I could tell you about the physical impossibly of navigating downtown San Diego in a car (one-way streets anyone?) or about the semi-painful nostalgia of navigating a downtown anywhere after my suburban exile, or about the still-unsolved mystery of how my ticket managed to evaporate from my pocket as I drove, requiring I buy a whole other one at the door....
But you don't want to hear about any of that. What do you want to hear?
Well, the show was great. Like, capital letters GREAT.
The crowd was kind of what I expected. There were aging grungies, a few hipsters with their plastic glasses, at least one punk-rock girl (past her first blush of youth), Country fans with their cowboy shirts, hats, and boots. There were even combinations of the above. I ended up getting kind of adopted by a pair of soldiers in the front row who knew even more DBT lyrics then I did.
Opening act was The Henry Clay People, who looked like someone'd put hipster glasses on a bunch of grunge musicians, with their flannel shirts and their veils of unkempt hair. Their blond singer was set up stage left, while their guitarist, who's stoned-looking face never moved once the entire show, jumped on amplifiers, stood on one leg, and on numerous occasions, wandered over to the singer to lean against him, share his mike, or generally invade his personal space. It figures that those two are brothers. This group had to face a nice wall of malaise from the stoney crowd, as the apathy that greeted their entrance and first numbers was pretty impressive, but they broke through it, and by their fifth song, everyone was bouncing. They come from So-Cal (frontman shared stories of working at San Diego's maritime museum back in the day) but they sound like punk-rock from Missisippi, if that makes sense. One of the longest too: they played for over an hour but made the time pass quickly. They rocked the room, and were easily one of the most impressive opening acts I've seen.
But everyone was there for the Drive-By Truckers. They would play for about 3.5 hours, a testament to the depth of their catalog, and someone like me would only recognize maybe two out of three of the songs they played. They were heavy on the new material, which I love. They're the kind of group that just turns the stage into a long, happy roadtrip, and we're all going together. Patterson Hood doesn't so much sing his songs as act live them, delivering a performance of "Sink Hole" that'll haunt you for days. The core of this group is the contrast between band-leader Hood and his foil Mike Cooley. Mike Cooley is aloof and cool where Patterson is engaged and passionate, and tends to more mellow renditions of his songs live then you get on his recordings, but he can sound like the Devil Went Down to Georgia when he decides the occasion warrents it. His deeply empathic "Birthday Boy" was a highlight of both the newest album and the show. The third lead singer of the night, bassist Shonna Tucker, has a voice like thick sweet honey, enfusing "Someday it's gonna be I told you so" with some dance-floor bounce and striking heroic poses with a bass roughly as big as she was. The drummer looked like he moonlighted as a member of ZZ Top, or Sasquatch, but played with almost delicate precision. The third guitarist, wild card John Neff, was the band's non-entity. He seemed to have no destinguishing features at all except his playing, but his playing was enough.
I loved this show. I love this band. Even if the super-long run time in a club with no Verizon service meant my sister would be frantic to reach me by the time the show was done, that was the best show I've been to in ages.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Movie Review: GREEN ZONE
It is kind of impossible to talk about GREEN ZONE without comparing it to (or even calling it) a Bourne movie. Paul Greengrass directed the second and third installments of the Bourne trilogy, and Matt Damon is wildly recognizable as the amnesiac super-spy.
The Bourne movies were also, well, damn good movies. Jason Bourne is THE action-hero of early 21st century, post-9/11 America. He's an unstoppable bad ass, but he's also a kind of personification of the damage the War On Terror has done to America's idea of itself: haunted by horrible deeds he doesn't even remember, hunted by former bosses who now see him as a liability, he's something that must have looked like such a good idea on paper that it was worth breaking a few rules to make it happen, only for unintended consequences to turn Mission Accomplished into a clusterfuck. Bourne is damaged goods, and Matt Damon, to his credit, never let us forget it.
If there is something driving Roy Miller (Matt Damon)'s hunger for the truth besides sheer decency, we don't find out what it is, but that's alright, Damon is more then capable of grabbing us and just pulling us along for the ride. In fact the entire cast is spot on, which is not just good, but vital with a script this thinly written. Many characters are stand-ins for real people, painted in broad strokes, but it's still interesting to watch Lawrie Dayne (Amy Ryan), the Judy Miller-styled reporter who's face lights up when she recalls how this high ranking official put the raw intel right in her hand, like it was one of the happiest days of her life. Brandon Gleeson radiates a kind of deep intelligence as Miller's CIA ally, who also carries the deeply held delusion that the truth matters.
