George Bush is a Facist.

I love bathroom graffiti. It's even more fun if it's badly spelled. Is a facist someone who judges others on their face? I hate Georgie as much as anyone...but it made me laugh.

I got to the Doug Fir nice and early. Finally, for fuck's sake, I was going to see an opening band. I got to the Df at 9:04 pm. Early enough for ya?!? The Golden Bears were up first. They opened for someone else a while ago, and I missed them, and they were reviewed well, and I was greatly disappointed. So I made damn sure I was there to see them tonight. And...oh, god they suck. Suck of the suckity-suck-suck variety of suck. I mean, they're probably fine musicians. It was a tight-sounding combo, though of the tentative, "we just started doing this together" variety. But it was the worst crappy math-prog '70's-era hippie-fantasy-jam-metal I've ever heard. Their album (which would be on vinyl, of course...not that that's a bad thing) should have "death" in the title and fairies (faeries?...ugh) on the cover. Death Faerie Death Destruction, by The Golden Bears. That sounds about right.

Please don't judge me by that comment. I love vinyl to death. In fact, the next band has a split vinyl 12-inch with another band that seems like the most awesome project. Split vinyl 12-inches should never be allowed to die out. So cool. So great. So indie.

I really did try. Honestly, I did. For a good two long, agonizing, endless metal jam-prog tracks. It felt like 45 minutes, but it was probably more like 12. Then I got the fuck out of there. I went upstairs to sit next to the fireplace and read the Mercury. I happily read at a bar pretty often. I like to be left alone, really, but I don't mind being approached. But this was just damn weird. I'm reading, and someone purposefully walks over to me and sits down right next to me. I look up, expecting someone I know, with that kind of intention (Boring Engineer Guy is supposed to be at the show...though he needs a new name. Mustache Guy? He grew this long, luxurious, creepy '70's mustache and suddenly tried to be interesting, though in my opinion it mostly just makes his head look too small. But that seems wrong--when I met him he wasn't Mustache Guy. Guy Who Wants a Ride Home? I figure that's why he texts me before every show he thinks I might be at--he doesn't own a car). Anyhow, it's some guy who must be in his mid-fifties, with an Eastern-European accent. "Are you enjoying your...maaagazine?" "Uh, yeah." It's the Mercury. Sure, it's not McSweeney's, but it's not like I'm reading porn, or Lucky, or Rachel Ray or something. It's the frickin' news weekly, not a maaaaaaagazine. "Come to the bar with me. I weeel buy you a dreeenk. We weeeel have a nice conversations." "No thanks...I'm just waiting for the opening band to finish, because they suck, and then I'm going back downstairs." "Conversation with me, it weeeel not 'suck'. I weeeel buy you a dreeenk." "I have a dreee....I have a drink, thanks, and I'm going downstairs in a minute." Thanks, Golden Bears. Thanks a lot. Had you not been so unbelievably retro-awful, you could have spared me this conversation. Ew.

I finished what I was reading, and went downstairs again. Although they weren't supposed to take the stage until ten, and it was 9:58, The Builders And The Butchers were in full swing. Crazy-ass blues-folk country-punk with a (thankfully rare) occasional medieval renaissance-fest influence (probably solely due to the mandolin). A six-piece with your basic guitar-lead-vox guy, and....uh....oh. The rest is pretty nuts. TWO guys on the sprawling drum kit (one of whom also occasionally played trumpet and mouth organ). That was internal-organ-shakingly-awesome. Violin. Mandolin. It may be only the second or third time I've seen an acoustic bass guitar used live, and it added a totally guttural undertone. Why more bands don't use this, I have no idea. It just has this amazing rough-edged feel, and it just seems to me like this astoundingly unexplored territory between the clean, detailed electric bass of a rock band and the warm but fuzzy-soft classical upright bass used in jazz or some blues bands.

Quick story about the first time I saw an acoustic bass guitar. I haven't told this story, have I? A dozen or so years ago, when I was still in my teens, I "recorded" an "album" with my "band." I went out to this studio in the horrific suburban wilds of my hometown, and rang the doorbell of the home owned by brothers I knew only by reputation, years older than me, who had gone to my high school. Someone unfamiliar, not one of the T brothers, answered the door. Confusedly, shakily, "Hi...I'm (OMS). I'm...the vocalist?" "I know who you are." The door should have creaked shut behind me after a statement like that. I follow this bizarrely prescient stranger to the basement studio. There, sitting on the couch, between the "manager" of our band and one of the T brothers who owned and ran the studio, was my high school crush, Q. I'd turned him down flat when we were 14 and he was a dorky, pudgy class clown. The next fall, he was nine inches taller, 250% buffer, and Oh. So. Hot. in his obscure rock band t-shirts and condescending attitude toward the girl who'd said no. He'd kept it up through high school, though injecting the appropriate "I'm too cool and barely remember who you are because I'm so busy with the indierock scene" attitude when called upon to do so. By that time, of course, I had a raging crush on him. And there he is, sitting on the couch eating popcorn like a spectator at the recording studio. Jesus Fucking Christ, now what the fuck am I supposed to do? Even my "boyfriend" the "guitarist" has no idea I even know this guy. I pull our "manager" aside and explain my dilemma. I can't possibly sing in front of this guy who's made it his crusade to make fun of me since that one fateful day in junior high. Do something? Please? He doesn't say anything. A couple of hours later, one of the T boys, sitting at the board, says, "OMS, let's get started recording your vocals." I blanch. The other T boy stands up and says, "Q, let's go get some pizza." And he's gone. And I record my vocal tracks. I'm terribly embarrassed by that brief, awful, early-'90's musical history, but Q, and both the T boys, have gone on to pretty decent careers. And the guy who answered the door? Turns out a few months earlier, some friends and I had gone out to First Ave for Sunday Night Dance Party. I avoided SNDP as a rule, but damn, we were all pissed at the boys in our lives, 19 years old, and feeling crazy. We met Mike Brady and his friends, and when we told them we weren't single girls, they asked us to grade them on their pick-up lines to other girls. The one that emerged, despite our advice: "We're starting a ska band called Clog, and we need a female drummer." Well, he's pretty well known as a solo act in the Minneapolis area these days.

