoron.  From the 19-year-old girls dressed like candy ravers circa-1993 to the frat dudes doing shots of Jäger in the bar, while the Crypts played their dark, thoughtful nightmare grooves, I seemed to have walked into a witches’ coven where half of the attendees were expecting a party instead of a séance.  But in fact, the mood of such a concert did land somewhere between these two ends of the spectrum. The music of Crystal Castles is smart and calculating and deeply rooted in the occult, while also appealing to the dance and party crowd, and/or those fans who revel in the collision of both dance and darkness.

Entering the stage with a sly presence, the duo wasted no time beginning with Alice Glass’ signature yelling and jumping at a hyper-momentum, set against a heavy and snail-slow techno groove, controlled by dj mastermind, Ethan Kath.  Their dynamic recalls a dancehall linguistic and a touch of The Knife with a White Magic tempo (another spooky, but more instrumental Brooklyn duo).  Crystal Castles are definitely Urban- tough (by way of Toronto), yet have an earthy fluidity.  Their set at City Art’s Fest was rooted in 90s tone with a futuristic vibration – echoeing up into rafters of a very noisy nothing, calling upon a feeling of primitive urge and uncontrollable movements…  Blood curdling drone to a backdrop of heavy rock beat that continually took the forefront and made the droning seem all that much spookier and omnipresent, as it alternated in and out of the vocal spotlight.  Three or four songs were filled with a shrieking chant that cut through the encompassing pulse, while the rest struggled with the balance between clear vocals and noise.

Much of the singing and howling that I enjoy so much in the recorded songs, was completely lost in a live setting.  I blame this solely on the venue.  I’ve only been to the Showbox Sodo three times, but every experience has the same outcome: the vocals are drowned out, the bass and feedback dominate the soundscape, and all of the details of melody and harmony drift upwards and get lost in the utter lack of acoustics in that mammoth building.  I understand that this band is on the rise and that they needed a larger venue to accommodate the demand from fans, but nobody -and I mean no decent musical act that I have seen or heard of- has ever sounded good at the Showbox Sodo!  It’s funny, because the original Showbox is, hands down, my favorite place to see live music in Seattle and the differences in atmosphere and sound quality between the two locations are so vast that I will continually pass on great bands and lineups simply because they are scheduled at the Sodo establishment.  To the credit of Crystal Castles, the energy that they projected was infectious and, even when the voices were inaudible, the crowd could sense the intent and level of enthusiasm in their performance.  Alice Glass has a stage presence like no other and, she alone, almost made up in her physicality what was lacking in the vocal and harmonic elements.

At rare moments they sounded just like the albums.  Steady, yet erratic.  Pulsating, yet spasmodic and random.  Bursts of light and jubilation, with equal parts doom and aggressive darkness.  Despite the muddled sound, the artists’ message came across and got the whole audience riled up, without a still pair of hips or feet in the building.  This tiny lady was a tinker-hellion onstage, straddling the crowd on her knees as they held her up, so that she could continue her yowling out into the madness of fan response.  These sneaky spell-casters are creating a new antithesis of disco; almost hardcore rock in a danceable format, but with something else all its own.  Dark and unreachable, they create appeal and intrigue with an aura of mystery; giving the listener just enough to grasp and keep the interest by hiding slightly in the shadows, both musically and physically.

All in all, Crystal Castles put on a great spectacle of a show, even in the poor setting and the intense silver strobe lights that threatened to either induce a seizure, or put half of the audience to sleep with its pulsing lull.  Fortunately CC’s dancey, droney brand of full-force electro-gloom kept everyone jumping along and deliriously /mysteriously happy.

I have no problem admitting that I am a fan of Ace of Base’s hits or Amy Grant’s “Baby Baby.” I do not appreciate them in some kind of ironic way, either.  They are good songs with catchy hooks and skilled song craft, and so is “Kokomo,” but I know there’s a difference.  I know that I shouldn’t like it.  “Kokomo,” written by Mike “Douchebag” Love, Terry “Doris Day’s son” Melcher, Scott “Mamas ‘n’ Papas” McKenzie and “Papa” John “Incest” Philips, is a sax-and-steel drum accented chart topper about some douchey resort in the Florida Keys that Mike Love liked to frequent.  The song came from a Tom Cruise movie that I have never seen.  Mike Love sang lead.  At the request of Disney, Carl Wilson and Al Jardine redubbed vocals that were originally sung by Terry Melcher.  The Beach Boy who had no involvement in this #1 single was Brian Wilson.

“Kokomo” is the antithesis of all that is supposed to be holy about “America’s Band.”  According to legend, the Beach Boys never released any “good” music before or after Pet Sounds, and they certainly never released any good music without Brian in the driver’s seat.  Those who venture into pre-Pet Sounds territory, on the other hand, discover classics like Surfer Girl and The Beach Boys Today!  Those who venture into post-Pet Sounds territory discover winners like Holland that Brian had very little to do with.  If the Byrds, Pink Floyd, and Depeche Mode can produce smash hits without their key songwriters, why couldn’t the Beach Boys?

As it turns out, with Brian’s two brothers (Carl and Dennis), cousin (Love), and aspiring dentist friend Al Jardine, the Beach Boys could too.  Mike Love may have been a tool who wasn’t as talented as Brian, but then again, John Lennon was a tool who wasn’t as talented as Paul.  And “Kokomo” is certainly a better song than “Happy Xmas (War Is Over).”

The unreleased SMiLE album is the holy grail for “Kokomo”-hating Beach Boys fans.  According to legend, Brian’s brilliant Pet Sounds follow-up, described as a “teenage symphony to God,” would have eclipsed Sgt. Pepper.  After the project was canceled, the Beach Boys released the more simplified Smiley Smile in it’s place.  Later Beach Boys albums would also include a few cuts from what would have become -the still fragmented- SMiLE.  In 2004, Brian finally finished a version of SMiLE with his touring band and released the CD to critical acclaim.  But there’s just something about hearing SMiLE in late-60s medium fidelity with Carl singing the crucial middle harmonies.

The SMiLE Sessions, finally released this month by Capitol, includes the closest thing to a finished Beach Boys SMiLE possible without overdubbing anything new.  The only problem is . . . the album was not finished, and the unfinished SMiLE, put together from studio scraps, is not as good as either Smiley Smile or the Brian‘s 2004 version.

Sonically, The Smile Sessions is the best that it can be.  Although Brian is one of my favorite record producers, there are things about his 60s production style that I do not care for.  Brian’s love of lush, stacked arrangements was not compatible with 60s recording technology.  Since he had only four, or -later- eight tracks to work with, he bounced four or eight tracks down to one track relentlessly.  In those days, each bounce meant a notable loss in fidelity, particularly in the high frequencies.  The snare drum in “Heroes And Villains” is a perfect example of what happens to sound with generations of destructive analogue bouncing.  For this reason, I find that, in spite of the rapidly improving recording technology, the first production credited to Wilson, 1963’s Surfer Girl, with its more spare arrangements and lack of studio trickery, actually sounds considerably better than the album Brian was working on four years later.