Greg Kinear doesn't have a gesture or glance to spare as the Paul Bremer administration goon, who is so fixated on the Political victory that he just plain doesn't see the human cost of the choices he makes. When Miller eventually uses his fists to try and beat some sense into him, it's about as close to a comeuppance as this character gets.
The Iraqi casting is also impeccable. Khalid Abdulla plays the one-legged Iran/Iraq war veteran "Freddy" as a haunted, conflicted figure who strives to remind everyone that nobody, not even well-intentioned Miller, really understands Iraq. Yigal Naor, who played Saddam himself in a BBC docu-drama and plays Iraq's top general here, radiates the kind of quiet, iron-handed command that might actually be able to hold a country together.
This is really as pulse-pounding as action-thrillers get. You'll find the same hand-held camera shots, frenzied pace, and incredible chase sequences that you found in the last two Bourne movies, proving again that Paul Greengrass is a director who can make even "person reading an e-mail" seem full of kinetic energy. He might be physically incapable of shooting something dull. The quieter scenes are not so much quiet as eerie. He portrays the Green Zone as a kind of surreal island. The scene where our battle-clad soldiers barge in on a relaxed, beer-swilling pool party is jarring. That's the gap between the people who give the orders and the people who carry them out, and that's why the righteous intentions of the men on the ground are foredoomed to failure. It's hard to get worked up about such hypotheticals as bloody civil war when your beer is cold and you've got a reputation to protect.
A lot has been made of the politics of this movie, but even with it's rooted-in-reality screen credit, the plot of the movie is very clearly the plot of a movie: it puts one man at the center of all the action, gives him the drive to solve the mystery, and brings it all to a kind-of victorious conclusion...kind of. Of course you can't escape history, and as we all know the mess Iraq turned into, we settle for the sort of watered-down victory we get. Miller gets through Iraq with his morality intact. This, it turns out, is as much as can really be hoped for.
I think when current American cinema is writen about in retrospect, GREEN ZONE will turn out to be a significant movie. It's not the best film anyone's made about the Iraq War, but it's a director and a lead actor using all the tricks they've learned from the wildly successful Bourne films to make a real-world point. I hope this won't be Matt Damon's last collaboration with Greengrass. These two get eachother, and for all it's flaws, this is one of the most tightly constructed thrillers you'll see.
It's a damn good movie. I don't know if I've mentioned that enough. A damn good movie.
The Bourne movies were also, well, damn good movies. Jason Bourne is THE action-hero of early 21st century, post-9/11 America. He's an unstoppable bad ass, but he's also a kind of personification of the damage the War On Terror has done to America's idea of itself: haunted by horrible deeds he doesn't even remember, hunted by former bosses who now see him as a liability, he's something that must have looked like such a good idea on paper that it was worth breaking a few rules to make it happen, only for unintended consequences to turn Mission Accomplished into a clusterfuck. Bourne is damaged goods, and Matt Damon, to his credit, never let us forget it.
If there is something driving Roy Miller (Matt Damon)'s hunger for the truth besides sheer decency, we don't find out what it is, but that's alright, Damon is more then capable of grabbing us and just pulling us along for the ride. In fact the entire cast is spot on, which is not just good, but vital with a script this thinly written. Many characters are stand-ins for real people, painted in broad strokes, but it's still interesting to watch Lawrie Dayne (Amy Ryan), the Judy Miller-styled reporter who's face lights up when she recalls how this high ranking official put the raw intel right in her hand, like it was one of the happiest days of her life. Brandon Gleeson radiates a kind of deep intelligence as Miller's CIA ally, who also carries the deeply held delusion that the truth matters.
Greg Kinear doesn't have a gesture or glance to spare as the Paul Bremer administration goon, who is so fixated on the Political victory that he just plain doesn't see the human cost of the choices he makes. When Miller eventually uses his fists to try and beat some sense into him, it's about as close to a comeuppance as this character gets.
