Ironic Twist
seeking irony, because sarcasm clashes with my outfit
Friday, September 10, 2004 :::
Last night's Smoke and Smoke/Detachment Kit/Les Savy Fav show was definitely not my cup of tea. I didn't leave early or hide out in the downstairs bar during any of the sets, but I also wasn't motivated to leave the soft couch in the back of the club and would not make an effort to see any of the bands again.
Smoke and Smoke belonged to the "spoken word/angst poetry yelled out in a bad voice and set to harsh music" school of rock. I think they tried to be political like Rage Against The Machine, but they had lyrics like "the sky is full of eyes, the sky is full of eyes." Ooh, The Man must be watching from all the way up there. By this point in their set, I was beginning to feel obnoxious, so I may or may not have yelled out, "They're stars!"
Detachment Kit were more likeable. Their style was a bit like Smoke and Smoke's, but they had far more melody and the singer had a much better voice. I also didn't get the impression that they were trying to be political. Their music just seemed generally angry/hurt, and some of their songs were even your average indie rock with a melody type. I took some pictures of Detachment Kit:
I don't know if this is even a good picture, because it's so pixelated due to the lack of light and the digital zoom, but I'm posting it in color and black & white because it looks sort of interesting:
Headliners Les Savy Fav gave off that spazzy performance art Baltimore band aura, even though they are not from Baltimore. Those of you from Baltimore probably know what I mean. Those of you not from Baltimore hopefully get the point when I add that their lead singer is a chubby middle-aged* bearded bald guy who started the show wearing a plastic black garbage bag and used props like a broken umbrella and a football helmet throughout the show. He also hiked up his shirt way too many times for my taste. Although I have to say that for a chubby middle-aged guy, he had some good dance moves. I also want to mention that LSF have many dedicated fans. Actually, the Black Cat was almost full for all three of the bands, but during the last set, the crowd was really into it. One chick even got on stage and bared her breasts for a while. I was sort of far away and didn't quite make out what was going on, but I think the mic might have been between her breasts while the singer sang into it. MG is reviewing the show for betterPropaganda, so you'll have a more thorough description of the show soon, with photos.**
* Correction (9/13/04) -- A friend of the band e-mailed to tell me that Les Savy Fav frontman Tim Harrington is only 31, so my description of him as "middle-aged" is not correct. Next time, I will leave the back of the club for a closer look before I attempt to guess at a musician's age. My apologies.
** Update (9/13/04) -- Read MG's review here and check out additional photos here.
Thursday, September 09, 2004 :::
I didn't make it to see The Rosebuds at DC 9 last night, but tonight I'm MG's +1 for the Les Savy Fav show at the Black Cat. They're playing with Detachment Kit and Smoke and Smoke.
Tuesday, September 07, 2004 :::
Last week I got an e-mail from the stellastarr* mailing list about the last show the band will be playing for a while since they're going into the studio to record their second album. The show was on Sept. 5 and in NYC, of course, at The Roxy, at a party called Motherf_cker. Looked great, but I didn't really think twice about going, because I hate taking the bus to New York and I didn't have a place to stay and didn't want to spend money on a hotel room just to go see a band I've seen lots of times anyway, even if they are one of my favorite bands right now.
(In case you're wondering why I've censored myself by not spelling out the actual name of the party, it's because my readers have complained about not being able to read this blog at the office, and I am nothing if not reader-friendly. So don't click on the link to the party if you don't want the word showing up on your computer.)
Then on Thursday, MG said to me, "Do you want to go to New York this weekend to see stellastarr*?" Turns out that she stored up some Hilton reward points and is inviting me to stay with her and two of her friends at the Millennium Hilton for a grand total of $3. I thought about it for about a minute and said, "Yeah!"