In spite of its moments of beauty and genius, SMiLE was a project as self-indulgent as they come.  Brian’s collaborator, Van Dyke Parks (who, incidentally, played accordion on “Kokomo”), known for his own terrible album Song Cycle, does not help.  Much of SMiLE is half-baked, over-effected short-attention span music a la A Wizard, A True Star.  “Good Vibrations,” successfully fused “modules” recorded in three separate studios together into one song, but even on the similarly constructed hit “Heroes And Villains,” none of the edits on SMiLE are as seamless and well-executed as those.  “A musical journey from Plymouth Rock west to Hawaii, complete with a suite devoted to the elements, a song about physical fitness, and a minor key cover of ‘You Are My Sunshine’” doesn’t seem like such a good idea once the pot wears off, or once the rest of the band, who still has to tour while the main songwriter stays home in LA, gets back and listens to it.  The Who wisely gave up on Pete Townshend’s similar Lifehouse project, releasing the ubiquitous Who’s Next instead.  The Beach Boys did the same with Smiley Smile, a record that I enjoy more than either Who’s Next or SMiLE.

Some of SMiLE’s best tracks, like “Cabin Essence” and “Surf’s Up” did not make it onto Smiley Smile, but that is understandable.  Prior to Pet Sounds, the Beach Boys had been releasing three or four records per year.  Almost a year had passed since Pet Sounds and the record company wanted a product.  If some of the best songs needed more time and energy to develop, or if they would sound out of place on the minimalist home-recorded Smiley Smile, there would always be a future record or two.  Some of the other SMiLE songs ended up sounding better on Smiley Smile.  “Vegetables,” which is fairly unmemorable in the heavily produced version on SMiLE, is brilliant in its creepy just-bass-and-vocals arrangement on Smiley Smile.  “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow,” which is abrasive and silly on Smile, is beautiful and hypnotic as reinterpreted in Smiley Smile’s stripped-down, slowed-down “Fall Breaks And Back To Winter.” “Our Prayer” and “Cabin Essence” made it onto 1969’s 20/20, and a superior version of “Surf’s Up,” based on the original studio tapes, augmented by Carl “The Man With The Pipes” Wilson’s lead vocal, a Moog, and 70s fidelity, appeared on the 1971 album Surf’s Up, one of the band’s best works.

Anyone who wants to sit through a record that’s good from start to finish will be better served by Smiley Smile, Surf’s Up, the 2004 Smile, or many other albums related to Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys than by The Smile Sessions.  But, in some ways, The Smile Sessions does, in fact, deliver the goods.  It is nice hearing the familiar songs with Beach Boys harmonies and this version of the album does sound better than the Pro Tools-edited bootlegs that I came across years ago.  But the end of the first disc and the entirety of the second disc, while not intended for casual listening, are fascinating for anyone who is interested in hearing how one of the greatest minds in pop music works his magic in the studio.  Brian’s “Surf’s Up” demos and instrumental sections of portions of “Heroes And Villains” are audio gold, and not only to fans like me who even bother to own the Party!/Stacks of Tracks two-fer CD.

SIDE NOTE:

The aforementioned Party!, released in 1965, contains twelve mediocre performances of acoustic songs, mostly covers, with corny banter in between and overdubbed “party” noise.  On first listen, the album comes across as a total cash-in for the Christmas season and fans who would buy anything.  It was precisely that.  On the other hand, the passing decades have declared it the precursor to the MTV Unplugged craze, well ahead of its time.  Brian’s latest single at the time, “The Little Girl I Once Knew” was a flop.  Disc jockeys despised the song because it contained the avant garde sound of silence before the chorus.  Party!, on the other hand, generated a #2 hit, the Beach Boys’ famous cover of The Regents’ “Barbara Ann.” As a matter of fact, Party! originally outsold Pet Sounds.

Brian clearly wanted to make big, serious records, but the public wanted to “party!”  Still, the modular, ambitious “Good Vibrations” became the band’s second #1 single.  The Beach Boys dropped the SMiLE project.  In place of the proud “Produced by Brian Wilson” label on its sleeve, Smiley Smile contained the phrase “Produced by The Beach Boys.”  Aside from a couple of bizarre and interesting records in the late 70s, America’s band were never Brian’s band again.  Twenty-one years passed.  Dennis had drowned.  The band had tried even its hand at Culture Club-esque synth pop on their Steve Levine-produced eponymous 1985 album.  Then, it was 1987.  The Beach Boys released their first #1 hit in 21 years.  The song was “Kokomo.”

ROBYN

City Arts Fest 2011

The Paramount Theatre

Seattle, Wa

10.20.11

Seeing Robyn at this year’s City Arts Fest was my first big pop concert.  I’m happy to have fulfilled this rite-of-passage;  never mind the fact I’m almost 30.  Actually, being almost 30 does relate to this story, because, as I age, the less tolerance I have for staying out late, fumbling through crowds, STANDING, and the general pack-in-as-much-as-you-can-handle model of music festivals.  EXHAUSTION =FUN?   But to see Robyn meant participating in this chaos-fest, so I bucked up, slammed a 24 oz Red Bull, packed a Snickers Charged, and practiced standing around and pushing through crowds a few weeks before the event.  Here is how it all went down:

I brought my friend Luke with me to take pictures, because my camera is old and I don’t understand hand-held technology.  First, Luke and I went to a multi-purpose events space known as FRED Wild Life Refuge to check in and get our press passes.  FRED is in a cool-looking, mid-century building that is officially described as  a “collaborative arts center.”  But I would like to call it an “all-purpose room-o-rama,” which just means that it is big and confusing.  What the fuck is an all-purpose events space supposed to be, anyway?  Or a collaborative arts center?  I’ve been inside and I still don’t know.  There are designer colors on the wall and lots of different “event areas”.  It does look really cool inside, though.

The confusing FRED provided me with the most confusing press check-in that I’ve ever experienced.  [Oh wait, I have never press “checked-in” for something.  I’ve only ever snuck around whatever event I was reviewing, feeling secretly superior, even though I paid to get in.  "DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM??" I would silently scream at fellow spectators.  If only.]  There was some fiasco about what press passes Luke and I were supposed to get, what we should get, and what we would actually receive.  We ended up getting separate passes and only one was a pass for the Robyn show.  “Ummm, what?”  Rather than me braving the pop fiends alone, trying to take pictures of Robyn that didn’t look like Rothko paintings, Luke and I decided to be “punk” and sneak us both in with the non-Robyn pass that they gave us.   So, music festivals are shit-storms of chaos for press and public alike.  Oh yeah, I had already figured that would be the case.  The anxiety of the check-in was further perplexed by the fact that, after we left the check-in desk, we were kind of naturally corralled into a low-lit maze/room/foyer that housed one of the festivals rotating art shows.  This would have been cool except that we were already hecka flustered and confused and now, here we were, trying to figure out where the art was supposed to be (re:”maze”), who were art people doing art things (yikes!), who were art people just there to look at art things (get out of my way!) and who were the other dumbstruck onlookers pretending to know what to do (I know you!).   Also, there was Vitamin Water shit everywhere, which is never a good sign.  Once we found the room protrusion that acted as the gallery, we had a look around as fast as we could.  Some of the art was interesting, but vibe-wise, it was all either serious and made you feel bad or was funny and made you feel bad.  To further concentrate the aura around us, during this entire experience there was no background music and a total lack of a chattery white-noise buzz.  We had to get out of there.  So Luke and I left feeling confused, worried, and totally awkward as fuck.   But anyway, ENUF COMPLAING!!  (Not really)  ONTO THE ACTION!  (Sorta)  IT’S ALL UP HILL FROM HERE!