Among the tapes on the shelf of the studio in the T boys' basement: Clog. Turns out they were a ska band. With a female drummer. The friend of a friend of a friend we were out with that night at SNDP.

That night, after the other T boy and Q came back, we sat around in the living room and played and sang spontaneously. Add some pot and we would have been real musicians! Add a campfire and we would have been any ordinary high school students. But one of the T boys played an acoustic bass guitar.

Anyhow, that was an exceptionally long aside. I kept listening to The Builders And The Butchers thinking their blues-folk-goofiness was kind of cheesy, except that it so wasn't. I didn't just bob my head. I didn't just bob my head enough to get my hair flying. I didn't just tap that one heel like a hipster-geek. I pounded that foot on the floor. They launched into several tunes that sounded like lost Zeppelin tunes. Okay, they didn't have to be lost Zeppelin tunes. They could have been extremely obvious Zeppelin tunes--how the hell would I know?--but there were so many of them. So they couldn't have been. There was also a lovely, if too obvious, Dylan reference ("there was blood on the tracks..."). But the best was when the vocalist's off-key buzzing, over the bluesy-chord-strumming, sounded for just a moment like they were about to launch into Two-Headed Boy by Neutral Milk Hotel. That was about four minutes in, and I was won over right that very second. Sure, TBATB's lyrics didn't come close to the creepy-dark complexity of NMH, but I don't need that in a live show. Just the sounds to pull me there. They were loud, they were bluesy-folk, they were rockin' and raucous, and they made the crowd crazy. Many people there obviously knew the lyrics (like I did for Nick's band, who followed), and shouted along, but they sucked everyone in.

Then Nick Jaina. I'm sorry, Nick. I'm soooooo so sorry. I don't really wish this upon you. I wish for you all the success in the world, all the success you deserve. As my friend frightwig said, "It sounds like you've got the whole world at your feet." I want that for you, I really do. But...I kinda wanted people to start leaving after TB&TB. And they did. In the middle of TB&TB's set, I got up to get a beer, and suddenly my spot was gone. And it was spot #3 in my list of DF places to sit and stand. And nothing was left, from spots 1-5 and even the "if I have to" standing-at-the-top-of-the-steps spots. I'm so sorry. I wished for people to leave. And they did. Nick had a good crowd, though not the huge, raucous crowd TB&TB had. But I loved what playing after a folk-blues-based band with that unbelievable energy did for Nick and cohorts. It's like he said to the band, "Okay, after that, we should reverse the set. We'll start out with the super-high-energy sing-along ones, then take it down after that." And Nathan responded, "Oh, yeah! Let's start out with super-high-energy and then...oh, hey, look, there's a disco ball. It's sparkly. I like it. Where were we?" So Nick started out with Maybe Cocaine and Dirty Heart. And didn't go downhill from there. Even songs that started out lovely and whispery ended up with Nathan and the drummer and the Shoeshine Blue guitarist guy and Ali singing loudly. I loved it. I pictured the one night, after a Binary Dolls set, when I saw what could only be Nick's vocal coach talking to him. "Dynamics," she said. "Dynamics," he repeated. And dynamic it was.

There was a new, unexpected, uber-twangy but spectacular lap-steel guitar part in...oh, crap. Red Queen? There were new shouted vocals in several songs, though there was one I thought didn't need it, didn't help it, even though it was Ali's voice. It wasn't shouted accompaniment, it was harmony, and it just didn't fit in the song. There were two or so new songs I didn't actually know, and a few I barely knew. There was also a promise to send the new disc as soon as this weekend! I've been waiting forever, but getting it ahead of everyone else is worth any wait. I mean, how cool am I? Elliott Smith's fucking piano. Fuck.

And then the encore. I was heartened by the response, the pounding (Nick's fans obviously have better rhythm than anyone else's, as the clapping and pounding didn't accelerate for a minute or more), the hooting. And we saw various musicians moving around on stage--whoohoo! And then there was a quiet melody going on...jeez, DF, they're coming out for an encore, shut the house music the hell off...and people started to quiet, and the lights hit the middle of the main floor...oh. It's not the house music. It's Nathan's violin! Shhhh....oh, be quiet, crowd, please? That's Nick's unamplified voice! There they were on the floor. Four songs, including If I Were To Make Things Right With Jesus. Three other voices taking over the Oooooh...Oooooh parts mostly drowned out Nick. But it was like being at that cozy night sitting on the living room floor at the house/studio in the outer ring suburbs, but so much better because, though surrounded by strangers, I was listening to something transcendent, not Clog The Ska Band Formed Mostly To Hit On Some Girl Who Played Drums.

Before the fourth song, the drummer went up to the stage where the mics were still. "This is the quietest song," he told us. Chatter continued on loudly around the little circle on the floor. A little strumming started. A remarkable, heartening chorus of "shhhhhh!" went up across the DF. People quieted. The song was heard. It was astounding--not just this amazing, unamplified version of a great song, but being inside this web of rapt attention and closing my eyes and mouthing the words.

Okay, yeah, you get my attention now, Guy Who Wants A Ride Home Because He Doesn't Have A Car, I'll offer you a ride home. But the show was transcendent, elucidating, elevating. And your mustache? It's just a mustache. I'm relieved, in the end, that we both know that, and there's nothing awkward.