The Iraqi casting is also impeccable. Khalid Abdulla plays the one-legged Iran/Iraq war veteran "Freddy" as a haunted, conflicted figure who strives to remind everyone that nobody, not even well-intentioned Miller, really understands Iraq. Yigal Naor, who played Saddam himself in a BBC docu-drama and plays Iraq's top general here, radiates the kind of quiet, iron-handed command that might actually be able to hold a country together.
This is really as pulse-pounding as action-thrillers get. You'll find the same hand-held camera shots, frenzied pace, and incredible chase sequences that you found in the last two Bourne movies, proving again that Paul Greengrass is a director who can make even "person reading an e-mail" seem full of kinetic energy. He might be physically incapable of shooting something dull. The quieter scenes are not so much quiet as eerie. He portrays the Green Zone as a kind of surreal island. The scene where our battle-clad soldiers barge in on a relaxed, beer-swilling pool party is jarring. That's the gap between the people who give the orders and the people who carry them out, and that's why the righteous intentions of the men on the ground are foredoomed to failure. It's hard to get worked up about such hypotheticals as bloody civil war when your beer is cold and you've got a reputation to protect.
A lot has been made of the politics of this movie, but even with it's rooted-in-reality screen credit, the plot of the movie is very clearly the plot of a movie: it puts one man at the center of all the action, gives him the drive to solve the mystery, and brings it all to a kind-of victorious conclusion...kind of. Of course you can't escape history, and as we all know the mess Iraq turned into, we settle for the sort of watered-down victory we get. Miller gets through Iraq with his morality intact. This, it turns out, is as much as can really be hoped for.
I think when current American cinema is writen about in retrospect, GREEN ZONE will turn out to be a significant movie. It's not the best film anyone's made about the Iraq War, but it's a director and a lead actor using all the tricks they've learned from the wildly successful Bourne films to make a real-world point. I hope this won't be Matt Damon's last collaboration with Greengrass. These two get eachother, and for all it's flaws, this is one of the most tightly constructed thrillers you'll see.
It's a damn good movie. I don't know if I've mentioned that enough. A damn good movie.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Deke Dickland's Guitar Geek Festival in Anaheim: 1/16/10
This one went simply. I read a write-up of the event in the LA Times. I had nothing going on that day. I decided to attend.
I found the perfect parking spot right in front of the hotel. The only soul in sight was an old, fat, white-bearded man walking slowly out of the lobby doors, carrying an old guitar case.
There was a gold Mickey Mouse statue in the lobby. Someone had slung a music-note-shaped guitar on it. I was DEFINITELY in the right place.
3 PM--DOORS OPEN
- there was a big sign over the door saying "YOU FOUND IT: Welcome to the guitar geek festival!" The line of tattooed dudes, mostly older, mostly with long hair snakes around the bar. I start noting down band t-shirts to research later.
3:15 PM--THE SEEING RODRIGOS
This trio of mariachi-costume-wearing guitarists bragged that, since this is a "guitar geek" event, they'd ditched their drummer. This was probably a mistake. Their dedication to instrument purity was, uh, admirable, but their sound could really have used the grounding. Without it they sounded like they were playing slightly-rocked-up mariachi music on guitars, which they kind of were.
3:30 PM--MESHUGGA BEACH PARTY
Billing themselves as "the world's only all-jewish surf band" these guys wore long Orthodox robes, black hats and big bushy fake beards. They, thankfully, appeared as a full band, with two guitarists, a bassist, a keyboard-playing woman, AND a drummer. And no one was fluff. Mixing surf music and jewish folk tunes sounds like one of those ideas you'd have after drink number one-way-too-many, but surprisingly enough this band cranked it up and never looked back. Plus they shared "cultural knowledge" by reading aloud from a rhinestone studded Dead Joke Scrolls, which were exactly what they were advertised as. That's the kind of cheese that makes me love you forever.
4:15 PM--BUDDY AND SUZY
Sorry. I hadn't eaten yet that day, headed out for an urgently-needed burger and missed it.
5 PM--STEVE TROVATO AND CARL VERHEYEN
Apparently, rhinestone-hatbanded Deke has gotten more requests for the both of these players individually then for anyone else he's ever hosted at his guitar-geek festivals. Now they are touring together, so it works out perfectly for him. They were two rather out-of-shape guys in their forties or fifties, wearing colorful shirts who adored each other. Each one kept trying to out-love the other one, asking for lessons, passing off the lead chords, and asking if their wives were in the audience. I love to see a bromance in the full of it's bloom.