Because the art experience made us feel like our souls were all deconstructed and heavy, we decided we needed to rebuild our souls with alcohol.  After a few drinks and a peek at the World Series at a neighborhood bar, we felt ready to slam another Red Bull and head out.  We wandered down to the Paramount Theatre around 8:15.  The Paramount is old and fancy and is a hella classy place to see a pop diva, so things were looking up for us.  Before we approached the entrance, Luke and I did some jumping jacks and a secret handshake to increase the chances of us both getting in.  It was a little scary, but we were able to breeze right in, just by flashing the door person the weird little fabric patches that served as our passes.  Our poor ticket taker seemed blitzed and confused; they had probably just talked to 500 people in a row.  It also seems like all door people see the satin square of a press pass sticker and their eyes glaze over with approval.  Either that, or they don’t give a fuck.  If they do, they are little jerks.

When we got inside, the Portland-based dance-duo, YACHT was booming throughout the whole theater.  We went in for a quick sonic dip and caught the end of their set.  The main YACHT people, Jonah and Claire, wore grungy 90’s Euro-trash clothes and jumped around in unison.  Before the last two songs, they kept asking, “Does anyone have any questions?”  No one was stupid enough to scream out yes.

When we came back out, a ton of people were still wheeling about in the lobby/foyer/ fancy waiting-area place.  Here, we decided to engage one-on-one with fans to get the inside scoop about why they would pay shit tons of money to come here tonight.  Also, we wanted to take their pictures so you could see them.  This was a good decision because, in general, people were fucking stoked and this energy rubbed off on me and Luke.  One exception was the little hipster couple that were all slouchy and angsty and told us “Um, yeah, we are actually, like… here to see YACHT….”  REALLY?? Paying $40 to see a Portland band in Seattle is stupid, I said to them.  Not really.  But I think you and I can agree that they were stupid bummers.  Luckily, they were the only people in the whole world who felt like that.  Everyone else talked about Robyn like she was the musical version of a crisis hotline, saving them and inspiring them.  People fucking LOVED to talk about Robyn and how she is “AWESOME” and “AMAZING.”  They were dying to tell you about how HARD SHE WORKS and HOW LONG SHE has been working , how it’s SO TOTALLY NOT about the money, and that she is a dancing MACHINE.  Seriously though, Robyn’s fans really want to see Robyn get her propers.  And they should, because we are dealing with a magic Swedish pixie, tough-as-nails bird lady, who has all the cred of a class act super star, yet also seems to be perpetually skirting the actual achievement of that status.  This strange paradox of existence just further adds to her deep cred.  She is an indie diva.  That sounds terrible, but there really isn’t a better term that I can come up with right now to describe her.

One might wonder, “Why isn’t Robyn as famous as all of the other pop divas that we know and love/hate?“  The most probable answer to that is that she is not insane.  This may be because she has better genes (Swedish) or it may just be something that she tries really hard at maintaining.  Part of that effort seems to have included removing her self from the mainstream pop music machine.  You may or may not remember her first single, “Show Me Love” (it is really bad), which was put out in the 90′s when she was only like 15 or 16.  I imagine that dealing with being packaged and promoted in a particular popular musical model, while trying to grow up, was nightmarish.  (It was actually, probably, OK and really fun.)  But, after some time and some albums that had either luke-warm receptions or non-international releases, a change was a-coming for Robyn.  In 2004, the pop-star and her label severed ties, as she moved towards a more electro-dance pop vibe.  From there, she started to independently release her work on the label that she created called Konichiwa Records.  You can read all about it on her Wikipedia page and she talks about it in interviews a lot.  The complexities of international music distribution are boring and complicated and I’m not going to go into it here;  just know that this was a turning point in her career and, from this point on, Robyn started to kick major pop-ass, getting weirder and weirder.  Being cut loose from the creative confines of a major label freed her to write harder dance music, as showcased by her prolific Body Talk albums.  Doing what she loved, without some asshole dude trying to dumb it down, probably also contributes to the artist maintaining her sanity.  You can YouTube a few of her videos and see that she is a young woman who is eager to talk about the work, how hard the process has been, how rewarding, and also, how she likes to be tough.  In the video interviews that I’ve seen, she mostly refrains from that awful diva filler about how “it’s all for the fans, and I love my fans and I live for my fans blah blah blah BLARG!!!”  She simply tries really hard to make the catchy-as-fuck, sometimes-serious, music that she wants to make and, so far, she is succeeding at it.  In summation, she’s fucking cool, but don’t take my word for it; here is what some of the fans had to say:

This Canadian couple were the first fans we talked to.  Meghan started off by asking if I had ever seen Robyn before.  When I said “no” her eyes lit up like she was gonna say “OH MY SHIT! GET READY TO SEE GOD, GIRL” but actually what she said was, “She is like nothing else.  Holy shit.  She is worth traveling halfway across Canada to see. Every one sings along. It’s incredible.  I would pay 3 times the money I paid to she her.”

They travelled from Calgary.  I don’t know where that is, but is sounds FAR.  It seemed like a lot of people traveled to see her.

Lori and Daryl did not travel but they did have some cool shit to say about Robyn…

Lori:  “Dancing on my own is my anthem. I sang it at Pride Idol (last summer at Seattle Gay Pride) and people loved it.”

David and Rodrigo were on a date (maybe).  David was excited:

“It’s Rodrigo’s 1st Robyn!  I came with to show him the ways, he’s in for a real fucking treat.”

I pressed David a little more, asking about why people love her live show so much.  He said, “People have a visceral reaction.  The theatrics don’t’ overweight the music and vice versa.  She dances her ass off in a jersey for 2 and half hours!  But then she’s incredibly real and sweet as hell.”

Kathryn and Kevin said that they had “Read great things about Robyn and had to check it out.”  Kevin added, “her sister really likes her.“  WORD O MOUTH, YO.

The Tall People below are named James, Wes, Dan, and Ken. Why were they here? “Robyn. Period,” said Wes. (In other words, “it’s like, Duh!”)  He added, “She is an energy ball.”  Dan and Ken didn’t want to say anything.

While searching for other nice-looking people to interview, we ran into YACHT at their merch booth.  We hadn’t planned on interviewing them, but they were probably the most approachable and smiley musicians that we’ve ever seen manning their own merch table.  They were serious about that “ask us anything!” shit that they keep talking about between songs.  I asked them what their feelings were about playing tonight with Robyn and they said, “HUGE.”  That was a better response than what I had imagined.  We left it at that.  Then we took this sweet picture together:

The “furgirls” Leah and Erika said that “Robyn is Amazing!” and that they were here because, “LOVE KILLS!”  (That is a song title, but it still doesn’t make any sense.)

