Grant Hart played the East End last night. Grant Hart! I'd never been to the East End, and it seems they cater a lot to hardcore and punk bands. First, I want to describe the venue a bit. It's been a number of things over the years, with a ton of '90s and early 2000s Portland bands having fond memories of the place under various monikers (The Rabbit Hole is the only one I can remember). I expected a grungy, dirty hole along the lines of the (now defunct) most recent incarnation of Satyricon, Rotture, or the bathrooms at Backspace. Instead, it was rather a nice little place. A small upstairs room with really nice wood floors and vintage 1960s touches like Danish wood-framed mirrors and a padded-vinyl black portable bar (that's probably the dj stand). Big open stairs take up a lot of the upstairs room, and go down to another room full of nice vintage furniture and candles on the table, plus a foosball table. Not nearly enough bars have foosball. A hallway heads off to the bathrooms (these are the as-expected incredibly gross and dingy ugliness, the only place that met that expectation), and strangely, passes a little vintage clothes-records-and-stuff shop that is only open 4 pm-midnight Thursday to Sunday (timed to coincide with when people are downstairs in the East End, I guess). I bought a green and yellow polyester dress for a dollar, and if I had a few hundred dollars to spare I could have gone nuts there. Finally, there's a small room downstairs with another bar that's the show venue, with an eight-inch-high platform as the stage. Dark, but not dirty.
Drunk Ladies opened up. From down the hall in the vintage shop (man, they had some great stuff!), it didn't sound like my thing. Heavy and maybe a little proggy. Cheap Meats was next. They were actually a lot of fun, all classic early shouty punk done pretty well (if appropriately sloppy). Then, surprisingly, much of the crowd cleared out. The 20 or so people that were left were there for the same reason I was. Grant Hart is a fucking legend. One of the two songwriters in Husker Du, and later made a little (very little) splash with his band Nova Mob, Grant's been pretty much just covering his Husker Du and Nova Mob songs, alone with a guitar, for twenty years or so. Almost every song was familiar, and I haven't seen him in at least ten years. I'm not sure I can even say he's a great musician or anything anymore, but the songs still make me all warm and happy. He's a weird guy, I didn't understand any of his stage banter, but I sang along with all the songs.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Dancing In The Dark
Pretty great show tonight at Backspace. Forbidden Friends opened up, their first show ever. It's sorta a Thermals side project, if they all just stood up one day and moved one instrument to their left (except that Maggie Vail sits in, too). Not surprisingly, very much like The Thermals, but slightly lower key, sometimes a little poppier, and with a little less vitriol. I liked it. They played four songs.
Ted Leo (solo, no Pharmacists) headlined this show. One of the Lovely Boyfriend's favorite bands. I started thinking a lot about how I integrate bands into my favorites, and why I have such a hard time embracing other people's favorite bands. Because this is clearly something I should love. Typically, when I come at a band on my own, I hear a song or two. And I like that song or two, sometimes right away and sometimes after many listenings. Then I buy a CD. I listen to it in order. It has a flow, and one song cues the next in my mind. Then I buy another CD, and I integrate that into my mind and my music life. Then another. Sometimes this is at the pace of the artist's creation, like Menomena. I learn their music catalog in their order, at their pace, starting at the beginning. Sometimes it's in my own order, at my pace. I'll reluctantly admit that I came to Spoon really late to the party. I knew a bunch of songs, but didn't realize what they were, and then one day, I just took a leap and bought...oh, where did I start? Gimme Fiction, or Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, whichever came first. And then the other one. Then another, and another, until I had integrated it all. When someone else loves a band, the music comes at me all disorganized. It's like what I hate about poorly-done college radio. You don't know what it is, you don't hear it very often, and you may never hear it again.
All this is a long, meandering way of saying that I think I really like Ted Leo. As often as the punk moniker gets attached to him (as often by himself as by anyone else, from what I can tell), my impression all along was that it wasn't the right primary descriptor. The solo show made it confirmed for me this impression I've never been able to fully articulate...he's a singer-songwriter at heart (but not in a bad way!), but with a higher average BPM. Charming lyrics of moderate-to-high complexity, filled with clever turns of phrase, mostly major key...heck, my mom would have loved this stuff. The closest punk comparison is mid- to late Replacements without so many ballads (no Here Comes A Regular), but he's way smarter. He fires off lyrics like Elvis Costello, so many words fit into a line that there's no reason to put the rhyming words on the downbeats. Oh...and he was really nice about bumping into me and almost, but not quite, making me spill my beer. A couple of fun covers, The Waterboys' Fisherman's Blues and Springsteen's Dancing In The Dark, and references all over the place. I heard The Jam, Neil Young, the aforementioned Elvis Costello, and things probably too obscure to call a reference but made sense in my head, like John Vanderslice. It was a pretty good show.
