This was a momentous day... this was the day in which we broke in the workshop. To clarify, the house Rachel and I just bought has a powered workshop that makes for a perfect practice area.
Andy got to town early in the afternoon so we plugged in and played some noised-out free psychedelia. There were the ingredients for at least a few songs in there. The important part is that the acoustics in the workshop aren't bad and we could even play with the door open without any trouble. I guess that's one of the advantages of living on three acres...Lou and I had screenprinted more shirts and I've been listening to the roughs from A Wolf in the Works a ton, getting super jazzed on this project. Can't wait to finish the record.
Andy and I rolled to Winston-Salem where we met with my old friend Jason who's in town from Portland. He and I and Andy and the legal maximum amount of awesome people allowed in a single room at a time gathered for Indian food and good conversation. Met some good new folks, reconnected with some cats I rarely see. Andy dug it, dug the people. It's always rad when different circles of friends intersect and get along.
Rolled back from Winston. It's a super quick drive, just an hour and fifteen minutes.
Packed up, rolled up to Chapel Hill. Driving down Main St. in Carrboro, to where it splits into Franklin and Rosemary, and we see a hooker strut down the street in the world's tiniest shorts (and I really wish she'd had a little more on... gross) and then she gets in the car in front of us. It was so laughably cliched, she even pretended to give directions before she got in. The light had since turned green, had been green for several seconds, but we (and I suppose the cars behind us as well) were so amazed at the brazenly obvious solicitation of a prostitute at a major intersection that none of us so much as honked for them to move. I mean, Jesus, it was only 9:30!
They made it a few hundred yards before the car pulled over into the car wash parking lot on the corner of Brewer Ln. and kicked the hooker right back out again. I'd like to remain as in the dark as possible, thanks.
Arrived at the Res. Met Pushy Lips, very nice people, packed in our shit, grabbed a Schlitz from the cooler, and began to play rock and roll at about 10:15.
I apologize for only having pictures from our own set. If you're in another one of the bands and have shots of your sets then please send them my way and I'll include them in the writeup.
Note to self: invest in a camera so this doesn't happen again. D-, see me after class.
That said, this is what happened...
The senseless beating death of an innocent drumkit
We started off pretty strong with "1980," always a good starter tune. Again, the red bass amp performed admirably. This was only my second show using it as my low amp. I need to invest in a tube amp but, until then, the bass amp will do nicely. It's loud as hell and has a good built-in compression circuit. The unfortunate thing is how obscenely heavy the fucker is. Also performing admirably is the OLP. The new pickups (Seymour Duncan Phat Cat & Pearly Gates) have transformed it into a unique and unstoppable guitar.
I remember "Golgotha '98" and "Peace Treaty" coming across really nicely. In "Peace Treaty," which is our thickest song by miles, the extra kick of the bass amp really turned in grainy and mean. That one felt really good to play. Andy thinks it's turning into one of our strongest songs and I agree with him. Forgot some words in "Missouri," but it went well and ended nicely.
"Wolf Wings" went fantastic. We got it right, we got it right for the first time in a live setting! I don't mean to
sound sarcastic or anything, we've just never really worked on this one aside from the acoustic version we put down to go on A Wolf in the Works. We played it for several shows as a solo tune but have been working in minimal drumming, something to echo the hand drum aesthetic of the recording. This time around we worked on something Andy and I had discussed, where he crept into a full-on drumbeat. The beat was slow, bluesy... somewhere between syncopated death lounge and stonered out. I had a really easy time working with it and it contributed to the overall darkness of the song in a way that is simultaneously badass and frightening. Good work, Andy.We finished on an especially wide-open version of "Southport" in which we smashed Andy's drumkit. That was a ton of fun, hammering my guitar through a bass drum head. I've smashed guitars and now I've smashed a drumset and, I have to say, I prefer smashing drumsets.
"Why did you do that?"
That would be what Kristen of Pushy Lips (link) asked us after our rampage. The answer was an honest "Well, the heads have needed changing for a long time and this was just a lot more fun."
Pushy Lips are hard to pin down and I prefer bands that are hard to pin down. The music is riff based, yet firmly rooted in early 90s soul rockers like the Chili Peppers and Jane's Addiction in their locked-in guitar and bass approach. The two string players were either totally synchronized or, in moments when they were not, they made commentary upon each other's lines... like the guitar would be rocking along on a rhythmic line and the bass would interject sarcastic notes on off-beats. Kristen, the percussionist... holy hell could she play the drums. I dug the guitar and bass interplay and I dug Amoretta's kickboxer approach to vocals, but Kristen was the real core of this band. Amazing precision, the classic "blindfolded drummer." It's infuriating, to see her calmly looking elsewhere in the room while rocking her kit like an octopus having a panic attack. That's too much talent at work! Stop doing that! Muscle memory, that's what it was, the body's knowledge of where the ride, where the tom, where the snare would be without having to wait for the mind. The instruments spent the majority of the show clumped close together, eyes locked and music tight. Smart, very smart. The live sound and overall tightness reflected their healthy musical communication.