We ran into three seriously classy ladies in red who had things to say like this:

Mary (on the left): “She is great because she never let go of the dance vibe.  And It’s not about making money.“  Emmi Lyn was in the middle.  She just nodded in agreement with her friends.  It was Aileen’s birthday and she said, “I heart Robyn!“  It’s her birthday!  She doesn’t need to do any ‘splainin’!

Then we saw some Olympia people who said that they were excited.  You be the judge:

After we micro-interviewed all of our new friends, Luke and I went up to the photo pit where shit got real.  The photo pit is this aisle that is fenced off right in front of all of the foaming-mouth superfans who squish up next to each other and happily break their ribs on the safety rail.  I felt their eyes seething hatred upon our privileged shoulders.  Luckily, we were only allowed to be up there for 3 songs.  After 10 minutes of awkward waiting, Robyn finally came onto the stage.  The theater was packed and the balcony section looked CRAZY!  A roiling field of elevated dancing fools.  It was awesome.

The first song was a weird slow intro/speaky thing that basically just let everyone get all giddy with anticipation.  Dark red lights slowly went up to reveal a bunch of keyboard and drum dudes in white lab onesies.  Robyn slowly slithered out (she is so blonde!  And serious!  And tiny!  And close!) and did some roboty spoken word stuff as the song started to build.  She had weird printed spandex leggings that may or may not have been a “steam punk” print  (gears and chains and stuff) and also a boxy shirt that looked like a paper bag with stars cut in it.  Not a jersey like I was hoping for, but good for how weird it was.  If anyone can pull off a paper bag smock, it is Robyn.  She was already dancing really hard, like stomping on the ground, twirling, marching, and constantly pulling off other cool dance moves; all within only about one minute of being up there.  She further broke the ice with some comedy relief by retrieving a banana that she started to eat aggressively.  Somehow, she did this without insinuating blowjobbiness and that, my friends, is a hard balance to strike.  She was just like, “Damn, I need to eat something.  Might as well make it entertaining!” Then she busted out a couple of remedial singles like “Dancehall Queen.”   I was kind of bummed that these were the songs she was singing while we were down in the pit,but maybe it was a good thing that she refrained from the jams for those first three songs.  Photographers (which I was posing as) are not supposed to lose their shit and/or move their bodies in any rhythmic way. Not pro. Thankfully, we soon had to leave the pit and I found a cozy pillar to lean on.  Here, I relaxed and enjoyed the spectacle and weirdness of being at a big pop show.  I also felt great about not be crammed into the armpit cracks of several sweaty strangers trying to “dance.”

One thing that I’m happy to note is that, although Robyn’s vocals were definitely treated, she was really singing and she was singing damn well.  No off-key quavering bullshit here.  No pop diva with a headset whose dance moves take priority over out-of-breath vocals.  When she launched into “Dancing On My Own”, everyone started (appropriately) dancing even harder.  Everyone was definitely also singing (Meghan from Calgary doesn’t’ lie!).  It felt very posi and healthy and fun.  She busted through AT LEAST a dozen more songs that everyone LOVED without any hint of fatigue.  It was kind of crazy.  When she did mutter things into the mic in her reassuring Swedish chirp, she sounded Zen-as-shit.  She wasn’t even breathing hard!  (Robyn might be a cyborg. I think she does have a song about being a robot.)

To get back to “Dancing On My Own,” this song has some weird power about it.  The general enthusiasm, sincerity and admission of vulnerability that everyone engages in when they rave about that song, can be intense and even awkward.  Saying that you love that song is a bit like saying “I am, from time to time, a pathetic loser.”  Yet, this sentiment is ultimately neutralized with the bold understatement that all of us losers can take care of ourselves in the midst of heartache.  She made fake make-out arms with herself at some point during the evening, the gesture being funny and empowering at the same time.   See what I mean??

I didn’t stay for the whole show, knowing that she would likely be on stage for a full hour-and-a-half.  (Ow! My bones!)  But I had seen enough to know that :

a) A Robyn show is special,

and…

b.) people would be leaving here tonight also feeling special.

Special like they just partook in a day-long cleansing ritual where they divulged all of their sins and shitty-behavior and, not only got forgiven, but were given practical, real-world tips about how to be a better person.  So yeah… I just inadvertently compared Robyn to both Jesus and Scientology, but I think that you get the point.  A Robyn concert seems to be just as much about dance music as it does about basking in the glow of fellow sensitive souls who aren’t afraid to be sincere.  Even the hipster kids were dancing with their hands out of their pockets.

-Jamey BVM

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Photography by LUKE CHMURA

(check out his Vimeo page HERE)

[Utilize the Slideshow (SL) &/or Full Screen (FS) Modes for maximum viewing pleasure]

Gang Gang Dance

Neumos

Seattle, Wa

10.14.11

Let’s get this straight: “I am a total snob, a pseudo intellectual, and an occasional dilettante.”

I know this about myself.  At least I should get some Buddha points for being mindfully (if knowingly) self-aware.  I appreciate most genres of art and music.  I even admire my own openness to various genres when I’m alone with myself in my car.  I may pop in Four Tet, followed by Blossom Dearie, Elvis Perkins, Arvo Part, and Simon & Garfunkel.  Then, sometimes it’s the Black Keys, Joy division, Toumani Diabate, Ukulele Ike, Hello Seahorse, and Jurassic 5, finishing off (haha) with Guns N Roses.  The juxtapositions of my car DJ skills have me liking myself right through my morning commute.

One of my biggest snobby glitches is this: When I first hear about something, after it has already become a little too popular with the local hepsters, a wee switch goes off in my brain which keeps me secretly “above” whatever it is (at least for now).  Let’s call it snob-tourettes.  I bide my time.  I hold off until this brilliant (or not so brilliant) pop group, painter, movie, or writer passes through the imaginary threshold of popularity and into the passé; I subconsciously wait for it to be uncool enough for it to be cool enough for me…and then I sit back and take it in for the first time.  Maybe (probably) I haven’t even really paid attention to it before this.  My snob-tourettes has wrestled my tiny Buddha to the ground.

Lately, I have been openly rooting for my better self.  I do aim to grow to appreciate art on its own merits, god damn it!!  So, when an opportunity to cover the Gang Gang Dance show at Seattle‘s Neumos came, I jumped at it.  I – mostly – missed the slow swell of psychedelia that was Gang Gang Dance’s rise to international notoriety; a fact (sadly) that would usually inhibit me from listening for at least a couple of years.  This was the better-self-test that I needed; a prime opportunity to step willingly on to a popular alternative band wagon, or at least be open to it.

So, then and there, I committed to attending the show.

I prepared myself with a very limited crash course on the Manhattan music/art collective.  Some of the music was familiar to me already, but, previously, I had tried to ignore it.  So, I listened a little more, but not much better.  I watched a few youtubes.  I read the MonsterFresh.com interview.  I listened to a few songs on spotify.  I did not want to learn too much.  I definitely did not want to go to the show as a confirmed hater or a fan.  I was hoping to be genuinely converted from the live event.  I wanted to be convinced that they were worth the hype; alternatively, I wanted to be justified in shunning their popularity.