They were master-players, that much was obvious even to a layperson like me. A google search tells me that these two are very in-demand studio musicians. I don't know what songs they were playing, for all I know they just jammed up there for fifteen minutes, but I could have kept watching them for days.
6 PM--"CRAZY" JOE TRITSCHLER
This guy was a sort of Co-MC, helping Deke out and serving as foil and witty banter. He is a funny, funny guy. He played this gig on his "satanic midget guitar." It was satanic because it was high and evil sounding. Somehow the music didn't grate. Engineering new instruments seems to be this guy's stick. He sounds like a punk-rock Buddy Holly.
7 PM--"HONEYBOY" EDWARDS
Had to move my car and missed it. Sad about it too, as this guy is billed as the "last of the Delta bluesmen," a contemporary of Robert Johnson.
7:30 PM--ELECTRIC 12-STRING NIGHTMARE
The rules were simple. Bring your own twelve-string. One guy will tune them all. Reclaim your weapon, crowd onto the stage and play. There were 17 of them total, including one woman dressed up like Tinkerbell (not making it up). The song was "Mr. Tamborine Man" re-written as "Hey Electric 12-string man, please play in tune for me." Crazy Joe conducted with a big board that had the cords on it and a whammy bar as a baton. That's how you know this is a REAL guitar geek event.
It actually wasn't much of a nightmare. It sounded like chaos of course, but it was controlled chaos. Even Tinkerbell was a more-then-competent player. Deke said in conclusion that if he'd known it would sound so not-awful he wouldn't have called it the Nightmare.
7:45 PM--BRIAN LONBECK AND ELAINE FRIZZELL
The only thing I really remember about this gig was that these two are old with a capital O. Elaine had a huge brown wig, massive plastic glasses, and I don't think her hollow-body was plugged in. Brian Lonbeck was singing and playing, but while I remember it being pleasant, it wasn't so pleasant that I didn't ditch to use the bathroom and hit up the bar for the most watery gin and tonic I've ever had in my life.
8:30 PM--HISTORY OF THE STEEL GUITAR
THIS was interesting, and apparently it was attended by all the giants of the steel guitar scene, which is a small scene, but a real scene. One guy explained that the Acoustic Island slide guitar originated when the suer-plantation owners imported South-American cowboys to teach the native laborers how to heard cattle. When the cowboys went back to South America, they left their guitars behind. The natives, of course, had no idea how to tune or play these properly, but one day some guy must have dropped his knife on the strings and noticed the sound it made, which is how the instrument came to be played with a metal bar against the frets. Through further experimentation, it turned out that adding a bullet-shaped end to this bar enabled the instrument to make the full range of notes and octaves. A grammy-winning Island slide player demoed this technique, playing a piece that made me wanna hula dance right there, which would not have been pretty, so I'm glad I resisted the urge. A stand-up bass, jazz drummer, and ukulele accompanied.
Down the line the instrument got more advanced. First it got electrified, as demoed by one guy. Then effects pedals were added, as demoed by that rarest of creatures: a steel-guitar player who has been employed for 40 years. Apparently he is Merle Haggard' band-leader. At the very end of the line was a guy who invents his own steel guitars, who's machine created incredible futuristic kinds of sounds.
Informative AND entertaining. Perfecto.
9:30 PM--JOEL PATERSON AND THE MODERN SOUNDS
10:15 PM--DEKE DICKERSON TRIBUTE TO JOHNNY RAMONE
Best part of the show was seeing all the unhappy old people scowling down their noses at all the noise. If Deke hadn't been the event's MC, he would never have gotten away with it. I guess the supposed demise of the punk-rock generation gap has been greatly exaggerated.
Sponge-Bob's voice actor was the evening's Joey Ramone. He stressed that you need to put the Ramones in context: if you're a 14-year-old in a small town in the midwest and looking for balls-out rock music, and you turn on the radio and hear "More then a Feeling" and other bloodless drek, and then your friend's cool older sister goes to New York for a week and comes back with a Ramone's album that sounds like BLLARRRGHHGHG and off they went.