On Sunday morning, we caught a Vamoose bus, to which I couldn't object because it's not a Greyhound and it only costs $35 roundtrip and I was traveling with friends so I wouldn't be sitting next to some creepy man who would stare at me and breathe loudly for the entire four hours (which is what happened the last time I took a bus to NYC). After a pleasant trip, we arrived at Penn Station and got over to the hotel, which is not as swanky as Hilton would have you believe. We walked to Tribeca for dinner and to Soho for desert at Rice to Riches, then returned to the hotel to get ready to go out on the early side, since Motherf_cker was advertising free vodka drinks between 10 and 11.
The Roxy is a really great space, and the crowd was great. Half the people there looked like they walked out of Party Monster – club kids in giant platform shoes and lots of sparkles, drag queens and nearly naked skinny gay boys – and the other half was comprised of your standard hipsters and slightly less hip concertgoers. The free drinks were strong and the DJs were great. We were there for many hours and I can't think of a song that came on that I didn't like – they played everything from The Killers and Franz Ferdinand to Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Rolling Stones and Lou Reed to "I Put a Spell on You," Siouxsie & The Banshees and The Ramones.
The band went on a little before midnight and played a mix of new songs that will be on the next album, like "On My Own," which they've been playing at shows, and songs from the debut album – "In the Walls," "My Coco," "Jenny," "Pulp Song." During "Jenny," five or six girls climbed up on stage to dance with the band. I'm not a fan of girls climbing on stage because they inevitably try to rub themselves (dance with, whatever) against the musicians, which makes it more difficult for the musicians to play their instruments and it makes me nervous thinking that they might mess up, even though I know it's not likely. Luckily, stellastarr* were not thrown off by the gyrating girls and played the song just as well as if there were no girls rubbing themselves on them. The bassist, being female, was least affected by this, a fringe benefit of being a female musician.
After the set, one of the party's organizers threw some CDs and records into the crowd. Since it's inevitable that when things are flying through the air I will be hit in the face with one of said things, I was hit in the face with the new Walkmen album, Bows & Arrows, on vinyl. I'd guess that getting hit in the face with a record (cardboard on the outside) is much less painful than getting hit in the face with a CD (plastic on the outside), so as far as getting hit in the face with flying objects, I made out pretty well. No injury and a cool record.
I was hoping to spot some hipster celebrities – Chloe Sevigny or somebody like that – at The Roxy, but didn't. I did spot The Sexy Magazines' Franco V. passing around flyers for his band's next show. We left when most of our little group started falling asleep on the couches and about half of the other people there had already left. I have to admit that I was a bit overwhelmed by Motherf_cker – going out to shows and parties in D.C. and Boston doesn't even come close to preparing one for going to a party in New York. When I woke up really late on Monday morning I thought that it's for the best that I don't live in NYC. In the first few weeks of adjusting to living there, I would be out until at least 4:00 a.m. every night, get fired from my job, if that job happened to require getting there at 9:00 a.m., and would be in massive debt caused by drinking and clothes shopping. We did manage to drag our tired ourselves to the Village on Monday afternoon, for breakfast at Peanut Butter & Co. and shopping at Girlprops and lots of random little stores, before catching the bus back.
And now I'm back in D.C. What's there to do around here this week? Scissor Sisters at the 9:30 tonight; The Rosebuds at DC 9 on Wednesday, Les Savy Fav at the Black Cat and Pallino at DC 9 on Thursday; the Black Cat anniversary party Snow Patrol at the 9:30 on Friday; Mousetrap at the Black Cat and Guided by Voices at the 9:30 on Saturday. And if you want to see Brown Bunny, it opens at Visions on Friday. Plus, it's the last week to see the "Nordic Cool" exhibit at the National Museum of Women in the Arts – it ends on Sunday.
01/05: Taint and Bliss present INFAMY, 9:30 Club
01/10: Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton, 9:30 Club
01/19: Benjy Ferree, Meredith Bragg and the Terminals, Greenland, Black Cat 01/24: Hej Hej, Cafe Saint-Ex