Here’s what I learned about Gang Gang Dance before the show:  The band has been termed many things: avant-garde, experimental rock, art-punk, world beat, tribal-electro-pop, & electro clash.  They tour with friend/artist/band-member Taka Imamura; he has been described as the band’s “spiritual advisor.”  They have some songs that last 11 minutes.  Okay…so definitely unconventional…and, in my mind (though I was trying not to pass judgment), they started to seem a little gimmicky(?)  I stopped my research there.

When October, 14th came, it was one of the first rainy cold nights of autumn.  It was dark by 6pm and I had trouble with even the thought of leaving my warm little house.  Attending the show didn’t feel like a good idea anymore.  Nobody really cares if I like popular alternative music.  What was I proving exactly?  I wanted to read a book in my bed, not shake it on the dance floor.  I was going, but I was not in the mood.  To top it off, the venue (Neumos) sits in the center of Seattle‘s Pike/Pine Corridor!  The show was in the middle of “Weekend Party Central” and it was Friday night!  I got into my car.  It was so rainy and so cold.  I drove.  I questioned if I’d find parking?  I thought that I might be late, I was tired, and I had limited expectations.

Then, out of nowhere, events aligned.  Is there such a thing as a divine trance-rock-fairy?  Did it give my kvetching inner humbug a smack down?  I don’t know what magic suddenly occurred, but the evening got lovely.  I found parking instantly (unbelievable prime, free, parking).  Then, I met an awesome pair of friends at the door.  I breezed through the photo pass scenario and had a drink bought for me.

Light anxiety turned to contentment.

Woosh, there I was, happy and sharing a cocktail with a friend.  My car was parked for free on a Friday night.  I had missed most of the opening band, but I would catch all of the Prince Rama set before the headliners took the stage.

Prince Rama is a sister act from Brooklyn, NY.  The band is made up of sisters, Taraka & Nimai Larson, friend Michael Collins, glitter, sequins, and an eighties jump suit.  Wikipedia states: “Originally raised on a Hare Krishna commune in Florida, and educated at an art school in Boston.”  This is the most succinct and descriptive wiki statement I have ever read, and sums up Prince Rama perfectly.  They definitely reminded me of the other kids of hippies that I grew up with.  Their performance reminded me of the haunted houses and rituals that I would invent with my childhood girlfriends.  All in all, they played tribal-psychedelia, with an earnestness of pre-teen girls or art school kids.  One of the sisters (Taraka) ended their set by chanting “trust, trust, trust…” and falling into the crowd.  They were young (20’s?) and probably deserving their own little review, but it was getting late and, by the time they left the room, I was ready to fall asleep on my feet.

At last, the members of Gang Gang Dance arrived on the stage.  They didn’t seem like they were in any hurry.  Things were being set up pretty casually. Instruments were getting their final tunings and Lizzi Bougatsos was emptying a leather bag.  Out of the bag came a small wooden, African (?) devil (?) mask.  She put the mask in front of her face all nonchalantly, like… umm… she was just checking to see if the mask still worked and as if no one was watching.  Then she took out a black bustier and tossed that down in the small pile of purse contents.  The pile contained percussion sticks, mallets, and other things that I couldn’t quite make out. “This could go either way” I thought.

The audience pressed closer together.  I stood with my hands on the stage and to Lizzi’s left.  The crowd was diverse.  A guy who was in his mid-forties and was sporting the classic ex-grunge rocker look was pushed up against my right arm.  Standing behind me was a Northwest skinny pants, horned-rims and fedora guy.  To my left a girl (barely of age) was in a new-agey-gypsy get-up swinging her arms in anticipation.

Lizzi said hello to the crowd.  She wore black gladiator heels, a black cat suit with back cut-outs and a sheer black-metallic button up with the giant tags still on it.  She said something about the Occupy Wall Street protests, which I didn’t understand completely.  When she spoke, she sounded a little like Fran Drescher (which was all that I could think of).  Then she thanked to Prince Rama and summed up my feelings about the opening band by asking sincerely, “Aren’t they cute?”  They were cute… exactly.

A series of color saturated video projections began: still, moving, and layered.  The rest of the band took their places.  Brian Degraw placed a drum stick in his mouth and laid into the keyboards.  There was a gradual spacey drone filling the room; like new age wind chimes set to heart beats.  Then the music transitioned into what sounded like traditional Arabic music.  One moment it seemed like a massage therapist soundtrack.  Next it sounded like “We built this City” by Starship.  Suddenly, the percussion kicked in from all directions (Brian Degraw on drum pads, Jesse Lee on the drum kit, and Lizzi drumming along at center stage).  The music morphed in to a tribal rite of passage.

Bougatsos’ voice was like some odd combination of Kate Bush, Cocteau Twins, and Grace Slick; with a hint of Sinead O’ Connor (from “I Am Stretched on your Grave”).  It was spacey.  It was techno.  It was hard core(?)  Wait… hold on… sometimes it was like that scene in Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood (okay, pretend you haven’t watched it, if you’re “too cool”) when the little girls are chanting around the fire with homemade tribal headdresses.  At moments the front-woman wailed, then she cooed, screeched, and sometimes she was barely audible at all.

Brian Degraw ceremoniously placed a scarf over his head like a holy man.  A large white triangle was projected onto the video screen.  The words “positive” and “energy” were visible on two sides of the projected triangle.  The image slowly rotated.  “Was I being inducted into a secret society?”  If this was a cult, then it was kinda okay by me, because the music was extremely danceable.

Taka Imamura swayed around the stage looking for things to do.  Sometimes he danced to the beat.  For a while he held (what looked like) a large tumbleweed.  He carried the tumbleweed/sculpture around the stage, placing it behind the singer’s head, walking it to different odd locations on the stage, or holding it over his own head as he negotiated the crowded stage like a cartoon shaman.  At one point, he and Lizzi held hands and casually danced through the crowd.  How many bands have a spiritual advisor on stage?  He didn’t play an instrument or sing, but it was clear that he was considered an integral component to what the group was doing as a whole.

One song became another, or there were minute pauses in between.  I tried with my limited knowledge to distinguish between them.  My sense was that, aside from the few die hard fan-geeks, it was hard for most attendees to pick out a set list.  It could have been one long song; one uniform experience: visuals, players, audio, costumes, and color palette.  I felt transported.

Taka arranged a white sheet/scrim in front of Jesse Lee’s drum kit so that the drummer’s head was barely visible and so that the projected images (which were getting denser) could take up most of the visual space on the stage.  The visuals shifted from glittery constellation objects to swaths of saturated color blended with layers of metallic video mesh.  Some of the projections were in shades of teal, fuchsia, indigo, apple green, red and white.  Colors and sound flashed together, pulsed to the music, or oozed like a lava lamp.  The room obtained a Willy Wonka ferry boat feeling.