Ted Leo (solo, no Pharmacists) headlined this show. One of the Lovely Boyfriend's favorite bands. I started thinking a lot about how I integrate bands into my favorites, and why I have such a hard time embracing other people's favorite bands. Because this is clearly something I should love. Typically, when I come at a band on my own, I hear a song or two. And I like that song or two, sometimes right away and sometimes after many listenings. Then I buy a CD. I listen to it in order. It has a flow, and one song cues the next in my mind. Then I buy another CD, and I integrate that into my mind and my music life. Then another. Sometimes this is at the pace of the artist's creation, like Menomena. I learn their music catalog in their order, at their pace, starting at the beginning. Sometimes it's in my own order, at my pace. I'll reluctantly admit that I came to Spoon really late to the party. I knew a bunch of songs, but didn't realize what they were, and then one day, I just took a leap and bought...oh, where did I start? Gimme Fiction, or Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, whichever came first. And then the other one. Then another, and another, until I had integrated it all. When someone else loves a band, the music comes at me all disorganized. It's like what I hate about poorly-done college radio. You don't know what it is, you don't hear it very often, and you may never hear it again.
All this is a long, meandering way of saying that I think I really like Ted Leo. As often as the punk moniker gets attached to him (as often by himself as by anyone else, from what I can tell), my impression all along was that it wasn't the right primary descriptor. The solo show made it confirmed for me this impression I've never been able to fully articulate...he's a singer-songwriter at heart (but not in a bad way!), but with a higher average BPM. Charming lyrics of moderate-to-high complexity, filled with clever turns of phrase, mostly major key...heck, my mom would have loved this stuff. The closest punk comparison is mid- to late Replacements without so many ballads (no Here Comes A Regular), but he's way smarter. He fires off lyrics like Elvis Costello, so many words fit into a line that there's no reason to put the rhyming words on the downbeats. Oh...and he was really nice about bumping into me and almost, but not quite, making me spill my beer. A couple of fun covers, The Waterboys' Fisherman's Blues and Springsteen's Dancing In The Dark, and references all over the place. I heard The Jam, Neil Young, the aforementioned Elvis Costello, and things probably too obscure to call a reference but made sense in my head, like John Vanderslice. It was a pretty good show.
Monday, January 31, 2011
What Have I Been Doing Lately?
This time of year, just when I most need some excitement, it gets hard to drag my ass out to shows. By the time I would leave the house, it's been dark for four hours already, and getting off the couch seems like work. I've been to a couple of things over the last month or so. A friend's party with some good music. New Year's Eve at Mississippi Studios with Dirty Mittens (great!), Ramona Falls (one of my favorites), and Heliosequence (good).
A recent theme that is not making this project any easier is shows starting totally late. A couple of weeks ago, I went to see Wild Flag at Bunk Bar. We got there way early, figuring the place would be packed, and knowing that Bunk Bar sandwiches are better than anything we could have concocted at home for dinner. I'm a pretty good cook, but damn. Those are good sandwiches. I got a grilled cheese, because I had eaten something and wasn't very hungry. The grilled cheese was pretty ordinary, but the lovely boyfriend got a squash sandwich with bacon, and it was amazing. I actually went back the next day for a sandwich because I was so disappointed that I hadn't been hungry enough for one of their real, serious creations. We got there at 7:30, figuring people would be lined up, or at least start pouring in shortly thereafter. No, it was pretty sparse there. Glad we misestimated that way, rather than the other way, I guess. The first band didn't start until after 10:00! Late. Drew Grow and the Pastors' Wives were supposed to open, but Drew Grow had apparently been in a pretty bad car accident (everyone who mentioned it said he'd be fine but had broken a bone or two), so Ramona Falls had stepped in to replace them. Their NYE show was a bit more dynamic, but Brent Knopf is always awesome. I loved that the stage was lit only by a utility light (you know, a bare bulb at the end of an extension cord, with a plastic cage and a hook) that was just laid on the floor of the stage. This was Ramona Falls' first show since Brent announced he was leaving Menomena, or in other words, their first show as Brent's main project. Wild Flag spent a lot of time setting up, and hung the utility light from the rafters. So damn bright! I guess they had someone filming. I have to admit, my first thought about WF was, "Gee, another band that wants to sound like Sleater-Kinney....oh, wait..." As the set went on, they became tighter and just looked like they were all having lots of fun. Even Janet Weiss had this big, genuine grin on her face. By the end, I was really enjoying it.
