We strike at midnight... if you still love rock and roll... keep those modern parables a-comin'... and we'll keep on not reading...

*for a factual account of this show, click the pretty picture

 

Where the Buffalo Roamed - Finn Riggins - Kellie Ann Grubbs - April 13th @ the Nightlight (Chapel Hill)

When I was 16 years old I saw my first rock show. It was at Walnut Creek and, of all the major label hacks, I chose Pearl Jam. In fact, at this point in history the amphitheater was still called Hardee's Walnut Creek... and I was but a rube who had no idea what kind of moneytrail voodoo took place when it came to sponsorship of these places. So I paid my $25 and I saw the show. It was 1998, and I still lived in the absolute boondocks of Eastern North Carolina. Pamlico County, natch. And I at least knew a place called Cat's Cradle existed, but I couldn't even conceptualize local music (or even the independent scene). It didn't exist where I lived. At all. I mean, what, the nearest town was New Bern (worse than useless) and beyond that... I could have gotten some underground action in Greenville but I was dipshit clueless.

Tangent aside, I'd dropped $25 on the ticket and $100 at the merch hut. No shit. I got two shirts, a hat, some stickers, Pearl Jam socks, and two posters. Did I mention I was a total rube? But I was jazzed out of my mind. I already believed in rock and roll, even if I didn't know what it was yet. And don't judge me, either. Pearl Jam was my favorite band in the goddamn world. Every music lover has to start somewhere, and don't be a lying hipster and pretend the first band you loved was Spiritualized. This was a pilgrimage for me, so it was only natural to blow through $100 at the gift stand... dig?

I thought I was experiencing rock and roll. I shouted myself hoarse, jubilation, for I knew every lyric to every obscure little b-side. True story. And the hot, slightly older, girls just in front of me and my friend Mike kept looking back at us, annoyed. But I kept on bellowing along with Vedder, who was tiny in the extreme distance, a quarter of a mile across the lawn. True story. But really, as far as common experience goes, there was nothing personal at all about this show. This wasn't rock and roll, this was a readymade product... a shared experience on par with watching the summer blockbuster or pro ball on TV. A ruthlessly generalized product... and how many times had that show been played like that, to vague hordes, with minimal variation? How many times had that movie been made? And how many times can you see Kobe Bryant jump over a refrigerator before you start to yawn? Because there's no sweat. It's a carefully practiced attempt at the übermensch game, and therefore useless on a personal level.

Some say "time makes fools of us all." I call this one a copout. It's the great leveler. Through the lens of time, my asinine jack-foolery in Raleigh's eastern 'burbs, circa 1998, appears - accurately enough - as just one step of many. If that had been the extent of my physical interaction with rock and roll, then I'd probably be passed out by Walnut Creek's gates to this day. Hell, what is it even called any more? Verizon Jiffy Lube Schmirnoff Ice Lite Zero Bojangles Walnut Creek, brought to you by Michelob? But I kept moving. I kept walking.

The shows I cared about got smaller. The bands got weirder. And I got involved. It wasn't easy, but I got involved and I got louder. And louder. And when I look back on that show, 12 years ago this August, I hardly recognize it as rock and roll. Where's the fucking sweat? And I don't mean the sweat of some Led Zep shirt wearing hack with a $6 MGD sloshing around in a plastic cup. I mean the hard work of rock and roll that pulls its own weight. I mean bands that tune their own fucking guitars. I mean taking to the road in vehicles that barely run. And I mean getting as close as you want to the stage, where the culmination of hard work and dedication is the application of blood and sweat to the pickguard of a bashed-to-shit secondhand electric guitar in bad need of intonation work. And when you're the one on the stage, you're baptized by it.

It's important to outgrow your first love, in anything. Because you learn to love slowly, and you never do it right from the gate. I didn't know until after the fact that I had outgrown Pearl Jam, but it was a beautiful revelation. I had already been listening to much more engaging and technical music, as well as some really strange shit that might just turn my dogs against me. Locrian , from Chicago. Check them out. And it dawned on me one day that PJ never had been a good band to begin with. They were just my starting point and I had already moved on, I just didn't know it. I don't really miss them, either. I have plenty of good rock and roll (with actual coherent vocals) that does the trick better than they ever did... and without all the fucking histrionics.

And it's this sense of liberation that I wish on U2 fans. It's a baffler to me, that people can insist on digging U2... and defend it and maintain their indie cred without ever answering to the fact that their favorite band is a played out bastard creature with delusions of Christhood. But no, that's subjective. Let's keep it to what is objective.
LISTEN:
This kind of aggressive nostalgia (i.e.: the treatment of said band as infallible) is damaging to the development of new tastes. If you stay, at least in some way, locked in a certain time period or ethos, it will always damage your view of new bands. If you persist in continuing to worship your first musical love, you will (unwittingly) measure all new acts by their yardstick... as you did when you and your pimples first discovered them in a smelly bedroom when you were a teen.

SO THROW OFF YOUR SHACKLES.
GIVE UP THE BANDS OF YOUR TEEN YEARS.
THEY WILL ONLY LIE TO YOU. AND MAKE YOU THINK OF OTHER BANDS ON THEIR TERMS.


DRIVE TO THE NIGHTLIGHT/PARK/GRAB A BEER/UNLOAD GEAR/HELLO ANDY AND NIQ/HELLO FINN RIGGINS

Kelllie Ann Grubbs (click for an unsorted list of anagrams) started our fine show. She's common friends with our Wilmington buddies Ponchos from Peru and Fractal Farm (more on Fractal Farm in the next entry), and plays gently unhinged singer-songwriter stuff with a quiet, patient delivery. And she had the right kind of audience - a solid crowd of modern sensitives came out and gave her proper attention. About half of them stuck it out for Finn Riggins (here's their list of anagrams), which isn't bad for a bill with two rock bands and a solo act... where the crowd is there to see the solo act. The show started out seated, and maintained that dynamic throughout. We (anagrams for Where the Buffalo Roamed) had a select few who stayed to see us play, but our volume level pretty much emptied the place. The Carrboro Ninja stuck it out, snapping pictures from his perch - hanging upside-down from the ceiling by a diamond filament. I know acts like Caltrop play the Nightlight, and they are loud, but they also have a reliable Chapel Hill draw. Our draws are in Raleigh, Asheville, Greenville and possibly Wilmington. We definitely don't draw in Durham - more on that soon. But we played a pretty good show. I was having guitar issues, the OLP is pretty much falling apart, but we managed nicely. We played with a few different things, with Niq using his mic more often. Also, I changed "North Dakota" a little bit. Probably because I can't actually sing the part I wrote at the end, so I just play that melody on the guitar now. Not really a copout, because I've always been more of a guitarist than a vocalist. And I can always trust my left hand.