I loved the odd sense of cohesion,  equally combined with the more experimental elements of when they didn’t seem to know what they were doing.  Near the end of the show, Josh Diamond accidently broke a guitar string.  Taka took the opportunity to grandiosely stretch that string out from the instrument; making a new electric screech as diamond played the five others that remained fully attached (I should add Lizzi joined the string pulling, as well).  The whole spectacle was both luscious and silly.  They appeared to ride the line between taking themselves way too seriously and acting as if it was all complete nonsense.  The music was solid, but the stage performance had some looseness to it.  Being goofy, bad ass, approachable, and spiritual -simultaneously- has got to be a fairly difficult task to pull off successfully

I have been trying for days, but it’s really difficult for me to relay the experience.  My mind, just sort of, flits around when I try to pin down the details.  The band’s gestation in the New York art scene might explain some of it.  Certainly, there was a flavor of performance art.  Have you ever seen footage of old Factory happenings; Beuys in his heyday, early CBGB shows, or even the Sound Lab (cultural alchemy) work coming out of the East Village in the late 90’s?  Maybe this comes from a band having spent over a decade together?  Another set of players and these components could have seemed easily like a glib spectacle, but, for Gang Gang Dance, it didn’t come across like that at all.  They seem oddly self-aware, but also raw and honest about what they were doing.

After the spectacle was over, the members of the band cleaned up their gear.  The bustier & African mask (which were never used) were put back into the oversized bag, and Lizzi Bougatsos sat at the edge of the stage.  She spoke to those that waited around.  She invited people to stay and hang out.  She sincerely thanked the fans for coming out and supporting the band.  She hugged and took pictures with those who came close.  This morning I watched an interview in which Bougatsos states that she literally picks a member of the audience, which she feels connected to, and that she sings/performs to them.  In my opinion, the success of the show was built on this sort of communion.

I went home feeling glad that I had the opportunity to attend.  My only wish was that I had spent less time thinking about it and more time letting myself go.

Gang Gang Dance has been playing larger shows and festivals lately.  This year, they performed at both the Animal Collective-curated ATP Festival in Minehead, UK and The Pitchfork Music Festival.  Growing popularity means that there may be fewer opportunities to experience the intimacy that makes this band so special.

The result of my little self-experiment is this: I learned that -yes- I am, in fact, an snob-idiot when it comes to being too concerned about what other people are and are not listening to.  The band’s current release Eye Contact is now in permanent rotation on my morning commute.  But, more than listening, I am looking forward to an opportunity to see Gang Gang Dance live once again.  I am converted and, so it seems, are the masses.  These smaller shows may soon become history and so, I encourage you to jump on this band wagon as soon as possible.  I implore you: “Shake it while you can!”

Click here to view the embedded video.

BORIS

Neumos

Seattle, WA

10.12.11

Boris has intrigued me since the first time that I read about ‘em.  It was in the early 2000s and, while it may have been on a web forum, it was much more likely from a now-defunct post-rock and experimental record review site.  I knew that they took their name from a Melvins tune, I knew that they were Japanese, and I knew they had a hot lady on guitar.  Over time, I further learned that they have put out noise records with Merzbow, had released a handful of rumbling drone records, and that they knew how to pull a cute trick now and again -like when they encased gummy worms in the jewel cased spines of certain special-edition versions of their 1998 album Amplifier Worship.  Everything about Boris sounded interesting and mysterious.  They evoked an intensity and honesty that made them brooding and yet, somehow, not depressing.  Just reading the way others talked and wrote about them convinced me that this was a band that was creating and playing music because they needed to.  Feedback was not an accident, it was an art.  I instinctively knew that this was a band that already meant something to me and I hadn’t heard a single note.

But what finally drew me to Boris and made me a “real” fan was the 2005 stateside release of their album Akuma No Uta on doom/drone label, Southern Lord (the original Japanese release was in 2003).  I had read about this record and I knew that it was a transition for the band way before I’d ever even heard the thing.  It marked a step away from their reputation as the heavy drone band from the Land of the Rising Sun and a step into the pool of stoner-rock and blown-out speaker sex appeal.  Seeing Akuma No Uta’s cover art told me everything that I needed to know: that this band had heart and that this band had humanity.

The cover art for this U.S. version of Akuma No Uta is a play on the cover image from Nick Drake’s 1970 folk album Bryter Layer.  [Feel free to brush up on Nick Drake over on Wikipedia.  It’ll probably be better than any synopsis I’d pen here.]  That a band would do this told me that they had personality, that they were clever, and that they were both okay folks and cool-ass motherfuckers.  I mean, both images looked nearly identical.  There was nothing kitschy about this and nothing cute.  Boris appropriated a depressing folk classic from thirty-plus years ago and, while there was a “nudge-nudge” that the band and fans alike were bonding over our shared recognition of a pop-culture cipher, there was no “wink-wink” that they had anything but respect for the original.  There was no thumbs-up and there was no smirk.

Fortunately, for all of us (and for me, especially), Akuma No Uta turned out to be a fantastic record to boot.  I immediately liked it, because it married the fuzzed-out drone that I sorta liked (but, wanted to love) with the gyrating sexuality and strutting appeal of acts like bass and drums duo, Death From Above 1979.  Prior to this, I had picked up some albums by groups like Growing, Khanate, and Pelican that I really wanted to like, but I didn’t really feel like I had genuinely and sincerely connected to anything that fell under the “drone/doom”  umbrella until I heard parts of Akuma.  The Japanese trio had crafted a release that contained all of the power chord rock riffs that I’d been steeped in since junior high and all of the inebriated joy and ennui that I’d come to learn about in college.  I later came to appreciate the ambient dooooom of Boris’s Amplifier Worship and Altar -their 2006 collaboration with SunnO)))- but those records affected me intellectually, rather than emotionally.  Akuma had something else going for it and, even when I was only listening on earbuds while strolling to work, it never failed to touch me.

So, it may sound strange to you that I hadn’t seen Boris live until now, especially considering how frequently they tour.  I’ve lived in Seattle for five years now and I’m sure that I’ve missed them no less than four times, within that time period.  Something always happened to prevent me from going or something else has always come up.  Maybe I was just too lazy.  Maybe I was simply bummed that I’d have to go to the show alone.  Maybe I didn’t feel like taking the bus across town.  Or,  maybe, I was just going through another one of my “I don’t know if I’m into this heavy metal thing anymore, I’m just going to listen to John Prine” phases.  But now that I have experienced Boris live, I’m sold, and, God willing, the next time that they come around there won’t be another “maybe” to keep me from being there again.

The band’s performance in Seattle last month was fantastic.  Of course, it was fun and they played well, but, for me, the best part about the show was really my own sense of surprise and discovery.  You see, in spite of everything that I just wrote about Akuma No Uta’s somehow sensual stoner-rock, my knee-jerk reaction was still that Boris was a monolithic drone band.  I still had every expectation that I’d walk into Neumos and, once the band hit the stage, they would unleash an hour of fog-machined Orange amp feedback and follow it up with fifteen minutes of 4/4 power chords.  Then they’d politely thank us and head back to the green room.

And, yeah, while Boris’s hour-and-twenty-minute set contained moments and cycles of drooooone, moments where the band let every note feed back for just the right length of time before they slid that half-step up the neck, and, while there were times when they stared into space and dreeeeew out those arpeggios, more often than not, the band rocked.  And that is to say, they RAWKED!  They stretched out the guitar solos and they indulged in effects-pedal-hopping.  The majority of their set was a Kill Rock Stars take on red-hued psychedelia.  It was fuzzed-out and heavy, and yet, still trashy and joyous and fun.  I could hardly believe it when I heard Boris play what I swear were snare drum samples.  Hearing the conflation of a vaguely danceable Dark Wave beat and a basement make-out vibe with doubled up fuzz boxes and guitar hum was something that I hadn’t quite expected.  To manifest an environment where I felt like I could both sway and leer while, simultaneously, grinning and throwing a fist in the air was somehow genius.