Thank you Deke Dickland. Thank you, SpongeBobby Ramone. I've tried to be a Ramones fan before. I didn't get it.
I do now. Thanks again.
11 PM--GEORGE TOMSCO AND 3 BALLS OF FIRE
Like Duane Eddy, George Tomsco is another part of an important instrumental group from the sixties, though he's not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and his work, though familiar, isn't as omnipresent as Eddy's. Still, he was a bubbly fifty-something Tex-Mex with an epic mustache and an effortless stage presence who was quick enough to fill in the missing notes when the weird little techno-keybord thing Deke was trying to play died on everybody. My primary impression of this gig was "warm." Everything about it was warm. And the music was great, but saying so is almost redundant right now.
MIDNIGHT--DUANE EDDY
Hey, this guy looks familiar...
Yes, the random guitar-carrying old man I'd spotted as I arrived was none other then the evening's headliner, the Hall of Famer himself. Well HUH.
The only instrumentalist to get into the rock-n-roll hall of fame. I guarantee you have heard his songs before. It was cool to Deke, Crazy Joe, and other parts of the other acts gathering around a man who is clearly a hero to all of them. Deke said that ever since he was a kid, he's dreamed of the day when he will get to play "Peter Gun" with Duane Eddy, who replied "Let's do it." This gig brought the house down. Rocking and heartwarming.
I'm glad I went.
I found the perfect parking spot right in front of the hotel. The only soul in sight was an old, fat, white-bearded man walking slowly out of the lobby doors, carrying an old guitar case.
There was a gold Mickey Mouse statue in the lobby. Someone had slung a music-note-shaped guitar on it. I was DEFINITELY in the right place.
3 PM--DOORS OPEN
- there was a big sign over the door saying "YOU FOUND IT: Welcome to the guitar geek festival!" The line of tattooed dudes, mostly older, mostly with long hair snakes around the bar. I start noting down band t-shirts to research later.
3:15 PM--THE SEEING RODRIGOS
This trio of mariachi-costume-wearing guitarists bragged that, since this is a "guitar geek" event, they'd ditched their drummer. This was probably a mistake. Their dedication to instrument purity was, uh, admirable, but their sound could really have used the grounding. Without it they sounded like they were playing slightly-rocked-up mariachi music on guitars, which they kind of were.
3:30 PM--MESHUGGA BEACH PARTY
Billing themselves as "the world's only all-jewish surf band" these guys wore long Orthodox robes, black hats and big bushy fake beards. They, thankfully, appeared as a full band, with two guitarists, a bassist, a keyboard-playing woman, AND a drummer. And no one was fluff. Mixing surf music and jewish folk tunes sounds like one of those ideas you'd have after drink number one-way-too-many, but surprisingly enough this band cranked it up and never looked back. Plus they shared "cultural knowledge" by reading aloud from a rhinestone studded Dead Joke Scrolls, which were exactly what they were advertised as. That's the kind of cheese that makes me love you forever.
4:15 PM--BUDDY AND SUZY
Sorry. I hadn't eaten yet that day, headed out for an urgently-needed burger and missed it.
5 PM--STEVE TROVATO AND CARL VERHEYEN
Apparently, rhinestone-hatbanded Deke has gotten more requests for the both of these players individually then for anyone else he's ever hosted at his guitar-geek festivals. Now they are touring together, so it works out perfectly for him. They were two rather out-of-shape guys in their forties or fifties, wearing colorful shirts who adored each other. Each one kept trying to out-love the other one, asking for lessons, passing off the lead chords, and asking if their wives were in the audience. I love to see a bromance in the full of it's bloom.
They were master-players, that much was obvious even to a layperson like me. A google search tells me that these two are very in-demand studio musicians. I don't know what songs they were playing, for all I know they just jammed up there for fifteen minutes, but I could have kept watching them for days.
6 PM--"CRAZY" JOE TRITSCHLER
This guy was a sort of Co-MC, helping Deke out and serving as foil and witty banter. He is a funny, funny guy. He played this gig on his "satanic midget guitar." It was satanic because it was high and evil sounding. Somehow the music didn't grate. Engineering new instruments seems to be this guy's stick. He sounds like a punk-rock Buddy Holly.