A couple of nights ago, I went to see a show at Branx. Not normally a venue I would go to, but it was to see The Thermals. I don't get that opportunity nearly enough! The show had been changed from the 20th to the 28th, and the door time on the website had been changed from 8 to 7. We got there at 7, and there was a line. Doors weren't open. We waited a few minutes, got bored and cold, and went to Produce Row for a beer. We went back to Branx about 8, and the line had gotten really really long. But about 8:20, it was clear that doors weren't at 8, either. I'm a huge proponent of all-ages music in theory, but I have to say, I'm not always a fan of hanging out with high school kids, especially as they stand in line, showing off for each other and practicing smoking cigarettes (they weren't very good at it). So we went off to La Merde for another drink and some Trivial Pursuit questions. We were back at 9, and they were just starting to let people in. We got in line, and slowly moved inside. Guidance Counselor was just starting to set up. I love Guidance Counselor. As much fun as they were when they were messy nerd-punk wildness, as the band gets tighter, it's just as fun and maybe even more so. Ian's got this total art-school-rock Devo/early Talking Heads thing going on now, which is just amazing. They finish up, and I start listening to some of the chatter around us. "Did you see Wampire?" "No, did they play already?" "I heard they played at 9, were you in yet?" What the fucking fuck? The first band played before the audience was in the venue?
I understand why all-ages music isn't doing well in this town, if that's how shit gets run.
I was terribly disappointed I missed Wampire! I've only seen them once, and it was a super-short set at PDX Pop Now! this past summer. Not that this set was much longer (and on the same stage, actually).
Last up, The Thermals. They've got marvelous energy, and it seems to emanate from Kathy Foster's hair. Sorry, Paul Alcott, but your hair is maybe only #2 in town for most amazing to watch during a set. They may not have been as into their set as I've seen them, but they don't put on a bad show. They've got really good and great, and this show was really, really good.
On a side note, the place has been cleaned up a bit. a few new "walls" (framing and drywall that goes partway to the ceiling), a small bar area for the 21-and-up crowd, a nicer stage with an enclosed backstage area. Oh, and some spray-insulation on the ceiling, perhaps to minimize noise from Rotture upstairs. The bathrooms looked kinda clean, too, at least upstairs in Rotture, with some of the graffiti covered up and real locks on the (still handmade plywood) stall doors. Things that still need to be fixed: Doors at 7 should not mean doors at 9. Doors at 9 should not mean first band starts the second the doors open. The ventilation system is still all closed off, and I'm not sure if that really means there is genuinely no ventilation in the place...how could that be legal? Yet the ventilation system has cool air running through it, even though the vents have metal plates bolted over them, because after an hour of sweaty kids dancing, water starts to condense on them and drip onto the crowd below.
I'm not sure it's the best this town can do for all-ages music. I could rant and rave all day about the closure of Berbati's (occasionally all-ages), The Artistery, and Satyricon all within a month or so, but cripes, is this the kind of place we want carrying the torch? Long live Backspace, and I'll even give some props to the split-floor arrangements at the Crystal Ballroom and the Wonder Ballroom. I just wish there was another way. More ways. More places. I was a sixteen-year-old kid hopping in my (thanks, dad!) 1975 Volkswagen Beetle as soon as I was old enough and driving into Minneapolis to go to all-ages shows at First Avenue, but that place is on the same circuit as the Crystal. It's not like other towns have it that much better, those all-ages venues on a smaller scale in other places don't survive either. Is it because I want a beer with my show? Is it because kids are ghettoized in this country and adults don't want to hang out with them?
What is this better way?