This night made me realize that the reason that I had liked Boris all along is because they take chances.  It doesn’t matter if it’s possible that they can’t always quite pull it off ,or if another band out there can do it better – Boris does it because they want to, and you know that because it’s tangible and you can feel it.  And by “you” I mean “all of you,” because, from what I could tell, everyone in the crowd loved this show.  I saw heads nodding and smiles smiling and frantic grabs for iPhones so that we could try to snap pictures of the nimble-fingered guitar solos and the gaffer’s-taped setlist.

However, the one thing that was absent, and the thing that honestly told me that Boris is a great band, was that I didn’t really feel like most of us knew any of these songs.  I mean, of course, I don’t expect anyone to sing along (the lyrics are in Japanese), but I seldom got the feeling that much of the crowd knew the song that was coming from the stage.  I don’t think it was just me.  We all loved that riff that sounded like “Thirsty and Miserable.”  We all felt those washes of guitar fuzz and feedback.  The smoke and red lights enveloped each and every one of us, as we heard the nine-minute finale that was piano plinks and drum fills and shoe(h)aze backdrops.  How much time did we spend wishing that we had a tattooed girlfriend to touch and a window from which we could stare out into the abyss that is our uncertain future?  Hmmm, how about the entire evening’s worth.

I suppose that if I’d been a bigger Boris fan -by which I mean to say a bigger Boris “completist”, – then I might have had a different take.  More likely, I’m sure that I would have been equally as impressed, albeit in a different way.  I’m glad that I didn’t stand there that night and wish that the band had played “this” instead of “that” or that they didn’t lean as heavily on their 2005/2006 record Pink as I would have liked.  The notion that they should have ridden that over-driven bass feedback tone for maybe just thirty seconds more never crossed my mind.

So, I’m glad that I went in exactly as I did.  There was nothing to get in the way of the band and nothing to prevent me from seeing the musicians perform as a band.  Everything that I witnessed was pure and I didn’t have the wherewithal to second-guess any of it.  I saw Orange amps, Matamp heads, and daisy-chained pedal-boards stretched across the stage. Drummer, Atsuo’s Lucite kit was on prominent display.  Because I not only didn’t know what song the band might play next, but also didn’t always know what it would sound like, I could spend Boris’s set concentrating on the band members themselves, on their interaction with each other, and with their music at hand.  I experienced the music for what it was.  It was sustained chords, sincere melodrama, and barely-buttoned black shirts.  I could feel the real joy in those “whoos” that Atsuo called out into headset mic and the exuberance in every one of those dozen times that he hyped us up by banging the gong that hung behind him.  The stage moves of Boris’s double-necked guitarist, Takeshi may have been few, but I never thought they were anything but legitimate and honest.  I had no expectations of anyone’s technical ability and, even if there were a few times when I thought, “Yeah, maybe those fingers coulda pressed just a little bit harder on those strings” I sensed that it didn’t fucking matter, because, together as a group, Boris was a band that did nothing if not communicate themselves, their ambitions, and their hearts to everyone in the audience.  They had the confidence in themselves to write whatever they wanted and they knew and respected their fans enough to know that, when they saw us standing there before them, we’d all understand.

Setlist:

Riot Sugar / 8 / Statement / Attention Please / Party Boy / Flare / Spoon / Missing Pieces / Window Shopping / 1970 / PINK / Alleron

Photos courtesy of  WT DVL ( http://wtdvl.tumblr.com/).

DANIEL BARROW

City Arts Fest

Seattle, Wa

0ct. 22, 2011

Possibly one of the most unique additions to Seattle’s City Arts Festival, visual artist Daniel Barrow performed his Sobey award-winning “Every Time I See Your Picture I Cry” at FRED Wildlife Lounge on Oct. 22.  Having seen Barrow’s performance for the first time a couple of years ago in Milwaukee, I jumped at the chance to witness it again.  Without experiencing his work for yourself, it might sound odd to hear that it possesses a cinematic quality, but I definitely think that’s an apt way to describe it.  The performer manipulates lush, darkly comic illustrations manually via a simple overhead projector, sliding the transparencies back and forth, while narrating a tale of alienation and violence in the life of a failed art student.  The visuals are set to an original score of chiming, Pet Sounds –like instrumentals composed by Amy Linton (The Aisler Set), which provides a stunning backdrop to Barrow’s sad, matter-of-fact intonation, and serves as a cheery counterpoint to the often-grisly scenarios that his characters encounter.  The result is a multi-sensory psychedelic experience; cinematic, but unlike anything that conventional cinema could conjure.

Divided into ten chapters, the story revolves around an art student-turned-garbageman who reclaims his childhood nickname of “Helen Keller” (so named because of a chronic eye infection problem).  Barrow assumes the voice of Keller, narrating the story from his perspective.  The garbageman relates the details of his chronic eye infections, dysfunctional home life, and failure to develop as an artist with clinical detachment.  In an attempt to express himself artistically, the character creates his own phone book of the city, person-by-person; each profile complete with a hand-traced portrait and biography.  Part of this effort involves combing through the trash of his subjects, whose sad detritus gently rotates in constellations of discarded diary entries, used tampons, and food wrappers.

The trash collector’s antagonist is a serial killer who escapes from prison, stalks him, and murders the people in the phone book one by one.  It is implied that the killer is a figure from the garbageman’s childhood; a neglected outcast nicknamed “Bag Lady.”  Much time is spent exploring the relationship between Helen Keller and Bag Lady, the latter of which is described as having spent “thirty days in an incubator, and thirty years paying for it.”  They are effective foils; the garbageman an erudite, dispassionate artist, and the serial killer the embodiment of impending, senseless, unthinking violence.  [The serial killer does attempt to communicate at one point by using his victim's blood to paint “EVERYTHING IS NOT OKAY. THE WORLD IS OVERPOPULATED. SOMETIMES POLITICIANS LIE" on the walls - sentiments that fit into our current political dialogue almost as well as they fit into a murder scene.]  Eventually the garbageman himself falls victim to the murderer, coming to an especially gruesome end.  Yet, even in the afterlife, Keller retains the same evenhanded tone, describing only mild disappointment at his demise.

Considering the poignant contrast of Barrow’s vibrant, sensory-rich performance with its musings on the sensory deprivation (as experienced by the real-life Helen Keller), the relationship between the visual and narrative elements of Every Time I See Your Picture I Cry is thrown into sharper focus.  From the beginning, the infamous deaf/blind namesake of Helen Keller looms large over the performance.  This is both literal, as well as figuratively true, with her portrait and biography serving as an introduction.  Quotes from her journals pepper the narrative as well, reinforcing the characters’ alienation from the world around them.  Indeed, the garbage man himself is -aside from his nickname- otherwise unnamed.  The overall structure of Every Time I See Your Picture I Cry is deliberately dense and multifaceted, mirroring the layers of beautiful illustrations that Daniel Barrow projects.  It’s an elegant relationship and one that warrants several viewings.