Amoretta... it took me half the set to realize who she made me think of and it's Zach de la Rocha. I haven't seen a frontperson behave like that since the 90s and I loved to see it. It was a righteous and fearless thing. I'd be too self-conscious on stage without a guitar to riot around like that. Incredible lungs, terrifying eagle-on-the dive screams that would make a lesser person pass out and hit their head, combative, "know your rights-"style calls to arms, and this uncanny ability to make intense and piercing eye contact as she ranted and rambled, grooving to the beat and looking to all the world like a panther at the height of a speed bender.
ARRRRRRRRRRE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
I didn't know until the next day why Blag'ard (link) was going on about REM, but it's one of the funniest spots on their record. "REM Show," a song about the false rumor of an REM secret show at the Cat's Cradle, brings so much of what is silly about my beloved Chapel Hill to light. It's such a paradise, it really is, but sometimes we get so lost in the paradise that even the most insubstantial of rumors make a ton of sense to we, the music faithful, and we're left wandering around believing them. I'm sure there's a very real and very entertaining story behind the tune, I want to know it, but my impressions were positive. In listening to the song, I actually laughed out loud and I thought "Yeah, I'm just ridiculous enough to have fallen for that."
Very good record, by the way. Bobcat. Check it out. Joe runs a really well-organized online record store called Pig Zen Space (link). Anything any of us can do to break the monopoly, let's do it.
No, that wasn't me outside of the iStore with a molotov. Why?
I've been hearing these guys' name for quite a while so it was really good to get to play with them and see what they were all about. They are also a drum and guitar two piece but Joe's guitar approach is nothing like mine. Instead of my arsenal of effects he plays a Strat through a compression unit and, well, that's it... just straight into the amp, no distortion or anything. Nice guitar work too, he tended to hold his chord structure pretty steady while establishing melody and providing flourish by changing the shape of the chord on some of the nonessential strings (holding the barre and the three steady, for example, and riffing with his two spare fingers). Joe's guitar technique is good enough to make up for and surpass what a lot of us are doing with our pedals. I love my pedals but I would feel naked without them. This dude shows up with a guitar and an amp, the basic tools of the trade, and reminds me it can be done.
Adam, the percussive half, played his set nice and low. I love to watch a good drummer at work and the Reservoir was filled with talented drummers for this show. His snare was slung lower than the height of the kick and his approach reflected the height of the set. He didn't pick his arms up too high, indicating an understanding of proper technique, bringing his hits from the wrist with surprising strength.
The structure itself gave generous nods to classic rock shapes... and by "classic" I mean the fifties, doo-wop. Harmonies on the choruses, lending a stripped-down punk rock air. Educated cavemen discover the 12 notes we can play and hole up for years on end to write their story. It comes out primitive, yet refined... reflecting forty years of musical development separate from and unaware of radio rock. There's some definite Pacific Northwest in there, an amalgam of fender snaps and squeals and driving rock and roll catchiness that's just fun as hell.
Also: Joe sings a lot like Jello Biafra. Hell yeah.
Prostitution: part two.
We packed up and called it a night. Pulling out of Brewer Lane and stopped at the light we see the same hooker from earlier strutting down the middle of Franklin Street, wandering the four lanes but not really headed for any sidewalk. Two cops swoop, lights on. One pulls in front of her and the other swings wide to the right before hooking left across four lanes, GTA style, and she's cornered and she's shouting and they're out of their cars and we're down the road and her story will end its own way.
It dawns on me that not everyone gets to see this side of their town. I guess the hours I'm up and out and in the world, between playing and seeing music and my job (which has me all over the Triangle, putting in hundreds of miles a day), put me in a lot of places and the likelihood (statistics! percentages!) for seeing true and total insanity goes up drastically. We're too smart to be such animals and we're too base and instinctual to be so smart and human society, serially suicidal, pushes itself apart as it pulls itself up the ladder towards greatness that is simultaneously fiction and within our grasp.
As for us, it's time to go to Pittsboro... it's time to sit outside by the fountain and drink a last beer... and eat the rest of a bag of potato chips... and to go to sleep so I can go to work... so I can go to sleep so I can go to work... no shows for several weeks... and thank god... gotta control this thing... gotta leave myself time to sleep and actually unpack my house... I want to learn to play the drums (and maybe to fly helicopters)...
Next: June 19th - Where the Buffalo Roamed @ the Nightlight (Chapel Hill)!
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