A recent theme that is not making this project any easier is shows starting totally late. A couple of weeks ago, I went to see Wild Flag at Bunk Bar. We got there way early, figuring the place would be packed, and knowing that Bunk Bar sandwiches are better than anything we could have concocted at home for dinner. I'm a pretty good cook, but damn. Those are good sandwiches. I got a grilled cheese, because I had eaten something and wasn't very hungry. The grilled cheese was pretty ordinary, but the lovely boyfriend got a squash sandwich with bacon, and it was amazing. I actually went back the next day for a sandwich because I was so disappointed that I hadn't been hungry enough for one of their real, serious creations. We got there at 7:30, figuring people would be lined up, or at least start pouring in shortly thereafter. No, it was pretty sparse there. Glad we misestimated that way, rather than the other way, I guess. The first band didn't start until after 10:00! Late. Drew Grow and the Pastors' Wives were supposed to open, but Drew Grow had apparently been in a pretty bad car accident (everyone who mentioned it said he'd be fine but had broken a bone or two), so Ramona Falls had stepped in to replace them. Their NYE show was a bit more dynamic, but Brent Knopf is always awesome. I loved that the stage was lit only by a utility light (you know, a bare bulb at the end of an extension cord, with a plastic cage and a hook) that was just laid on the floor of the stage. This was Ramona Falls' first show since Brent announced he was leaving Menomena, or in other words, their first show as Brent's main project. Wild Flag spent a lot of time setting up, and hung the utility light from the rafters. So damn bright! I guess they had someone filming. I have to admit, my first thought about WF was, "Gee, another band that wants to sound like Sleater-Kinney....oh, wait..." As the set went on, they became tighter and just looked like they were all having lots of fun. Even Janet Weiss had this big, genuine grin on her face. By the end, I was really enjoying it.
A couple of nights ago, I went to see a show at Branx. Not normally a venue I would go to, but it was to see The Thermals. I don't get that opportunity nearly enough! The show had been changed from the 20th to the 28th, and the door time on the website had been changed from 8 to 7. We got there at 7, and there was a line. Doors weren't open. We waited a few minutes, got bored and cold, and went to Produce Row for a beer. We went back to Branx about 8, and the line had gotten really really long. But about 8:20, it was clear that doors weren't at 8, either. I'm a huge proponent of all-ages music in theory, but I have to say, I'm not always a fan of hanging out with high school kids, especially as they stand in line, showing off for each other and practicing smoking cigarettes (they weren't very good at it). So we went off to La Merde for another drink and some Trivial Pursuit questions. We were back at 9, and they were just starting to let people in. We got in line, and slowly moved inside. Guidance Counselor was just starting to set up. I love Guidance Counselor. As much fun as they were when they were messy nerd-punk wildness, as the band gets tighter, it's just as fun and maybe even more so. Ian's got this total art-school-rock Devo/early Talking Heads thing going on now, which is just amazing. They finish up, and I start listening to some of the chatter around us. "Did you see Wampire?" "No, did they play already?" "I heard they played at 9, were you in yet?" What the fucking fuck? The first band played before the audience was in the venue?
I understand why all-ages music isn't doing well in this town, if that's how shit gets run.
I was terribly disappointed I missed Wampire! I've only seen them once, and it was a super-short set at PDX Pop Now! this past summer. Not that this set was much longer (and on the same stage, actually).
Last up, The Thermals. They've got marvelous energy, and it seems to emanate from Kathy Foster's hair. Sorry, Paul Alcott, but your hair is maybe only #2 in town for most amazing to watch during a set. They may not have been as into their set as I've seen them, but they don't put on a bad show. They've got really good and great, and this show was really, really good.
On a side note, the place has been cleaned up a bit. a few new "walls" (framing and drywall that goes partway to the ceiling), a small bar area for the 21-and-up crowd, a nicer stage with an enclosed backstage area. Oh, and some spray-insulation on the ceiling, perhaps to minimize noise from Rotture upstairs. The bathrooms looked kinda clean, too, at least upstairs in Rotture, with some of the graffiti covered up and real locks on the (still handmade plywood) stall doors. Things that still need to be fixed: Doors at 7 should not mean doors at 9. Doors at 9 should not mean first band starts the second the doors open. The ventilation system is still all closed off, and I'm not sure if that really means there is genuinely no ventilation in the place...how could that be legal? Yet the ventilation system has cool air running through it, even though the vents have metal plates bolted over them, because after an hour of sweaty kids dancing, water starts to condense on them and drip onto the crowd below.
I'm not sure it's the best this town can do for all-ages music. I could rant and rave all day about the closure of Berbati's (occasionally all-ages), The Artistery, and Satyricon all within a month or so, but cripes, is this the kind of place we want carrying the torch? Long live Backspace, and I'll even give some props to the split-floor arrangements at the Crystal Ballroom and the Wonder Ballroom. I just wish there was another way. More ways. More places. I was a sixteen-year-old kid hopping in my (thanks, dad!) 1975 Volkswagen Beetle as soon as I was old enough and driving into Minneapolis to go to all-ages shows at First Avenue, but that place is on the same circuit as the Crystal. It's not like other towns have it that much better, those all-ages venues on a smaller scale in other places don't survive either. Is it because I want a beer with my show? Is it because kids are ghettoized in this country and adults don't want to hang out with them?
What is this better way?
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