While the story is strangely abstract and the animation has a simple homemade quality, the overall effect is quite stunning.  Quick movements, such as a character bowing or stabbing another, are particularly striking, considering that they’re the result of merely sliding transparencies around an overhead projector.  There is a sense that Barrow is, in addition to an illustrator and storyteller, an illusionist plying his sleight-of-hand tricks to a room full of rubes.  Daniel’s inventive use of the overhead has a distinct charm, derived from the contrast between antiquated technology and a dense, highly discursive storyline.

At its core, Every Time I See Your Picture I Cry is an exploration of what it means to tell a story.  Daniel Barrow‘s ability to bring simple elements of sound and color together in a single space creates -as I’ve said- a cinematic experience.  It seems unfair, though, to describe his work in terms of the technology he deliberately eschews.  If anything, the illustrator’s work seems pre-cinematic, in that it relies on simpler techniques to deliver an experience that cinema eventually monopolized.  For anyone who has lamented the way that digitized screen time exerts itself over our lives, the illustrator/performer’s low-tech masterpiece will no doubt strike a chord.

After seeing it a second time, I definitely wished that there was a way to revisit the experience of the performance, after the fact, as well.  Unfortunately, it’s nearly impossible to find a representative example of Barrow‘s work online, besides a few still images and short clips of other works.  Having attempted (and inevitably failed) to explain to friends what exactly Daniel‘s show consists of, I can say that it’s definitely something that needs to be experienced live.  Although he has toured with this performance for several years, Barrow said that this was his first time in Seattle.  I was surprised by this, given that he is from Winnipeg and tours widely in Canada.  In any case, here’s to hoping we see more of his work returning to the area in the near future.

St. Vincent

The Neptune Theatre

Seattle, Wa

10.13.11

As of October 13th, 2011, I have been to the Neptune Theatre twice.  My first time at the former Landmark cinema was more than three years ago; the occasion being the 48-Hour Film Festival.  My part in our entry was doubly noteworthy for me, because offscreen I wrote the music and onscreen had the enviable role of “nude organist.”  I was more of a transitional motif than a character per se, but it nonetheless featured my first (and only, so far) nude scene(s) in a film.  It was a bizarre experience, to be sure, watching myself “play” organ nude on the big screen.  But, strange as it was, it wasn’t a very vulnerable experience.  The nude organist was humorous and I didn’t feel embarrassed, or as if I’d really lain bare anything of importance.

As might be expected, such a first visit inevitably framed my second.  This month, I saw songwriter St. Vincent (née Annie Clark) perform there.  Since my last trip, all parties involved – Annie Clark, The Neptune Theater, and myself – have undergone changes.  Clark had what she called (in lyric and stage talk) a “Champaigne Year,” filled with unspecified rough patches.  The Neptune no longer just shows movies and has transformed into a burgeoning music venue.  And I’ve graduated from college and have a new group of friends with whom I play music (and hope to for a while.)  These changes imbued my expectations for the show with hackneyed, half-formed thoughts as to whether St. Vincent, a singer whose persona has always been anything but shy, would evoke a certain nakedness of spirit in her performance.  Or, put another way, would her confessional vulnerability be more effective than my physical nudity was to the filmgoers?

I had more than autobiographical reasons to speculate about Clark’s onstage persona.  Annie is currently touring in support of her most recent slice of magnificence, Strange Mercy.  The album has garnered a great deal of well-deserved praise and has been touted -rightly, to a degree- as a much rawer, more confessional album than her previous two.  Much in the same way that Sufjan Stevens’ Age of Adz was approached last year, it has been deemed inseparable from Clark’s own year, during which she wrote much of the album on foray here in Seattle.  Throughout the night, she made it clear that she couldn’t thank Seattle enough, describing her return as a homecoming, though not of the sort with a cheap “dress from Macy’s,” but rather because the audience was “fucking awesome.”

But, while this was a more vulnerable Clark, her time on stage seemed very comfortable with being a production, despite understandable angst at the pressure to be “the best of the bourgeoisie.”  Midway through the set, she told a story which stuck with me throughout the rest of the concert.  This anecdote tied into her song, “Just the Same But Brand New”, from her second album, and concerned a friend of hers who worked for a Manhattan socialite.  The latter owned a mid-century home on the East Side, and hadn’t renovated her house or its furniture since she bought it.  Recently, she requested Annie’s friend, an interior designer, to do so, but only so that it can (creepily) look just like it did sixty years ago.  Her manner of storytelling was perfect, as she didn’t bother to tie it into the song; she let us do that, and its image – a crumbling, rich woman clinging not only to the past, but to its artifice – stuck to my brain, and put to name something visceral that I often felt with St. Vincent ‘s first two albums (and continue to feel with her third.)

Clark’s persona is either pitched as pixie-like, or confessional, but is most accurately off kilter.  Her songs remind me of a sweaty, tense Tennessee Williams play set in the South; everything is in order, but something is very wrong, though the oddities have to emerge from the woodwork (or the gilded bed frame.)  Her vulnerability is real; “The Year of the Tiger” deals with her difficult year and her discussion of the songwriting process left no suggestion that these songs were about somebody else.  But the choreographed lights (whose properties were apropos of the songs: sharp as knives during “Surgeon” and ice-cream colored on “Northern Lights”) and gold-framed stage brought to mind one of David Lynch’s solitary songstresses, like the bar singer in Twin Peaks, whose overwrought aesthetics show that something is off in his alternate universe.  Her work definitely has an edge, but it’s a controlled, precise edge, like that of Tom Verlaine, the genius guitarist behind Television, and such craftsmanship makes the eeriness of her work possible – more than would be conceivable with nothing more than rough guitar accompaniment, as would befit the prototypical “raw” sound.

Interestingly, the moment when she seemed at her most obviously vulnerable came when she played her one cover of the night.  When she prepped the crowd for a version of The Pop Group’s “She Is Beyond Good and Evil” and discovered, at the lack of response, that few in the audience had heard of them.  Yet suddenly, she seemed all the more in her element, channeling the frenetic, punk roots of her sound that can easily be forgotten in the beautiful production for which she has become renowned.  And it marked to me a far greater shift than did the vulnerability of her original lyrics, as her covers in the past have been fairly tame and well known; e.g. Jackson Browne’s “These Days” and “Dig a Pony” by The Beatles, both of which served a more bourgeois aesthetic.  In covering TPG, something came unhinged, her guitar riffs let go of their punctuated control, and she sounded more like Iggy Pop.  Wedged in the middle of the set, it contrasted wonderfully with her own work, which she executed very differently.

For all of St. Vincent’s third-album yearnings to not be just another “cheerleader,” who “tell[s] people what they want to hear,” her concert convinced me that the process of has left her all the more self-assured as a performer and all that such a designator carries with it.  No longer content to be played by those around her, she knows how to draw us in.  Her sheen is all the sweeter and her edge is all the rougher, but most importantly, both spring from a singular alternate universe that she has created, populated by dilettantes, disappointed characters from New-Wave films, and mistreated maids – all of them far more interesting than my turn as a naked organist.