7 PM--"HONEYBOY" EDWARDS
Had to move my car and missed it. Sad about it too, as this guy is billed as the "last of the Delta bluesmen," a contemporary of Robert Johnson.
7:30 PM--ELECTRIC 12-STRING NIGHTMARE
The rules were simple. Bring your own twelve-string. One guy will tune them all. Reclaim your weapon, crowd onto the stage and play. There were 17 of them total, including one woman dressed up like Tinkerbell (not making it up). The song was "Mr. Tamborine Man" re-written as "Hey Electric 12-string man, please play in tune for me." Crazy Joe conducted with a big board that had the cords on it and a whammy bar as a baton. That's how you know this is a REAL guitar geek event.
It actually wasn't much of a nightmare. It sounded like chaos of course, but it was controlled chaos. Even Tinkerbell was a more-then-competent player. Deke said in conclusion that if he'd known it would sound so not-awful he wouldn't have called it the Nightmare.
7:45 PM--BRIAN LONBECK AND ELAINE FRIZZELL
The only thing I really remember about this gig was that these two are old with a capital O. Elaine had a huge brown wig, massive plastic glasses, and I don't think her hollow-body was plugged in. Brian Lonbeck was singing and playing, but while I remember it being pleasant, it wasn't so pleasant that I didn't ditch to use the bathroom and hit up the bar for the most watery gin and tonic I've ever had in my life.
8:30 PM--HISTORY OF THE STEEL GUITAR
THIS was interesting, and apparently it was attended by all the giants of the steel guitar scene, which is a small scene, but a real scene. One guy explained that the Acoustic Island slide guitar originated when the suer-plantation owners imported South-American cowboys to teach the native laborers how to heard cattle. When the cowboys went back to South America, they left their guitars behind. The natives, of course, had no idea how to tune or play these properly, but one day some guy must have dropped his knife on the strings and noticed the sound it made, which is how the instrument came to be played with a metal bar against the frets. Through further experimentation, it turned out that adding a bullet-shaped end to this bar enabled the instrument to make the full range of notes and octaves. A grammy-winning Island slide player demoed this technique, playing a piece that made me wanna hula dance right there, which would not have been pretty, so I'm glad I resisted the urge. A stand-up bass, jazz drummer, and ukulele accompanied.
Down the line the instrument got more advanced. First it got electrified, as demoed by one guy. Then effects pedals were added, as demoed by that rarest of creatures: a steel-guitar player who has been employed for 40 years. Apparently he is Merle Haggard' band-leader. At the very end of the line was a guy who invents his own steel guitars, who's machine created incredible futuristic kinds of sounds.
Informative AND entertaining. Perfecto.
9:30 PM--JOEL PATERSON AND THE MODERN SOUNDS
10:15 PM--DEKE DICKERSON TRIBUTE TO JOHNNY RAMONE
Best part of the show was seeing all the unhappy old people scowling down their noses at all the noise. If Deke hadn't been the event's MC, he would never have gotten away with it. I guess the supposed demise of the punk-rock generation gap has been greatly exaggerated.
Sponge-Bob's voice actor was the evening's Joey Ramone. He stressed that you need to put the Ramones in context: if you're a 14-year-old in a small town in the midwest and looking for balls-out rock music, and you turn on the radio and hear "More then a Feeling" and other bloodless drek, and then your friend's cool older sister goes to New York for a week and comes back with a Ramone's album that sounds like BLLARRRGHHGHG and off they went.
Thank you Deke Dickland. Thank you, SpongeBobby Ramone. I've tried to be a Ramones fan before. I didn't get it.
I do now. Thanks again.
11 PM--GEORGE TOMSCO AND 3 BALLS OF FIRE
Like Duane Eddy, George Tomsco is another part of an important instrumental group from the sixties, though he's not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and his work, though familiar, isn't as omnipresent as Eddy's. Still, he was a bubbly fifty-something Tex-Mex with an epic mustache and an effortless stage presence who was quick enough to fill in the missing notes when the weird little techno-keybord thing Deke was trying to play died on everybody. My primary impression of this gig was "warm." Everything about it was warm. And the music was great, but saying so is almost redundant right now.
MIDNIGHT--DUANE EDDY
Hey, this guy looks familiar...
Yes, the random guitar-carrying old man I'd spotted as I arrived was none other then the evening's headliner, the Hall of Famer himself. Well HUH.
The only instrumentalist to get into the rock-n-roll hall of fame. I guarantee you have heard his songs before. It was cool to Deke, Crazy Joe, and other parts of the other acts gathering around a man who is clearly a hero to all of them. Deke said that ever since he was a kid, he's dreamed of the day when he will get to play "Peter Gun" with Duane Eddy, who replied "Let's do it." This gig brought the house down. Rocking and heartwarming.
I'm glad I went.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Back to Back to the Grind: 1-8-2010
When I was growing up in this town, I didn't hang around coffeeshops. I didn't really hang around anywhere. But I'd been to "Back to the Grind" quite a few times in my life. Their coffee is strong, their hot chocolate comes with generous amounts of whipped cream, the lemonade is cheap as hell, and as the biggest independent coffee spot in downtown it's possibly the hippest place to be seen.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that they sometimes have bands there. Like they did tonight. No cover charge, one drink minimum, and three local acts. This was a chance to get to know the "scene" in my suburban So-Cal town, such as it is, so I figured it was really time for me to stop lolly-gagging and head OUT on a Friday night.
The first band was Mothers of Gut. The guitarist I talked to said it was the frontman's idea. He washed his hands of the name. The guitarist held his Strat like he was worried he would break it, the sweater-wearing, emo-haired bassist could have been wearing a mask and no one could tell, the frontman had a huge bushy moustache that I couldn't see past. The drummer was the only one who looked like he was having any fun. They did not so much play their music as construct it, and they layered on the effects so heavy that the guitar sounded like it was under water, the singer was in a tile bathroom, the bassist was playing a synthisizer and the drummer was...who knows. This is music that takes itself very, very seriously. Get some production behind Mothers of Gut, and it could really fly. The coffee house is not for them.
After that, The Polite were a breath of fresh air. Where Mothers of Gut had been tense, joyless creatures, The Polite were all smiles, cracking wise with the people at the front coffee tables, taking a long time to tune their instruments, and it seemed like they personally knew all of the people who suddenly flooded the bar. The coffee house was packed and at least one hipster leaning against the bar knew all the words to the songs. They were poppy and punky and a bit surfy, and even if they didn't challenge much, they are extremely easy to like.
The RAGA was the last group, with a barrell-chested, hollow-body wielding, Spanish-singing frontman, who sound not unlike Los Lobos's less muscular little brother. Not an un-apt metaphor for East LA vs. Riverside.
Not many dendrites in this group, but a fun diversion.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that they sometimes have bands there. Like they did tonight. No cover charge, one drink minimum, and three local acts. This was a chance to get to know the "scene" in my suburban So-Cal town, such as it is, so I figured it was really time for me to stop lolly-gagging and head OUT on a Friday night.
The first band was Mothers of Gut. The guitarist I talked to said it was the frontman's idea. He washed his hands of the name. The guitarist held his Strat like he was worried he would break it, the sweater-wearing, emo-haired bassist could have been wearing a mask and no one could tell, the frontman had a huge bushy moustache that I couldn't see past. The drummer was the only one who looked like he was having any fun. They did not so much play their music as construct it, and they layered on the effects so heavy that the guitar sounded like it was under water, the singer was in a tile bathroom, the bassist was playing a synthisizer and the drummer was...who knows. This is music that takes itself very, very seriously. Get some production behind Mothers of Gut, and it could really fly. The coffee house is not for them.
After that, The Polite were a breath of fresh air. Where Mothers of Gut had been tense, joyless creatures, The Polite were all smiles, cracking wise with the people at the front coffee tables, taking a long time to tune their instruments, and it seemed like they personally knew all of the people who suddenly flooded the bar. The coffee house was packed and at least one hipster leaning against the bar knew all the words to the songs. They were poppy and punky and a bit surfy, and even if they didn't challenge much, they are extremely easy to like.
The RAGA was the last group, with a barrell-chested, hollow-body wielding, Spanish-singing frontman, who sound not unlike Los Lobos's less muscular little brother. Not an un-apt metaphor for East LA vs. Riverside.
Not many dendrites in this group, but a fun diversion.
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